by A2S Board Member Jason Sneed

With the evil forces of Mordor arrayed in menacing tumult on the plains below the ancient city of Minis Tirith, the diminutive hobbit Meriadoc Brandybuck sits atop an armored steed, readying to charge into the breach with the remaining cavalry of the West to save Middle Earth from the spread of evil across the land. With him, steading their steed, rides Lady Eowyn, the Iron Rose of Rohan. In the fearful silent pause preceding the charge, she leans into the trembling hobbit and whispers,

“Courage, Merry. Courage for our friends.”

Each of the six or seven mornings when we were in country in Nigeria, Andrew and the staff of A2S tasked one of our team members with leading the morning devotion as we gathered for breakfast. Each night after an exhausting and awe-inspiring day, we would assemble in Andrew’s hotel room for dinner prepared by the A2S Youth Center kitchen staff, and one of the A2S Nigerian staff or volunteers would respond to Andrew’s now-familiar invocation to “Tell us your story.”

Midweek, the evening before we were to take our U.S. Vision Trip Team and A2S staff to the International Displaced Persons (IDP) camp to deliver athletic shoes and school workbooks to refugees from the conflict in the North of Nigeria, our team was reminded that it was Team Member Megan’s turn to lead devotions in the morning. She was ready for the charge and asked the Team to prepare for devotions the next morning by listening to Brandon Lake’s song, “Courage.”

In that anthem Lake sings, “To crucify my will in holy service. To never bow even if it means the furnace. To pledge my every breath because you deserve it. God give us courage, God give us courage.”

She led devotions the next morning, inspiring our team (and nearly bringing one US Team member to tears) on the theme of Courage. God had ordained her leading devotions on this topic, and leading them that very morning, because that happened to be the day we would travel to the IDP camp to meet and serve those who fled from their homes with nothing but the courage in their spirits and the clothes on their backs.

A2S Board Member Jason Sneed & his wife Megan at the A2S Youth Center.

“Courage, Megan. Courage to Follow God’s Leading.”

The giving to A2S doesn’t stop at the Youth Center in Benin, or at the OWA Center (Opportunity, Wellness and Advancement) soon to be under construction adjacent to the Youth Center. A2S serves underprivileged kids in the poverty-stricken area of Benin with its after-school educational and Christian education program, by providing a hot meal every day, and with its university scholar support programs. We are not just giving them fish, so to speak. We are teaching them to fish, to become agents in their own development, to change systems and inspire visions beyond poverty and beyond a handout.

They also are learning to serve. A2S students, scholars and staff also practice giving back to those less fortunate than them. A2S in Nigeria visits the IDP camp on the outskirts of Benin City, housing up to 3000 refugees, bringing them supplies, and, on our visit in early July, delivering boxes full of athletic shoes and school workbooks. We also repainted their basketball court while there, repainting all the while borders and painting the lanes (of course) a crisp Davidson Wildcat red.

A2S volunteers paint the Internal Displacement Persons Camp’s basketball court during Vision Trip.

When we pulled up in our 3-4 vans and assorted vehicles, scores of children came running up to greet us, but respectfully stayed a short distance from us to allow us to exit the vans and take in our surroundings. After chatting with the children for a few minutes and exchanging high-fives, we walked across the camp to the huge open-air barn-like auditorium, as the children went running into the barn, launching a worship service like nothing we ever have heard. As thousands of kids sang the most beautiful worship song that they apparently wrote themselves, our U.S. team members entered from the back to walk up the aisles to take our seats up front to the side of the stage. I felt like a rock star entering and walking up the aisles to the throng of praising children, except that instead of an audience of fans praising a band, it was an audience of angels praising God Almighty.

Team Member Megan had never prayed before in front of a large group of people. On the drive to the IDP camp int he van, A2S staff member Ehiz asked our U.S. team for a volunteer to offer a prayer after the worship service and before we handed out athletic shoes and workbooks. There was a momentary pause in the van (as there often is when someone asks for a volunteer to pray), before Megan, practicing what she had just preached that morning on Courage, piped up with an “Ill do it!”

Now it was one thing to agree to offer a prayer in front of a group while sitting in a van of a dozen friends. But you should have seen Megan’s face when we saw the size of that group! She asked Ehiz what she should pray and he said, “Just encourage them then pray.” And did she ever! She told them they were beautiful, that they were loved by God, that they were fearfully and wonderfully made. With microphone in hand, she prayed an amazing blessing on those children who have lost so much, but who expressed such joy in worship.

Immediately after the service our U.S. Team and A2S staff assembled at a gazebo outside the auditorium, where two teenagers, Bitrus and Maryam, sat waiting for us to tell us their stories. We learned of the horror suffered by Maryam as she fled from her community in the face of Boko Haram terrorist forces, leaving her home with her family and eventually making her way to the IDP camp hundreds of miles away. She spoke with passion and ferocity, and after answering a few questions from our group, she broke down, sobbing with grief.

We heard of Bitrus fleeing his home with his four brothers, three sisters and their mother, to another village when Boko Haram entered their village, killing the men and taking hostage the boys to be drafted into their violent army. Bitrus and his brothers escaped capture by arriving at the nearby village, finding and putting on girls’ tunics, dresses and even headscarves to conceal their identities as teenage or young boys, and because of their wits and God’s provision they survived, having concealed their identities from those who would abduct or kill them. He and one of his brothers escaped separately to the IDP camp, where he now lives at 19 years old, reassembling his life with God’s help.

A2S Board Member Jason Sneed distributes textbooks to the children at the Internal Displacement Person’s Camp.

“Courage, Maryam. Courage, Bitrus. Courage to God’s refugee children, and to finding your family.”

That night, bone-weary and assembled for dinner at the hotel, Andrew asked one of A2S’s Nigerian entrepreneur mentors and Board of Trustees member, Mr. Brume, to “Tell us your story.” Mr. Brume owns and operates several IT businesses in Nigeria, a field in which he had worked years before in

Northern Nigeria. He recounted his own courage story, describing when, as a younger Christian man, he had been working on an assignment up north, living in an apartment in a gated compound, when he saw an assembly of young men agitating and causing trouble nearby. This gang of young men was out for blood, and he and others at the compound sought to leave and were assaulted by the mob. He was knocked out, a bloody gash in his head, and when he came to, he and a woman from the compound made it to a nearby mosque where the local imam mercifully allowed the injured Christians inside and bolted the door. The throng of angry men assembled outside and demanded entry, or that the imam would send the badly injured Brume and the woman out. The imam sought to pacify the mob by asking Brume and the woman to pray with him and repeat some words after him within the hearing of the mob. Basically the imam was instructing them to say some words, sincerely or not, to renounce their faith in Jesus and convert to Islam to save their lives.

The woman complied, repeated the words, and the mob seemed satisfied with her, handing over a headscarf for her to wear to show her conversion. Brume, however, conscious enough to realize what was being asked of him, refused. The mob raged. He assumed he might die from the head wound or from refusing to convert, but he refused nonetheless. Brume reported that he heard God’s voice in his spirit, saying, “Today is not your day to die.” Eventually a local public official he knew was contacted, the police held the mob at bay and delivered Brume to the hospital. Brume spent 15 years in the ministry after this, and has reentered the IT field in recent years, having “fought the good fight.” He now serves on the A2S Board of Trustees and as a mentor to A2S pitch competitors, and I had the privilege of meeting with him and the other A2S Trustees while in Nigeria. You can find his courage story told on the 700 Club broadcast.

“Courage, Brume. Courage to Lead. Courage to Fight the Good Fight to the End.”

The final courage story I’ll recount is of one of the A2S After School Academy students. Olabisi (“Bisi”) and her four siblings live in a neighborhood a mile or so from the Youth Center, and are all “ASA kids.” She’s very bright, and has discovered a gift for broadcasting and media as part of the

Olabisi’s family (Olabisi attends the After School Academy at A2S and has been featured as one of our FaithFuel kids).

A2S media team at the Youth Center. She is one of the ASA kids featured in the A2S program, “FaithFuel,” where A2S each month features an ASA kid or staff member in a monthly mailing that all Faith Fuel subscribing members receive, so they can prayerfully support the ASA kids and see who their donations support. Bisi and her parents graciously invited us into their modest home so we could see how and where a typical ASA kid lives. We crowded into their dimly illuminated, small living room one afternoon, her proud mother and father sharply dressed and graciously hosting us, with Bisi standing in the center of the group. With cell-phone lights shining in her direction because the electricity either is costly to use or unreliable when turned on, Bisi courageously told us of her love of multimedia and thanked us for the support received at the after-school program. She’ll attend university in a few years because of A2S donors’ support. We presented her family with a family portrait for their home.

“Courage, Bisi. Courage for your future. Courage for the Faith that Fuels.”

C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.”

A2S named our trip to Benin a “Vision Trip,” not a “mission trip,” because, as former A2S Scholar Uche told us, “all the kids there love Jesus already.” We were there not to be on mission for them, but to help enable God’s vision for their lives and their dreams, and, as each of our team members discovered, some unexpectedly – God’s vision for us.

When you join as a monthly-recurring Faith Fuel member, or make a one-time gift to A2S, or make an extra-special bid in the auction on that Nigerian-made household item or unique experience at Soulful Supper, you are not just bidding on an item to show in your dining room or for a weekend away. These investments in the Kingdom increase, as C.S. Lewis says, at “compound interest.” You are investing in development that A2S is proving that works. You are investing in a vision in the future that God has for every A2S after-school academy kid and university scholar. And, if you are courageous enough to accept it, you just might see God enlarge his vision for his worldwide church in your life.

“Courage Merry, Courage for our friends.”

“Courage, Megan. Courage to Follow God’s Leading.”

“Courage, Maryam. Courage, Bitrus. Courage to God’s refugee children, and to finding your family.”

“Courage, Brume. Courage to Lead. Courage to Fight the Good Fight to the End.”

“Courage, Bisi. Courage for your future. Courage for the Faith that Fuels.”