Sixteen people from four churches in the Diocese of Connecticut went to see the challenges of evangelism, mission and ministry in the context of cultural confrontation with an increasingly aggressive Islamic community. Their trip included medical work, evangelism, friendship, fellowship and worship with Anglicans in the Diocese of Kaduna.

The Connecticut contingent came from Trinity Church in Tariffville, St. John’s in Bridgeport, St. Paul’s in Brookfield and Christ Church in Sharon. In the first week, four people participated in Kaduna's 50th-anniversary celebrations and toured the diocese.

In the second week, 12 others (including one doctor, one nurse, one lawyer, one college student, one high school student, two priests and several businessmen and women) worked in various ministries. Some worked in a rural health clinic and mobile medical clinic. Some participated in a program to plant new churches in rural areas. Some taught in the diocesan high school. One worked with diocesan officials to rewrite the diocesan constitution. Everyone went to the most remote outposts of ministry to meet, encourage and pray with evangelists and mission priests.

Visiting and working with the medical team at the Kateri Medical Clinic was a highlight. The group members' four home parishes had contributed funding to staff the clinic, the only medical facility available to the very poor rural residents of the Kateri area. In the first two months of operation, the clinic had helped more than 1,000 people.

Most of the cases at the clinic concern pregnancy, child birth and diseases that claim the lives of many young children each year, especially malaria.  Dana Buchanan, a physician and member of St. Paul’s, worked in the medical clinic and the mobile medical clinic.

She said she was “shocked” by the primitive health conditions in the rural villages -- and inspired by the “exceptional dedication” of  Dr. Adekunle Alao, who runs the mobile medical clinic and supervises the Kateri clinic.

“He and his helpers accomplish so much with so little in the way of equipment and supplies.  It’s amazing,” said Buchanan, who planned to bring several of her American medical colleagues back for a medical mission.

A partnership of the Spirit

The mission trip marked a new chapter in a cross-continental relationship. For 13 years, Trinity Church has supported the mission and ministry of  Kaduna Archbishop Josiah Fearon.

The friendship began in 1991, when Fearon, then bishop of the Diocese of Sokoto, was working on his doctoral degree in Islamic studies at Hartford Seminary.  Since then, the parish has been a “home away from home” for the bishop and his family. When Fearon’s daughter needed complicated surgery and a long convalescence in the mid-1990s, the family lived with Trinity parish members for several months. Also in the mid-1990s, the parish raised funds to build a new diocesan center in Sokoto diocese. After anti-Christian riots in February 2000, during which hundreds were killed and thousands had their homes destroyed, Trinity raised $30,000 for relief efforts in Kaduna diocese.

In February 2002, Trinity’s rector Tom Furrer, senior warden Jim Lawson and vestry member John Hart took their first trip to Kaduna. They saw the great needs and the meager resources. They saw the Kateri Medical Clinic building sitting empty because there was no money to staff it. They came home committed to raising funds to staff the clinic.

After a year of prayer and preparation, the parish hosted a benefit dinner for the clinic.  More than 150 people from many Episcopal and other congregations attended. The event raised $54,000 in pledges for the clinic -- enough to pay a doctor and nurse for three and a half years. Since then, more donations have come in and more staff has been hired. The clinic is now open seven days a week. 

Furrer is impressed by  the work the Anglican Church is doing in northern Nigeria.
“It’s a very humbling experience,” he said. “They do a great deal with very few material resources. They are operating in a very complicated and often hostile environment with the constant fear of violence from the Muslim community. They are making heroic efforts to preach the gospel, establish churches and make disciples in the rural areas where ‘animism,’ or what we would call ‘paganism,’  is still the dominant world view.”

Anyone wishing to know more about mission partnership with the Kateri Medical Clinic or the Diocese of Kaduna can contact the Rev. Canon Tom Furrer at 860-651-0201 or by e-mail at  tfurrer@trinitytariffville.org.