Bill Millington - Babas Love

Baba:

God

Father

Daddy

Babas Love

Igala Tribe

Ufedo Baba

A Fathers Love

God

Abu

Daniel

Bill

Introduction

The steps of this journey are many. One of those steps took place one evening at our home. I (Cristy) listened to a missionary share a message on Stopping for the One. That night, I laid on the floor communicating to God through prayer and tears. I remember telling God that I would go where he wanted me to go and do what he wanted me to do. If he had said to me at that time, Okay, Cristy, I am sending you and your husband to Africa. How might I have responded? Neither my husband (Bill) nor I had ever thought nor considered going to Africa. Then one day, all that changed. God had heard my sincere prayer and sent us where He wanted us to go and showed us what He wanted us to do.

Please Send Someone

We heard the door open and my cousin said, One more thing, the people said, please send someone. He closed the door, and my husband Bill and I stood in our kitchen knowing that we were the someone.

This is a true story. We had been married for twenty-eight years when this story started. We had raised our son Brian and our daughter Amanda. Prior to going back to school to get some biblical training, I (Bill) was managing a construction supply business. My wife, Cristy, worked in a dental office. While I was attending school, Cristy went and spent some time with Amanda in Guatemala. Amanda was living in Guatemala working with Youth with a Mission in Guatemala City. After I had completed school, I was considered as a pastor at a small church in Oregon; however, this was not Gods plan for us. We were praying and waiting upon the Lord when Cristys cousin came to visit us one evening. He had just returned from Africa and was sharing his experience with us. He spent the summer teaching at Trinity Bible College in Anyigba, Nigeria. It was that night as he was leaving our home that we knew the direction we were to go in. Three months later, we were in Africa. That is how Gods plan worked. Airline tickets, visas, immunization shots, housing and finances fell into place.

At the time, I was forty-nine years old and my travels had pretty much been limited to the Pacific Northwest. I had some friends of color, but the majority were white. I had worked in some ministries that helped the homeless, but culturally, I was middle class. The only language I spoke was American English. Gods plan did not call for the most qualified, only the willing. To say the least, we had no idea what we were getting into, but we were willing.

Nigeria is the largest country in Africa, at least population wise, with 140 million people. We had to look at a map to find out where we were going. Nigeria is on the west coast of Africa right where the wide upper half of Africa meets the narrow lower half. The Niger River flows out of Nigeria. Most of the African Americans in America, if their heritage is from slavery, are from this region. The equator runs just below Nigeria and the equinox is just off the coast. To say it is hot is an understatement. Both of us have always lived where there was snow. We both learned to ski at a young age. Nigerians dont know what snow is. Some will tell you it snows in Jos, but what they have seen is hail, from the frequent thunderstorms that pass through in the rainy season. When you tell them that the snow gets five feet deep where we live, their eyes bug out, imagining five feet of hail-shaped ice balls crushing their house and family.

We had done all our correspondence by email with the people in Africa. Tim, Cristys cousin told us about the people we were in contact with over the internet. Missionaries, Greg and Tanya, had been in Anyigba, Nigeria, for the past nine years. We had never met Greg and Tanya prior to living with them our first year in Nigeria. We got to meet Gregs parents in Cascade, Idaho, before we left the States. Gregs mother had to bring Gregs dad home early because he lost so much weight while in Africa. Gregs father said there was something in the food that caused him to be nauseous. I watched him eat breakfast while we visited and didnt think he was a picky eater. Gregs mom had made a trip back to Africa without Gregs dad. It looked to me like a solid 50 percent survival rate at that point. We made contact with Tanyas parents once, by phone. Cristy called and got Tanyas mom. Cristy told her we were going to visit her daughter. Tanyas mom spoke of difficulties in Africa, how her husband had kissed the tarmac when he landed in the United States. Up until that point, the conversation had been on the negative side of neutral, when Tanyas mom asked how long we would be staying. Five months was Cristys reply.

FIVE MONTHS ! I could hear the scream clear across the room. The chances of survival dropped well below the 50 percent mark.

How do you pack for five months to a place you know nothing about? Cristy and I each took one fifty-pound bag. Gregs mom and Tim each sent a fifty-pound bag with us. Fifty pounds of toilet paper seemed reasonable, but I didnt do it. Fifty pounds of food was a thought, after Gregs dad lost weight, but I can eat fifty pounds of anything in a lot less than five months. I needed to lose weight anyway. The Lord put people in our path that gave us gifts to bring to Africa. We brought two cases of Bibles to give out as gifts. Really, for our own use we brought very little, and with each passing year, we bring less for ourselves, knowing what we can purchase in Africa. Computer and camera equipment from the States are a must just because I am inept at learning new tech stuff without the help of our children. Toothpaste I bring for taste and texture. Underwear, I mean, why take a chance on something that might chaff or bind for five months? Malaria medicine we bring from the States because you have to start taking it two weeks before arriving in Africa.

We weighed our bags and checked in after saying long goodbyes to our family and friends then disappeared into the bowels of the San Francisco International Airport. This is the point in our journey when the stress shifts from Cristy to me. Stress is expressed in many different forms by different people. For Cristy, organization is the relief for stress. I think the planning and packing have come to an end at the gate, and she puts all her anxiety on Christ, which is where it should be anyway. At this point, I realize this is no longer a dream; its reality. I hate heights. I hate to fly. We always get one window seat. Cristy enjoys it and is constantly aggravated that she has no one to share the experience with. The conversation goes like this: Oh look, look, how beautiful it is (San Francisco, Mt. Hood, Greenland, Iceland, the ocean, England, the Mediterranean, the Sahara, Abuja) look out the window, you can see it. The muffled reply from under the black mask supplied for the fearful, Great, take a picture. Sometimes Ill puke for emphasis, but this is a bad witness for abundant Christian living, and if you are returning from five months of living in a village in Africa, the authorities might lock you in a stainless steel room until they are sure its just airsickness. The flight from San Francisco to London is about eleven hours. We enter another international airport for a ten-hour layover. It is in these airports that you see which travelers are experienced and which are rookies. On our rookie year, we looked the part, baggage that didnt roll. We looked like middle-aged homeless vagabonds sprawled out on airport chairs. One of us buoyant with energy looking for food and fun, the other green at the gills, looking for stable ground to just hold still. Heathrow is so big and busy that they dont assign gate numbers until just before the arrival of the plane. So, the homeless sit watching the screen like Pavlovs dogs hoping to be rewarded and not punished.