THE WATER RAN AWAY

When I was a corper, I was involved in NCCF (Nigeria Christian Corpers Fellowship).

(In Nigeria, it is compulsory for every graduate less than thirty years of age to serve the nation for a year under NYSC-National Youth Service Corps. The word 'corper' is an informal modification of 'Corps' to describe a serving corps member. Young graduates from different regions are cross-posted to other regions and they work in any corporation or company they are posted to. NCCF is a body of Christian youth corps members and the mission of this fellowship is to reach the nook and cranny of the nation with the gospel of Christ through Rural Rugged Evangelism. This is in fact the fulfilment of a prophecy that the Nigerian Government will one day pay youths to preach the Gospel. Rural Rugged Evangelism which is shortened to 'Rugged' is gospel outreaches to rural areas. We have this slogan that 'if it is not rural, it is not rugged'.)

I served in Rivers State. In my own NCCF chapter we were always going for one Rugged or the other almost every weekend. This is because there are a lot of NCCF zones in the state. Thus, apart from the three Ruggeds organized by the state chapter of the fellowship for the three different batches of corpers-A, B and C  (tagged Baptismal Rugged meant to 'immerse' new NCCF members a.k.a Jesus Corpers into the Rugged culture), every zone also organizes its own Rugged. These outreaches are indeed rugged because most of the time you do 'rub and shine' throughout the program and then do a proper cleanup when you return home on Sunday. It was a beautiful time serving the Lord.

There was a particular Rugged I won't ever forget. It was my last. If I remember very well it fell on the weekend that followed our passing out as corpers. This outreach was organized by Ogu-Bolo zone of the fellowship. I cannot remember the name of the village we went to, but it was an island bordered by the sea. We crossed to the village by boat, about five minutes boat ride.

On reaching the village, we started organizing ourselves into different groups as usual. We divided ourselves into different praying groups while others were organizing the place, setting up our equipment and other things. But something shocking happened. Water from the surrounding sea was closing in on us. Remember I mentioned that the village was an island. It was a very small village, and from the school where we camped, you could see the sea. The ground that was all dry sand when we got there started oozing water mysteriously. So, some brothers started packing dry sand to stop the water. For where?! Even the spots they were packing the dry sand from got caught up with the 'flood' in no time.

We couldn't understand. We were perplexed. We were praying, but like people who had not eaten for ten days. The prayer had no fire at all, we were strangely weak. Then, suddenly, someone from my prayer group, Dipo, got angry in his spirit and stopped the prayer session. He spurred us to take our stand and fight this battle that was defying our God. So, we were fired up in our spirits and we started this hot prayer. The same thing happened in other prayer groups. And before we knew it, right before our eyes, the water ran away, it went back the way it came. The sand became dry again. Our great God who owns the sea and the dry ground! Who is mammy water before the God of all gods?

All the while that we had been trying to sand-fill the flooded ground, the villagers had stood by watching us. None of them came to sit on the chairs we had arranged for them. Maybe they wanted to see if our God would deliver us. But you see, once the water receded, they started to come from different corners of the village and took their seat. The programme for that Friday night started later than scheduled, but we had it anyway and there were souls who were won for the Lord.

I won't ever forget this Rugged, never.