The Rescue of Mama Ibo

"I stuttered in those days.

Didn't start talking until I was four.

I stumbled through life.

It was hard, monotonous, routine, predictable.

Walked in a fog of ignorance and despair.

Day after day after day, same old, same old.

Eventually I married .  Lost my first baby at 5 months.

Second baby died at 3 months.

Our third baby died as well.

Then my husband died in 2003.  He died one day while standing up.  Collapsed.  The end.

I was an angry woman.

Praying was such a bore.  I always fell asleep.

I decided to enter the Women's Lit Center at Nkara.  Life changed.

The way I saw my professors pray in school gave me great happiness.  They cared about me.

Before, when I ate, I never gave thanks to God, but now before I take a bite I pray.

My life came back to me.  I am more than alive.  I am transformed.

Now I must worship God.  I don't fall asleep anymore.

After attending the school for 3 years, I find myself reaching out to God.  I pray.  I read God's Word.

I completed my classes at the literacy center.  It took me three years.

One day while attending classes, a young man broke into my home.  He stole everything.

Even my prized solar radio that I listened to Radio glory with.  It was no more.

My connection with the outside world.  My escape from isolation in the bush.  Christian music. 

The daily Word of God--now silenced.  The radio was my gift from LMI when I graduated.

All that I learned at school, I have and keep on sharing with my relatives and friends in my village.

After my husband died, my house fell to the ground because there was no one to take care of it.

So now I am in the process of building another one.  I will use money from my crops to do this.

I, myself, get the grass for my roof from the forest.  I pay for the sticks.  A young man is covering the sticks with mud.

The village of Nkara laughed at me when I started school.

Whether I have a lot of problems or a good day, I am a happy woman!"

Note:  Mama Ibo is a tremendous blessing to the Women's Literacy School.  She graduated in 2008.  She is now on staff at our school and instructs women in knitting and needlepoint.  A woman of beautiful countenance.  I love her and thank God for her.