Me,My GOD And The CHILDREN
Apparently, the question stirred something inside the primate of the Goodnews Community and brought back some painful memories. Soberly, the archbishop recounted how he once woke up from his room around 4 O'clock in the morning, went to an open hall, and was confronted with a terrible sight of children, some of them below 10 years old, lying on a bare cemented floor. “I stood there and wept. I said ‘God, how could you have allowed these children to be on the street'. I was filled with tears. I asked myself, ‘why am I on the bed, while these children are on the floor'. I took my flashlight, woke the staff up and told them that we must start building tomorrow. And we did it. That's how we built the (children's) hostel”. As Mboho spoke on, you could sense the pains in his heart. His voice became low and shaky. He paused intermittently, sighed and then stressed a point. Moments later, tears rolled down his cheeks. And the archbishop cried. Except for the bleating of the goat and the chattering of the children that filtered in from the outside, there was a great silence in the room. “One miracle here”, Mboho resumes his narration, “is that even the kids who used to sleep on the floor would wake up very strong”. “Sometimes you can't eat any food placed before you, because a child down there is crying in need of food. It's a burden that brings joy. Life-giving is expensive, it comes with pains. I have seen a child brought in here as if it were an animal from the forest. Give him food inside a plate; he will turn it onto the floor before he could eat it.” Yet the Children's Home is just a fraction of the inspiring story of Elijah Mboho, a man who became born again in 1964, and has been in the service of God and humanity for 38 years, developing personal friendship with the likes of Orals Robert, T.C. Osborne, late Benson Idahosa who is fondly remembered as the father of modern Pentecostalism in Nigeria, Evangelist Uma Ukpai, Rev. Idem Ikon and Archbishop Isaiah Isong. The Children's Home is embedded within one of Mboho's service delivery organs called Goodnews Humanitarian Service Foundation (GHSF). “ Thou shall open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy in thy land” (Deut.15: 11 ) is the guiding philosophy of the foundation which also caters for adults who are poor and those with physical ailments who need medical attention. The GHSF and other organs like the Goodnews Evangelical Team (GET), Goodnews Tabernacle of Praise (GTOP), Goodnews Family Service (GFS), Goodnews Education Park (GEP), and Goodnews Ventures constitute the Goodnews Community International whose headquarters is the Gospel Village , established in 1984, at Midim, Abak Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State. The village, about 72 hectares, has a medical centre, staff quarters, administrative buildings, a football pitch and other numerous facilities that truly make it a village within a village. Goodnews Community has a liaison office in Columbia , USA . There are about 800 children, 75 percent of them orphans, in Mboho's Children's Home. Some of the children,INSIDER WEEKLY learned, were brought to the home by parents who suspected them to be witchcrafts. “They just come in here, dump the children and go away. Just like that!” revealed Aniekan Okpokpo, a reverend minister in-charge of information and publicity in the Gospel Village . One thing the children are not allowed to be called is orphan because of the belief in the community that God is their (spiritual) father. They also have earthly fathers and mothers in the persons of the reverend ministers, both male and female, who work as a voluntary staff, and there are over 500 or so of them, in the village. For the purpose of integration, easy control and sustenance of family values, the children are grouped into “families”, with each “family” having a leader who reports not directly to the archbishop, but to the administrator of the village. The children are given names picked from the bible, and some of them have “Mboho” as their adopted surname. It was past mid-day when INSIDER WEEKLYreporter was guided into the children's dormitory in the Gospel Village . The kids trickled in into the building, and from there into their different rooms. Clad in their blue and white uniform, they appeared tired after the day's outing at the Goodnews Nursery/Primary School within the village. Ukpeme Anietie, 7, leaned on the door post after putting off her school wears. She smiled shyly at her “visitor”, and mentioned that she received lessons on Social Studies in school, that day. Inside the room, there was The setting up of the Goodnews Nursery/Primary School, including the Goodnews High School, the Goodnews Computer School and the Goodnews College of Wisdom in the village has given hope of a meaningful future for the children, and shows how purposeful and tenacious Archbishop Mboho is. Part of the motivation for the establishment of the schools, according to Okpokpo, the PRO of the village, was the embarrassment Goodnews Community was experiencing while sending the children to public schools outside the village. People who weren't appreciative of Mboho's humanitarian services used to look at the archbishop as carrying a load that was too much for him and his organization. Most times, the children were harassed out of schools because of fees. His vision to embark on humanitarian cause, Mboho says, could be likened to the call of Abraham or the conversion of Saul on his way to Damascus as contained in the Holy Bible. God, he explained, appeared to him and spoke clearly about him moving out and picking humanity and being a blessing to people. “I don't copy anybody anywhere”, he emphasized. How does Mboho raise funds for the village, its many projects and programmes? “Since I confess that God asked me to open this place, it's God's direct responsibility to finance it. I don't have anybody in the U.S, London or anywhere in the world that I look up to that sends me money”, the archbishop stated, even as he admitted that as each day or week passes, God uses people, churches and organizations that send money to the village. Like a coin, however, the Elijah Mboho story has its other side that sadly portrays how today's man has turned his back against humanity. Mboho is well known and revered within Akwa Ibom and beyond. The archbishop is a humble and sincere man who has turned many lives away from doom to greatness, and he is fighting a wonderful cause for the widow, the orphan, and the sick. But how come the government, both at the state and the local level, and so many private organizations and individuals are yet to partner with him in the struggle to save the children? Until the cry of an imaginary baby pricks a conscience out there, and until someone somewhere boldly steps forward to join hands with this minister of God, the medical centre at the Gospel Village may continue to be without drugs and necessary medical equipments, the hostel without beds, the classroom without seats, and the children without enough foods and clothing. Culled from INSIDER WEEKLY of January 3, 2007. Akwaibominterest's comment :The Gospel Village could be reached at 100 Midim Road , Abak, Akwa Ibom State . E-mail: gci20040@yahoo.com , bispem@aol.com . Tel: 234-8028528077, 234-8023557387.
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10 month old Lovina, so lovely, so quite and so relaxed on the lower part of a double-deck bed. The children were excited about being photographed, for a story. “They are happy, and we are happy too. But it's not easy. Sometimes as human beings we feel discouraged, but we have to move on”, one of the voluntary workers shared her experience. Truly, the workers in this unique community possess rare courage, but hardly can their efforts translate into anything near perfection for the children, not when some of them (the children) are in dire need of medical attention, new dresses, and toys to play with; not when their rooms need new mattresses, and their classrooms, new seats and teaching aids. All the same, the workers seem to be very happy working with Archbishop Mboho, and being part of the struggle to rescue the society. “There is something we enjoy which teachers in other public schools don't, and that is being able to help the needy. The joy we receive from doing this is far greater than money”, Mrs. Uduakobong Whyte, a reverend and the principal of Goodnews High School proudly told 
