(responding to an email from someone)
I am sure you appreciate the safety of being in Europe compared to the times you spend in Nigeria. In 2006 I gave up everything in England to relocate to Nigeria to start the House of Rainbow Metropolitan Community church, I focus all my strength and trust on God and I still do, however, my life was endangered by my openness and somewhat naive of the Nigerian politics.
My home was vandalised beyond recognition and looted of every valuable items and I was later informed through our private investigator that there was an order to assasinate me, it was reported that our church was "an unacceptable brand of religion" I was circulated as wanted by the authorities for questioning, it was the grace of God that I was able to leave the country with the cloths on my back. I was angry, but you cant argue with God, many people with hope for liberation suffered again and again, many people were fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes because they were homosexual and attached to our church, our pictures were smeared over the Nigeria media with a clear homophobic message and incitement to kill.
Recalling the headlines makes me angry and at the same time more determined never to stop this heroic journey of faith.I am in London not because I chose but because God needed to preserve my life and that is why I continue to be more effective using the internet as an additional tool. I am out of Nigeria to re strategise and look at new ways we can do our work effectively, the down side is that many more people will not have access to the internet and many more will like to speak to somebody, we are doing our best to develop and train people locally in Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Personally I am frustrated but I am relearning to wait on God in faith and conscience. The physical church as been transformed in to a cyber church for now, where no harm or fear can be real. The two links I sent you is part of the work to reach people, at the moment we have nearly 300 people on line with over 400 hits on a single video message, there are people from over 35 countries and thus far I have upload 20 video messages.The hypocrisy of our people and government is so bad to the point that the minister of justice stood at the UN review in Geneva and lied that there are no homosexuals in Nigeria on the 9th February 2009. He must be in dark ages, never read the papers nor listen to the news.
I am active and in contact with Nigeria and our people everyday, by phone and internet. Nigeria newspapers still run stories with my name and our church regularly. I do not intend to stop until my last breath. I am stil involved with activism in Nigeria and we are detemined that we would continue the work, we need to measure the safety of all people. What can be useful is if we all come together trust and honor God in all we do. Help our fellow brothers and sisters. We cannot blame those that are downlow, even those in government, you know they will be skinned alive if they admit to being gay, these is part of the cross they bear, but at least they can orchestrate some changes using other mechanism. I must assure you we are working with much more people who are now allies to the LGBT community than we did five years ago.
Please keep in touch
Videos @ http://www.youtube.com/HouseOfRainbow and or join the discussion forum @ http://spiritualityandsexuality.ning.com/ ,
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