Early in June, Carl and Roxane Hill along with Kucheli Shankster Beecham and her son Carter had an opportunity to visit the ongoing work of the Nigeria Crisis Response.

When we visited the “camp” or Relocation Village in Yola, we were greeted by a large group with songs of welcome and introductions. They proudly took us around their new village and showed us their homes. When this village was first built it was far from surrounding homes but the area is growing and now they have others around them. They have built a fence around the property to keep nomads and their cows from coming through the village. There is a solar powered water source and some surrounding lands for planting.

Yes, the people have a safe place to live but they still miss their lives back home. Most of these Internally Displaced Persons are from the Gwoza area where Boko Haram is still in control and they cannot return home. There are many challenges to living in a new village; neighbors are very close by, there is not enough land to plant all the food needed for the upcoming year, there is no school building for the children, the temporary church was blown down in the spring rains and so on.

As we prepared to leave this new Relocation Village, the women handed us a list of concerns and items they needed.  A woman from one of the Yola churches was traveling with us and she took the list; hoping her church would reach out to this new community.

Let us continue to pray for Nigeria and all those living in Relocation Villages. (2 Million people in Northeast Nigeria are still displaced and cannot return home.) Pray also for the EYN Disaster Ministry as they try to meet the many needs that are a direct result of the Boko Haram insurgency.