Calling All Pray-ers

We need your prayer power! Faith Alive Foundation-Nigeria is applying for a major grant. Without being more specific on this public website, we appreciate your daily prayers for God's wisdom, strength, power, protection and favor for those of us involved with this grant as we move forward to serve the Nigerians that He brings to Faith Alive. Forgive me for sounding dramatic, but thousands of people's futures depend on this grant.

If you want to know more details, please post a comment here with your email and I'll send you a more detailed explanation about the grant's importance.

(The graphic above reminds me to pray with the full faith of a child.)

EPJ Center

Faith Alive Founder and Coordinator Dr. Christian Isichei and his family wish you all a happy Easter as they celebrate today their new gym and physical therapy center (almost 30 minutes from the Faith Alive Hospital in a newly settled Christian area called New Abuja). Named after their three children (Emily, Prince and Joseph), the EPJ Center is Dr. Chris’s first personal project since graduating from medical school in 1983.

Dr. Chris says that after his knee injury playing football (American soccer) with the Faith Alive staff, subsequent surgery and physical therapy in Baltimore a few years ago, “and all the lessons God taught me, like the psalmist it was good I was afflicted as I knew Him better.”

I’m amazed how Dr. Chris transforms negative experiences into positive ones. I shouldn’t be surprised, though, because he takes his lead from Jesus whose physical death didn’t have the last word—Praise God that He is risen!

Feel free to post a congratulatory comment here for the Isicheis.

Spiritual Theme: Good Stewardship

Thanks to Pastor Ben at Faith Alive in Jos, Nigeria for sharing a recent spiritual theme based on Matthew 25. To paraphrase the scripture, a man preparing for a journey entrusted his wealth to three servants according to their ability. The first servant received five bags of gold, the second servant received three and the third servant received one. This sounds like a math problem, but's basically a spiritual test.

When the master returned, the first two servants had doubled the bags of gold. The master said to each of them, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!”

But the third servant had safely hidden the one bag of gold in a hole in the ground. His master chastised that servant, calling him wicked, lazy and worthless before having him thrown outside into the darkness.

It migiht be easy for us to identify with or judge the third servant. Either way, Pastor Ben asks us to examine ourselves. He says: “Pause for a moment and list out what you think you have received from God.

• How long or short is your list?
• How can you rate yourself in regard to faithfulness with what you have received?
• What are your scores in the area of profit-making with what you have received as listed?

Let not what you received stop at you. Pass it on to bring in more to God. Don’t lose them. Don’t exchange them for the pleasures of this world. Keep and use them. For how you use them will point to how your eternity shall be. May we not dash the expectations of our master when he comes.”

Value of Volunteering

One of our local Faith Alive supporters is a hero. Denver's Channel 7 news recently awarded Gerry Lake that well-deserved title for her tireless efforts creating a feeding program for disadvantaged school children and their families. Each Thursday, she leads a group of community volunteers at our church to organize, pack and deliver over 200 bags of meals to area schools where teachers and counselors put the bags in identified children's backpacks. We affectionately call this program, in partnership with the McKinney project at our local food bank, McBackpacks.

What does McBackpacks have to do with Nigeria? A lot, according to Kate Clement, volunteer at Faith Alive and headmistress of Elim Elementary School in Jos, Nigeria. As part of Kate's visit to Fort Collins last spring, she watched in awe as Gerry and the McBackpack volunteers filled bags with peanut butter and boxed milk.

Kate took two important lessons from Gerry back to Nigeria:

1. It's possible to have a pervasive culture of volunteering.
2. You're never to old to volunteer in some way.

Gerry and her volunteers are young at heart. Kate said that many Nigerians think they have less value after a certain age, but Gerry and her crew prove otherwise.

We wish both Kate and Gerry well as they continue to be model volunteer heros.

Daughter of “White Jesus” Baptized

This post is for our Nigerian Faith Alive family who met Chris Harper, aka “White Jesus,” when he visited Jos with me in 2008. Chris and his wife Anna thank God for Emmaline, their beautiful, healthy baby girl. Pastor Cindy Frost (who visited Faith Alive with me in 2009) baptized Emmaline yesterday at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Collins, Colorado.

I’ve never attended a Nigerian child’s baptism, but imagine that it, like Emmaline’s, consists of the parents’ covenant to raise their child to love Jesus and a church’s vow to help. In the name of the whole church of Christ (including Nigeria), our congregation committed to “undertake with these parents the Christian nurture of Emmaline, so that in due time she may confess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,” and by our “example and fellowship, to strengthen her family ties with the household of God.”

The prayer for children's baptisms is one of my favorites and usually brings tears to my eyes. I know it’s long for a blog post, but it’s worth the time.

“Gracious Heavenly Father, from whom all children are a precious gift. Today we confess anew that we are but stewards of the lives You entrust to us. For we know that when we give our children unto You, we are able to keep them forever. When we deliver them into Your bondage, we know it is the perfect freedom. And when we bid them to love You first and best, they love us and others all the more. We pray for this child. Give her enough tears to make her tender, enough hurts to make her compassionate, enough of failure to keep her hands clenched tightly in Yours, and enough of success to make her sure that she walks with You. Give her a real concern for the needs of others, and help her to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ, who was baptized Your Son and servant and who is our risen Lord.

“We pray for these parents. Grant that their lives might be the window through which this child shall better see and understand You to be her heavenly Father. Help them to teach her to love all that is true and noble, just and pure, lovable and gracious, excellent and admirable, molding her young life into the likeness of Jesus Christ. May they love with Your love, teach Your truth, and share the gospel with this child, that Your Word may be heard, and Your will be done, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“Holy God, remind us of the promises given in our own baptism, and renew our trust in you. Make us strong to obey your will, and to serve you with joy, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

(Check out Chris's expression in the top photo. He's looking at Emmaline the way I think God smiles at us, his children--even if we are about to do something as silly as Emmaline and take off our pretty pink headbands.)

Faith Alive Foundations

Do you know the difference between Faith Alive Foundation-Nigeria and Faith Alive USA, Inc.?

FAF-N started in 1996, is Nigerian-led (Board of Directors that includes Dr. Chris Isichei, Founder and Coordinator) and operates in Jos, Nigeria with these statements:

Vision Statement: Faith Alive Foundation envisions a self-sustaining internationally recognized medical and social services center which meets the needs of humanity in a holistic way.

Mission Statement: To serve humanity by expressing God’s love through compassionate voluntary services and the provision of free holistic health care and social serves for improved quality of life.


FA USA, Inc. started in 2010, is American and Nigerian-led (Board of Directors that includes Russ McCahan, Dr. Chris Isichei and Sally Barlow) and operates in the United States with the mission to support approved projects at FAF-N. FA USA, Inc. is an offshoot of a foundation that began in the mid-2000s that has morphed into two current foundations—FA USA,Inc. and Hope for West Africa that supports a couple of Nigerian non-government organizations (including FAF-N).


In case you’re wondering where I fit, I am the U.S. Coordinator for FAF-N, a position created before FA USA, Inc. that coordinates visitors/volunteers, medical supplies and an array of other things that Dr. Chris needs. I also stay in close contact with both HFWA and FA USA, Inc. that are doing great work to support FAF-N.


Okay, enough acronyms. All you really need to remember are the thousands of people still living today because of these foundations rooted in Jesus Christ.

Sweet Mother

Happy Nigerian Mother's Day! Whether you call the woman who birthed and/or raised you Mother, Mom, Mommy, Mum, Mummy or something else (hopefully) endearing, today we give God a big NAGODE (thanks) for her.

Click here to read another post about Mother's Day (and see a photo of my mom), and click here hear the upbeat Nigerian "Sweet Mother" song.