Rivers Not Reservoirs
Connect to FB or Email >
  • Missionary Volunteer Partner - Home
    • Prayer Team
    • Missionary Support
    • Receive our Newsletter
    • Short Term Missions Team
    • Volunteers
    • Contact Us
  • MVP - Blog
  • Rivers Blog

March 31st, 2014

3/31/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Because of the Blockage of access to my Blog from Nigeria, I have been unable to Post over the past 10 days. I imagine this is for some a welcome relief to your email inbox. To those of you who have looked for them, as they say in Nigeria.... 'Sorry-O'

Meet one of 'His Rivers'

On my just completed trip to Lagos Nigeria and the campus of West Africa Theological Seminary, I had the honor of spending some time with several of 'His Rivers'. These men and women are - called of God - in many cases living in a foreign land - sacrificing much - yet daily walking in obedience to the Holy Spirit. Time or space do not permit the telling of all their stories.  Yet, I want to share some of them with you over the next few posts. 

In Africa 
You get your burnin’ and then you get your learnin’.
With learnin’ the burnin’ becomes a blaze !
Meet one whose becoming a blaze for God.


Picture

Meet NIXON

Many of you know Nixon. A student at WATS, who moved to Nigeria a number of years ago with his father and sister. His father Frederick came to WATS to receive his learnin’ – at the age of 50+. Frederick has now graduated and returned to Cameroon along with his daughter to be a ‘blaze for Christ’ in that country.

Spring 2013

The Call was given to all WATS students to sign up for a six week ‘assignment’ in missions called Springboard. Among the locations for assignment was a dangerous part of Northern Nigeria where Christians are being persecuted and killed. This assignment was to go and live/work among a village that had been driven out by the Muslim  controlled civic authorities because of the people’s unwillingness to conform to Muslim practices. 

Nixon signed up along with four or five others.

May 2013

Time was fast approaching to leave. One by one, those who had signed up to go began dropping out because of fear. Some were married, and did not want to risk the possibility of being killed, and leaving their families without a father.  Others had various  ‘reasons’.  Nixon struggled with the same fears – mostly of the unknown. But God revealed strongly to him, that he was TO GO.  He and one other prayed and prepared .

June 2013

They left by bus for a 15 hour ride to a City they had never been to, and where weekly reports were coming of Christians being killed. They arrived only to realize that the ‘missionary’ who was to meet them, and take them on the remainder of their journey was nowhere to be found. They ended up spending the night there, praying that God would ‘connect them’ with their ‘host’.

Morning came, and they were connected with their host and began a several hour journey via motorcycle to the village where they would spend the next six weeks.

Next Six Weeks

Living in mud huts
No Power or generators
No Water ( except a small bore hole – see picture)
No Bathrooms
Very little food – and certainly nothing he had ever seen or tasted before
People worked from sun up to sun down in the fields
No furniture except for mats to sleep on

So how do we ‘minister’?

So for six weeks, Nixon and his friend …

Became RIVERS of God to these people.

Every day they took their plows and went to the fields and worked alongside them in 100+ degree heat
Every day they drank the water and ate their food with them
Every night they slept on a mat on the floor of the mud hut
Every day they loved them, prayed for, laughed with, and cried with them
They scrounged up some wood and made benches for them to sit on
They fed the chickens
They met with the Children and told Bible Stories
And they ‘worshiped’ God together

And God protected them – No sickness, No persecution, Nothing that He didn’t give them the strength to endure.

The spark that God placed in Nixon’s heart of love for these people continues to grow into a blaze. 
His life will never be the same. And because God used him as a RIVER to ‘deliver’ 
His grace and mercy to them, they will likewise never be the same. 

THANK YOU NIXON – THANK YOU LORD

Pictures are worth a Thousand Words
Traveling
Feed the Chickens
A drink of water
Ready for another day
Ready to GO
Hard soil
Work, work, work
Cattle
Plow in hand
Goodnight
With the Children
Baby Dedication
Fresh clean water?
Looks delicious?
This is not a Holiday Inn


Picture
RIVERS NOT RESERVOIRS
7982 Hillcrest Trail
Jonesboro, Georgia 30236
404.784.4618

ARTICLES, RESOURCES, ETC.
CLICK HERE
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Mark Leavell

    Follower of Christ, Husband, Father, and Grandfather. Mark is the husband of Marybeth, the father of two sons , Alan  (wife Lenore) and John (wife Jen) and 5 Grandchildren. (Brianna, Keegan, Callie, Elijah and Gabriel.) He resides in Jonesboro, Georgia. 

    Archives

    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Subscribe to Blog

    * indicates required
    Email Format

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed