I would walk (drive) 500 (1500) miles....

As usual time has done its loopy thing and though the children and I only got back from our trip last night after 11 days away it seems almost as if it never happened.  Although I now feel rather spaced out after driving for 8 hours yesterday (well done James and Ruth for spending most of the Easter holidays in the car without complaining), we had a good time meeting friends and relatives, renewing relationships and letting more people know more about our plans for Nigeria.

We're hoping to go out at the end of June but we still need to raise a lot of support.  We're often asked by the people in Jos, "When will you be here?"  Before we leave the country we have to have raised or been pledged about £20,000 per annum.  It's a lot of money but our God is great and we trust he will supply all our needs.  However, he has chosen to work through humans so if you do feel that the Lord might be prompting you to support the work he's doing through us, please fill in the form on our support leaflet and send it to the Mission Africa office in Belfast or get in touch (dawn.jackson@missionafrica.org.uk) for more details of how to get involved financially and/or prayerfully.  If you don't you may have to put up with us for longer than planned and these posts won't get really interesting until we go overseas!  You know it makes sense!

I hope you all had a glorious Easter.  We happened to be in Aylesbury staying with my aunt and uncle over the Easter weekend.  The service in their church (Southcourt Baptist) was alive and we truly felt close to God throughout.  It was wonderful to worship the risen Lord in great music.  I especially agreed with the preacher that after 40 days of Lent there should be champagne breakfasts at churches, presents, parties and celebrations for 50 days afterwards as our Lord has risen, instead of the measly one day on Easter Sunday.  With the miracle of God becoming man at Christmas, his dying for us and rising again at Easter is the most significant event in history.

Just before the Easter day service we were given an interesting article from the April 2012 edition of Christianity Today. In it the author discusses the choices facing the Nigerian Church, how to react to the violence instigated by such Islamic groups as Boko Haram. Should Christians turn the other cheek or fight back?  He argues that the role of Christians is to be "just peacemakers".  To do this the Church needs a sound theological basis; theological education and good Christian teaching is terribly important and that reinforces our feeling that God wants us out in Nigeria to help strengthen the Church there.  If you can, please help us to get there.

Finally, here's a fact I learned over the weekend.  We met a friend and her family at Tiggywinkle's Animal Hospital. As well as cooing over an adorable hedgehog and watching in amazement as the attack tortoise, Mad Max, sped towards our shoes only to be thwarted by the wire fence, I learned that ducks cannot count.  This may be obvious to some of you but it rather tickled me, especially as the fact was illustrated by a photo of a mother duck followed by about two dozen ducklings of varying ages.  The inability to count can be something of a disadvantage if the duck swims out in the morning with 6 ducklings and returns with only 2 as she's still convinced that all her brood have come home.  However it's great if orphan ducklings need a mother - just attach them to an existing family.  Perhaps this fact intrigues me so much as it's quite flabbergasting to imagine that one day you might have 2 children but the next find yourself reponsible for half a dozen without noticing the difference.