{"id":4443,"date":"2015-09-05T09:13:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-05T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.brethren.org\/?p=4443"},"modified":"2015-09-05T09:13:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-05T14:13:08","slug":"susans-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/2015\/09\/05\/susans-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Susan\u2019s Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Written<\/a>
Written by Janet Crago<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was a very special Sunday called \u201cChildren\u2019s Sunday\u201d.\u00a0 All the children\u2019s classes prepare presentations and songs for the worship service.\u00a0 Many parents were there who didn\u2019t attend regularly.\u00a0 It was also a combined service.\u00a0 On an ordinary Sunday they have two worship services, one in Hausa (northern Nigeria\u2019s market language) and one in Kamwe (the language of the local people), but on this special Sunday, they combined the two.\u00a0 The church was full to overflowing.<\/p>\n

Susan was surprised when the pastor cut his sermon so short.\u00a0 She was more surprised when the church secretary ran out of church.\u00a0 Within seconds he was back yelling, \u201cEverybody run, the BH are coming\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Susan's<\/a>
Susan’s Destroyed Church<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everyone dispersed in a different direction.\u00a0 Susan ran into the bush.\u00a0 After some time she decided to go back home.\u00a0 She found her daughter Rose and Rose joined her.\u00a0 She also discovered that her husband had taken one car.\u00a0 Her two mother-in-laws were also there.\u00a0 Susan\u2019s husband Mark had a Muslim father who had two wives.\u00a0 Her mother-in-laws both have infirmities.\u00a0 One can see but not walk while the other can walk but her vision is seriously unpaired.\u00a0 They are a team.\u00a0 They help each other.<\/p>\n

Shortly after Susan arrived home, they heard some of the BH banging on the front door.\u00a0 Susan and her daughter Rose, ran out the back door leaving her mother-in-laws at home.\u00a0 They jumped the back fence and ran into the bush.\u00a0 They walked to the next village where they found her husband Mark with their car.\u00a0 He had also driven through the bush to get there.\u00a0 He drove through corn rows.\u00a0 They picked up an old woman who stated that the car was now her home and she wouldn\u2019t leave it.\u00a0 A local family gave them food.\u00a0 They spent the night in the car.<\/p>\n

In the morning they picked up others who had fled BH.\u00a0 One woman was very distraught.\u00a0 She had gone to church in the morning leaving her baby and two older children at home.\u00a0 When she ran from the church she did not know what had happened to her children.\u00a0 They ended up with 11 people and 3 babies in a car whose maximum is 7.\u00a0 They drove to the river crossing.\u00a0 The river was swollen with the rains and the car could not drive through it.\u00a0 They had to abandon the car and take canoes across.\u00a0 There were many children at the crossing who also ran from church.\u00a0 Susan paid the passage for many children so they could reach the other side on the canoe ferries.\u00a0 Then they hiked to another village about 8 miles away.<\/p>\n

People in this village helped them with food.\u00a0 Susan bought some cloth for the children so they could have clean clothes.\u00a0 Susan is the ZME (Zumuznta Mata Ekklesiyar, or Women\u2019s Fellowship) Director.\u00a0 The ZME has a bus, with a driver, to transport women for meetings.\u00a0 Susan called the driver to come get all of them.\u00a0 He came, and late the next day they all rode to Yola, a trip of about 120 miles. There were 27 in the bus, including 9 children.\u00a0 These children had relatives in Yola, and it was safe in there.<\/p>\n

When she arrived in Yola, Susan was getting multiple phone calls from people who were stranded in another village after they ran from BH.\u00a0 They expained that they didn\u2019t have transport money.\u00a0 Susan would talk to the drivers and promise to pay the transport when they arrived in Yola.\u00a0 Since she has been the Principal of John Guli Bible School for 17 years, and she is also the ZME Director, the drivers agreed to transport the fleeing people with her assurance of payment on their arrival.<\/p>\n

During this time, Susan was making lots of calls.\u00a0 Because Nigerians need to purchase cell phone time in advance, she had many people call her and give her the necessary security numbers to increase her calling time.\u00a0 These people had already paid for the security numbers.\u00a0 This effort made it possible to call the childrens\u2019 parents, and many others who needed to be contacted.<\/p>\n

\"Susan<\/a>
Susan in Jos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Susan stayed two days in a friend\u2019s house in Yola where 100 others were also staying.\u00a0 Her brother then invited her to stay in a house in Abuja.\u00a0 That is where she went for some time.\u00a0 She\u2019s now located in Jos, where she is the Director of Women\u2019s Ministry for EYN.\u00a0 Another person has been appointed as Principal of John Guli Bible School.<\/p>\n

Susan says she learned some things from this experience that she wants to share.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • It is good to be relational.\u00a0 The relationships she developed were key to the safe escape of her and many others.<\/li>\n
  • She now knows that she is not better than anyone else who was escaping.<\/li>\n
  • Life is not all about wealth.\u00a0 She says that life is more than riches.<\/li>\n
  • She says that she\u2019s had a good life, but has now been tested. She says that until you are tested, you can only imagine what you might do, you don\u2019t know for sure what you will do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The \u201cAfter\u201d Stories:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/strong>The woman who went to church and left her children at home found out that a neighbor woman rescued her children and fled to Cameroon with them.\u00a0 Cameroon is the neighboring country to the east.\u00a0 The children are safe.<\/p>\n

    The old woman who said the car was her home stayed in the car by the river.\u00a0 The fate of the woman is not clear.<\/p>\n

    Susan\u2019s mother-in-laws are both alive, but some local townspeople who joined BH abused them.\u00a0 They came morning and evening and lashed the old women.\u00a0 They gave them 20 lashes each.\u00a0 The BH were actually somewhat good to them.\u00a0 They came frequently to take chickens from Susan\u2019s layers (she had 1000 layers).\u00a0 Occasionally they would bring the old women some other food.<\/p>\n

    What Susan and her family lost:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    One car was abandoned at the river.\u00a0 It has now burned.\u00a0 Another car left at home was smashed.\u00a0 Her 1000 laying chickens are gone.\u00a0 Her and her husband\u2019s books were burned.\u00a0 She is living in a rented home and doesn\u2019t know whether she can go back to her home village.\u00a0 Her husband is going back home soon to assess the situation.<\/p>\n

    The children are all with relatives or with their parents in a safer location.<\/p>\n

     \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It was a very special Sunday called \u201cChildren\u2019s Sunday\u201d.\u00a0 All the children\u2019s classes prepare presentations and songs for the worship service.\u00a0 Many parents were there who didn\u2019t attend regularly.\u00a0 It was also a combined service.\u00a0 On an ordinary Sunday they have two worship services, one in Hausa (northern Nigeria\u2019s market language) and one in Kamwe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[139,370,419,814,921],"class_list":["post-4443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nigeria","tag-boko-haram","tag-ekklesiyar-yanuwa-a-nigeria","tag-eyn","tag-nigeria-crisis","tag-prayer"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/blogtest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}