LR:
I went to Nigeria by myself. It was not even quite two weeks after Richard Oral had died. And Richard was already scheduled to go, so a week earlier he went on ahead and he went to Swaziland. And he had been there over a week, and then I flew to the Ivory Coast and to Senegal and to Lagos.
And when I got there, I hated the world. I hated my life. My son had just died. He was my third pregnancy. I’d had surgery after surgery. I was in surgery for a hysterectomy, and God miraculously, sovereignly healed me.
And so I’m thinking, Next baby’s going to live. Next baby died, full term, died in my arms. And my life was pretty much, “Let’s go to Nigeria and die.” Yeah. If I don’t die physically, let’s just at least go over there and die emotionally. Because I’m already here in the United States, and everybody already read it in the papers. Let’s go somewhere where no one knows me and just die there.”
And that was my thought. As ridiculous as it was, it was reality to me. And I ran into your mom and dad and Margaret and Benson Idahosa. And they poured life into me in Nigeria. We didn’t have a lot of food, and some of the places we went to, we were hungry. We were physically very hungry.
I was spiritually hungry. I was emotionally hungry. And they just kept pouring life into me. And when I came back, I had told Richard, you know, basically I didn’t want to come home. I wanted to run away. And I told him, “Don’t you ever ask me to get pregnant.”
And I’d been fighting the physical aspect of being very, very sick since I was 18 years old of one disease and one thing after another, which finally led to the diagnosis that they had given me.
And so I was coming back home, and I said, “You know, I never want to breathe another breath.” And here I am flying alone. I don’t even go to the grocery store alone. And I’m flying alone to Africa, and I’m stopping in Senegal and I’m stopping in Niger, and I’m stopping in the Ivory Coast.
And I meet your mom and dad, and I meet the Idahosas and I meet Jesus all over again. And now I tell the story, you know, people say, you know, I’m Lebanese and my husband is Cherokee Indian. My mom’s Danish. So we’ve got a lot of stuff going on. You know, my dad’s family was very Lebanese-looking. My mom’s very Danish, little blue-eyed blond. And obviously Richard is Cherokee Indian.
And so when people ask me, you know, because Jordan’s got a little aspect of everything, and they say, “Well, what’s her nationality?”
And I say, “Well, basically she’s Nigerian,” because that’s where the hope for Jordan was born. I came back home. I had faith to believe I could have a child. And within about ten months, this is the product of your family and Benson and Margaret putting life into me.
So where else would her heart be but Africa? Where else would it be? And God puts those seeds in for a reason. And when He puts those seeds in and people are willing to answer a call like that, what do you do?
If God’s telling you something right now, I just really want to tell you this, don’t overlook it. When they said about building a school, when Amber put that thought in Jordan’s mind, when the Holy Spirit put it in her mind to go to Niger, she could have just passed it over and said, “Well, maybe in ten years I’ll do that. Maybe in twenty years we’ll build the school.”
But she said, “No, let’s do it now. We can do it now.”
If God is telling you that, if He’s telling you to hook up with their ministry, if He’s telling you to pay for their ministry, do it. Do it right now. Don’t let the opportunity for obedience pass you by.
And the easiest way you can do it is pick up your telephone right now, area code 918-495-7777, Abundant Life Prayer Group. They will pray for you, and they will ask God to anoint this and bless it, 918-495-7777. Or you can write Richard Roberts and Lindsay Roberts, Tulsa, OK 74102.
The second thing I encourage you to do is go to makeyourdaycount.com. That’s our website, makeyourdaycount.com, easy to do. We will link you over to that. We’ll link you over to Revolution. Revolution is the album that the kids have done, and it is one magnificent spiritual worship album, again, proceeds going to Hunger Needs a Voice. And that is the whole program that these kids have developed for this purpose.
And I want to encourage you to it. Don’t sit back and say, “Maybe it’s for somebody else,” because if God’s tugging on your heart, it’s for you.” So I encourage you to do that, and please stay tuned because we’re going to be right back.
LR:
Well, I don’t know about you, but I tell you, every time I hear about what happened in Niger, what’s been happening in Africa, what’s been happening with ORU students who actually can’t wait to go to places like Niger and bring the gospel of Jesus Christ, feeding teams, dental teams, medical teams, nursing teams, evangelistic teams, and now the possibility—in fact, it’s not even a possibility, it’s already been started—opening a school in Niger.
I thank God for kids in ORU that feel the call to take God’s healing power to many, many nations, including the nation of Niger.
And I want to encourage you, if you’d like to be a part of it, go to makeyourdaycount.com. That’s all you have to do is go to makeyourdaycount.com, and we’ll tell you all about it. Make it count today.