“The church has sadly never got any electricity or light to work. We can’t have our Bible studies,” said Pastor Raymond. His church is in a remote area in Plateau State, Nigeria.
For many isolated Christian villages in Nigeria, this is their reality. Communities don’t have access to electricity. Many can’t even afford the fuel to run a petrol generator for more than a few hours a month.
The lack of electricity is more than just a nuisance.
Could you bless our Nigerian brothers and sisters with the gift of electricity to power their lights, medical clinics and water pumps?
Water pumps don’t work. Hospitals and clinics struggle to function. Children who help with farming during the daytime hours can’t use their evenings for study. When Islamists attack, people find that their phones don’t have enough charge to make an emergency call.
This is just one of the issues facing our Christian family in sub-Saharan Africa.
Hunger and malnutrition, lack of access to healthcare and education, the absence of opportunities for sustainable employment – all these make the lives of our brothers and sisters more difficult.
A day of global giving
#GivingTuesday was created in 2012 as an antidote to the commercialisation of Christmas time – Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the January sales, and so on. Since then it has grown into a “global generosity movement”.
This year, we are asking if you can support our Opportunity Africa initiative – Barnabas Aid’s partnership with African Christian communities to help them become more resilient, self-sufficient and independent.
You could give a solar panel that can provide light and power to impoverished communities in Nigeria.
You could provide a pig or a goat for a farmer in Niger. Your gift could be a beehive that will enable Ugandan Christians to produce honey. You could supply cuttings of a new faster-growing, disease resilient variety of the cassava crop – creating a sustainable food supply for years to come.
Could you give a goat, and provide a sustainable income for an African Christian?
In Nigeria, you could meet someone’s need for a sustainable income by providing a sewing machine. You could contribute emergency medical provision – especially in areas subject to terrorist attacks – by giving a medical backpack.
Perhaps most importantly, you could provide Bibles that will give African believers the spiritual nourishment that they need.
This #GivingTuesday, could you give a gift that lasts to our African brothers and sisters?
