West Africa Outreach of Faith Christian Church

Reaching the unreached people of the Ijaw Tribe

Dear Friends and Supporters of Nigeria-Ijaw Mission,

This summer we are seeing the greatest progress to date, in our church-planting mission among the Ijaw of the Niger River Delta.

Four new Ijaw Pastors graduated High Impact Christian Center's Pastoral Training program in June. All four, Daniel, John, Imole and Joseph will be deployed in full-time pastoral work in early July. Joseph will become the new Pastor of the church at Ogbudugbudu, where the congregation has been without a Pastor for nearly a year. Joseph is a native of that village and his arrival will be received with great joy. The other three will be partnering with Ijaw Pastors who are already serving. They will either assist in pastoring churches we have already planted or in one of the two new churches plantings we will be undertaking in July.

Wilson Okotie will be taking the new Ijaw Pastors, along with a couple of our seasoned Pastors into two new Ijaw villages, Ofunama and Gborba, to hold crusades and plant a new church in each village. By the end of July we will have churches in 6 villages of the Egbema Ijaw Kingdom.

When I return to Ijaw Land this coming December, with Daniel Bernard, we are planning, at that time, to plant churches in 2 more Ijaw villages. This will bring our total to 8 churches planted in the Egbema Kingdom, by year's end.

Our goal was to have a church in each of the 9 primary villages of the Kingdom by the end of 2005. These churches will reach the half a million souls of the previously unevangelized, Egbema Ijaw.

In June I sent $6,000.00 for the building of a new church facility and parsonage in the village of Ogbudugbudu. Ogbudugbudu was the 2^nd village to receive a church planting. We sent the money with Joseph, the new Pastor of the congregation to make a double blessing for the village. There will be great rejoicing!

Remarkably, the Egbema Kingdom is without any medical treatment facility. At the beginning of 2004 I began to seek to raise $6,800 for the initial start up of a simple medical treatment facility in the central village of Ajakurama. The first church was planted there by Wilson Okotie and is presently overseen by Pastor DeRock. DeRock also serves as the only medical practitioner in the entire region. He was trained by a jungle medicine manual, and offers limited care, including injections for various sicknesses, suturing wounds and delivering babies. The plan for the Clinic is to hire a couple professionally trained Ijaw nurses, from the city, to work in the clinic, while Pastor DeRock remains free to travel by bicycle to the villages, administering his treatments, and conducting his pastoral ministry. The $6,800 has been raised and is ready to be sent for the initial start-up of the Clinic at the end of the summer. We are very excited about this new development, since it will have the ability to grow and develop, with the possibility of adding trained physicians, as the Lord gives the increase.

Accompanying me to Ijaw Land this December will be Dr. Dan Dennison, a very successful Oncologist (cancer specialist), upon whose heart the Lord has impressed the work of the Clinic and the mission to the Ijaw. Dr. Dennison will be busily engaged in treating the ill and training DeRock and our personnel. Please keep this effort in your prayers. And should you be interested in helping support this effort, your funds will be put directly to the Clinic and deeply appreciated.

A welcomed truce has been struck between the Ijaw and the Itshikiri. Though the heaviest concentration of fighting was to our east, in the Warri district, we thank God for the peace we have prayed for. This will pave the way for evangelism to now break out of the Egbema Kingdom and flow out to the Warri Ijaw. This also, is another matter for continued prayer.

Finally, I would ask you to please keep the work or Nigeria-Ijaw Mission, High Impact Christian Center and our mission to the Ijaw in your prayers. In a relative few short years we have planted several churches in the Egbema Kingdom of the Ijaw. This represents a serious evangelistic outreach to a previously unreached people group of 500,000. There are yet other neighboring Ijaw Kingdoms, totally well over 10 million, most of which have never been reached with the Gospel. The Lord has seen fit to give us this great opportunity. But we can't do it alone. We covet your prayers, and ask that you would direct interested people to this website, so the news of this ministry can spread.

Thank You, and may you be richly blessed in Jesus, our Lord,

Nick Champlin