Dear friends and family,

Chapel, Kulp Bible College

Kulp Bible College is located in eastern Nigeria in a rural area near the town of Mubi. The Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria, is growing rapidly. Rev. Toma H. Ragnjiya, who was the principal, became president of EYN. Rev. Jinatu Libra Wamdeo is now the principal. We have three EYN congregations and the college chapel within walking distance and all are well attended. Each congregation has two or more singing groups. The Women's Fellowship (ZME) is always one of the groups. Music is generally accompanied by drums. Sunday School for the children begins at 6:30 a.m. with the ringing of the bell. The college chapel has about one hundred and fifty children who have singing followed by classes.

We are both enjoying the students. One student never had the opportunity to attend school before he was eighteen. When he joined the EYN church in Maiduguri, the Sunday school class taught him to read. He is now literate in both Hausa and English. Another student was a policeman in Kano for thirteen years and an eye witness to many of the events there during that time the church was burned on three occasions and bulldozed once by Muslim extremists.

When we arrived in January, the "Bush Ministers" were on campus for Bible study and training. These men are mostly itinerant evangelists who take the Gospel to the most remote villages and face great hardship and danger. There was also a women's school in progress teaching literacy, sewing, typing and health.

During the time the Bush Ministers were on campus, the Kulp Bible School students were in churches teaching and preaching for their "Field Work Experience." The 182 students returned to begin the school year in March. The first semester ends in July. Classes resume in August with the year ending in December. Graduation is in early December.

Each student receives a one or two acre plot to raise food to feed his family. It has now started to rain enough for plowing. The students have yoked the college's bulls and begun plowing the fields. (The bulls come back from the fields a lot more willingly than they go out to plow!)

Life here is very labor intensive. Most cooking is done over an open fire with wood chopped and scavaged. The women walk very gracefully carring large buckets of water and heavy loads of wood on their heads while carrying a baby on their back.

The students are very dedicated and work very hard. They are poor in things but rich in spirit. The missionaries laid the foundation and watered, but God has produced an abundant harvest.

We would encourage anyone in good health, retired and able to teach Bible, agriculture or technology to consider coming to Nigeria for a short or long stay. Mervin Keeney, director of Global Mission Partnerships, knows the current needs and positions needing to be filled.

Lyall and Vivian Sherred