amy0b87982ac418
bluewatergigi
dbeville
Patrice Miles
Lenny
How it all began….
It was September 2017 and the Global Leadership Summit in Jos was going strong. C.A.R.E. Africa CEO, Emma and I listened to speaker after speaker with growing enthusiasm. I don’t remember the speaker but I do remember the impact of what was shared….“think big and don’t ask HOW just say WOW!” Emma and I looked at each other and said “We really need to start a school!” I immediately wanted to say but “HOW” and Emma reminded me of the speaker and said “WOW” Yup that is how it all started!!
We had no clue where to start but I knew a missionary, Marybeth Oyebade, who had successfully started several schools in Jos, Nigeria. Marybeth maintained standards unlike any other Nigerian school I had seen before. The curriculum had some Western influence. School fees were kept comparable to other schools but the teacher to child ratio was lower. Teachers, parents and students were held to a higher standard than normal. No cheating allowed. Failing students were not promoted to the next grade. Integrity was integral to the foundational values of the school. All of these things seemed like a dream come true! The icing on the cake was when I asked Marybeth to help me take her school to Egbe and she said YES!
I immediately reached out to my Business Coach, Scott Beebe with Business on Purpose https://www.mybusinessonpurpose.com. He helped C.A.R.E. Africa get out of our chaos a few years ago by providing vision, mission, policies, procedures and so much more. When I told him what I was wanting to do he simply asked “Hey you want me to fly to Nigeria and help you with this joint venture?” God is so good!
A few weeks later Scott Bebee, Emma, Tofunmi, Marybeth along with husband Bayo Oyebade and I were all sitting at a desk putting together a joint venture. Scott not only helped us with the legal issues but also helped us with a timeline, org charts, job descriptions and much more. Scott’s time with us was such a blessing and God knew we needed this to jump-start our school.
Since then it has definitely been a learning process. Marybeth and I continue to trust the people God is putting in front of us to catapult this school to its opening Sept 10, 2018. I could write an entire story about all the miracles that have occurred along the way but I will just share a few. With Marybeth’s blessing, one of her staff members has volunteered to leave the comfort of Jos and move to Egbe for a year to provide consultation and mentorship to our new C.A.R.E. Africa school staff. Other miracles include the qualified teachers God has provided that are full of joy; the U.S. mission team who just happened to be teachers and knew exactly how to decorate classrooms; curriculum getting delivered just in the nick of time AND some unexpected donations that allowed us to buy a few more needed supplies.
As with anything good, some spiritual attacks are to be expected. These attacks have been exhausting but we are persevering. We are in our last leg of this race and your help is needed! Please be in serious prayer for the $15,000 U.S. Embassy grant we have applied for to be approved. This $15,000 grant would allow us to finish the schoolrooms and pay teacher salaries for the first year since there will be no income coming from the school in year one. Please add the U.S. embassy grant request to your prayer list! I hope to hear something by month’s end.
This school promises a bright future for the C.A.R.E. Africa kids and the community of Egbe. We covet your prayers and if you would like to financially support our C.A.R.E. Africa school all donations can be sent to https://give.icareafrica.org/careafrica/careschool
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This is a great prayer letter that Carmen Marflak sent out. She is currently serving at Egbe Hospital for one month. This is her 5th time to Egbe Hospital. She makes a great observation that there is so many opportunities to serve in Egbe. Medical being the biggest need but anyone can come on a mission trip or serve short or long term and find a place to be God’s hands and feet because there is ministry going on all over the Egbe community. For more information about all the opportunities to serve email 
We had a great time at AWANA’s. There were not the 190+ kids there; there was only about 170 because it was raining and the roads and walking paths were very slick and muddy. The silence in the room was also a miracle. I walked in with the children laughing and talking, noisy!!!!!. 
These last 2 weeks in the OR have almost been overwhelming. My first day in the OR was the 11th and I have actually had 1 day off (Sunday, the 22). Tuesdays and Thursdays are supposed to be clinic/office day for Dr Fabruce, with no surgery scheduled on those days. So I am scheduled for lectures for the family practice residents, the Anesthesia trainees, and for the nursing students. But, even on those days, there have been so many emergent patients come through ER, that we have been working late into the evenings. Between all the trauma patients (motor bike accidents, walls collapsing on families, machete fights), the C/Sections, the appendectomies, perforated bowels and the snake bites, we have done very few elective/ scheduled procedures. On Monday, Wed, Friday, we normally start out with 3-4 scheduled procedures, but by the end of the day we have done between 5-7. All last week and this week, the only anesthesia providers have been Jummy and me. Evelyn is on maternity leave, Rebecca and Adeola are both on vacation. We have been getting a little weary by the time we finish the day. But God is good and gives us both a restful sleep at night. I am reminded of
Last Wednesday, a team of mothers and their teen children (10 altogether) came from my home church (Live Oak Christian Church) in Bluffton, SC. They experienced a lot of flight cancellations, and lost luggage (the last of their luggage arrived last evening), but they have been serving over at C.A.R.E. Africa all week; painting the school, doing VBS, making home visits to the sponsored children, visiting the HIV clinic. It has been a joy to have company!!! I am usually alone in the guest house. I don’t get to see them much, because I am finished with breakfast and in the hospital before they get to the dining room. Many evenings, I have missed dinner because of late cases, but the times that we have shared together have been good; hearing what they have done, and the stories of the C.A.R.E. Africa children, helps me to realize that there is another world out there in Egbe, that I rarely get to see. 
I recently read a book called God’s Smuggler. It is a true story of how a young, Dutchman by the name of Brother Andrew risked his life to bring faith and hope to believers behind the Iron Curtain. While reading the book I was continuously jealous of all the miracles Brother Andrew experienced. Some were as simple as a cake being provided for a meeting where he had no money to buy one. Others were big miracles like not getting checked at checkpoints where he had over 100 Bibles hidden in his car. I was so jealous and I felt if he experienced miracles in the 1930’s why can’t I experience God’s miracles in the 2018’s. I got on my knees and begged to see, hear, and experience God like Brother Andrew did. I begged God to “show up and show off” as I like to say.
Pray for me, for my family, for my husband’s media ministry, for my CARE Africa staff and for our school that we are starting in Egbe. My family and CARE Africa staff have experienced some serious spiritual attacks such as health problems, computers crashing, uncontrollable emotions/ thoughts, missionaries leaving, different cultural problems and even serious and brutal killings only miles from our home. There is sin in this world and when God is visibly doing big works in your life – evil is going to want to try and conquer it. There is a battle going on that our small, small minds cannot even grasp. It is a battle for our minds and souls and we know we are the winner, but there is nothing that says we will not experience suffering.
Family Based Care is all the rave at any adoption/orphan conference and in any article, blog or discussion regarding orphans and adoption. There are hundreds of studies that show most children in orphanages are there because of poverty, not orphanhood. Many children we call “orphans” have some form of family that would care for them if they had the means. Strengthening families is the best way to meet the needs of orphans and other vulnerable children.
They go to school for 8 hours a day in a Nigerian school system where cheating is overlooked and teachers send them on personal errands during school lessons.
Pray for the five teachers that we have hired for our school. They will come to our city, Jos, for three weeks in August for training. Their eyes will be opened to a different way of teaching and how they can truly make a difference in each child’s life at our school. 
It’s been almost five years in Nigeria, almost one year in our new home, and I was feeling almost happy…..
Thankfully God intervened. It took time and discontent, but eventually that soft, faint voice penetrated my soul and stirred my ear. “Stop escaping, my daughter, to something that isn’t real and escape to Me”. But my disobedience continued on for months. I didn’t realize that the escaping was making me become more and more dissatisfied with all the genuine blessings surrounding me -this led to DEPRESSION!
I felt like a new person. My sense of joy and contentment was restored. Doors started opening in unbelievable ways in my ministry. Not to say I still don’t have moments of homesickness and loneliness, but I have a renewed sense of peace that transcends all understanding.
At the beginning of 2018 we made a list of goals for C.A.R.E. Africa. One of our goals was a one-week camp for our C.A.R.E. Africa kids which would focus on their walk with the Lord and provide some vocational training. We knew it would be a huge undertaking financially and strategically. First, we would have to find experienced workers to run the camp. Then we would have to provide transportation for all the workers to and from our town of Egbe along with housing and feeding them for a week. We would also need a week’s worth of food to feed the kids along with supplies for vocational studies. Needless to say, we could not fit the camp into our 2018 budget but we kept the camp on our goals list with the hope of raising funds for it later on. 
The camp theme and camp lessons focused on Faith. 
We are excited to announce that our C.A.R.E. Sports Outreach program started last month! What you may not realize is that before co-founding C.A.R.E Africa, Emma was in sports ministry full time and became known in Egbe as “Coachi”. The Sports Outreach program has been a dream of Emma’s since starting C.A.R.E. Africa in 2014. One of our 2018 goals was to start going into the community to find the voiceless and exhausted instead of waiting for them to come to us. We felt that a Sports Outreach program would be a way we could accomplish this.
Each quarter we also plan to host a competition between our Egbe team “The Vessels” and a team outside of and within Egbe that is not connected with the C.A.R.E. Africa Sports Outreach program. The Egbe community really loves sporting events and everyone in the town comes out to watch the game and the presentation of awards. C.A.R.E. Africa will use this time to share the gospel among those that have come to the competition.
Miles In Missions 