Spending Thanksgiving In Africa

Shooting some video in Haiti

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving I am scheduled to fly to Nigeria on a two-week missions trip to a place that's made international news for the violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorists targeting Christians. I will be heading to Jos, where the missions organization I work for is operating in a school providing Christ-centered education and computer skills. It will be an honor to meet the educators and students in Jos who have been undeterred in the face of the relentless onslaught of violence fomented by Boko Haram.

We are expecting up to 100 educators to gather for TEN3 workshops at the 2014 Transformational Education -- Nigeria event. Later, I will be traveling to outlying communities where TEN3 hopes to launch computer training outreaches. I will be shooting video, interviewing, writing stories and shooting photographs for TEN3.

Last week I put together a 60-second video for TEN3 using video footage and photographs from two of my missions trips to Cap-Haitien, Haiti, and TEN3 staff photographs from Zambia and Nigeria. For a little flavor of what I'll experience, check out the video here:  TEN3 Missions Video

I would also appreciate your prayers for the trip. Pray for the safety of all of us and that God will be glorified in our time in Nigeria as we bring the hope of Jesus and Christ-centered education to a place in the world that desperately needs it.

A Gloucester Game-Changer: `Pocahontas Lived Here'

Gloucester: The view ain't so bad. Neither is the history.

When I tell most people I am from the lovely, photographically enchanting enclave of Gloucester, Va., they give me a blank look that says, "Where's that?" Or a blank look that says, "I thought Gloucester was in Massachusetts." Often I've aided the geographically-challenged by saying the Virginia strain of Gloucester is across the river from Yorktown and Williamsburg, or an hour east of Richmond on Chesapeake Bay, or 2 1/2 hours south of Washington D.C. and a light bulb goes off above their head. But I've been scrapping all that lately and just saying, "Pocahontas lived here." Eyes light up at the mention of Pocahontas.

Just this morning it happened. I am in Charlotte, N.C., for the week for a retreat/conference with my co-workers in TEN3, Transformational Education Network (www.ten3.org). We are here at the headquarters of Serving In Mission (most notably in the public eye recently because two of SIM's doctors contracted Ebola recently while serving in West Africa) from literally around the world. From California to Zambia, 10 of us TEN3 missionaries are here  from around the globe to talk strategy, plan, pray, encourage and exhort each other on our mission to provide transformational Christian education materials and technology skills to disciple and equip young people in Africa and the Caribbean.

This morning I met another missionary who is here for a separate conference. This missionary serves in Ethiopia but is from Australia. When she asked where I was from I told her Gloucester, Va., and explained roughly where it was. Then I mentioned it's where Pocahontas lived. That was the game changer. She had seen the movie. You know, the Disney animated film "Pocahontas." Even though the scenery in the Disney flick is utterly and completely lacking anything remotely close to what you'd find in Gloucester -- for example, the next waterfall someone stumbles upon in Gloucester will be the first -- and I have yet to meet a animals or trees that can talk, it's one of those things that's made Pocahontas famous.

Beyond the Disney flick, I asked the missionary what she knew about Pocahontas. She was an Indian princess, she said. That appears to be part of the fascination with Pocahontas; other fascinating things include that she was an Indian princess, saved John Smith's life, conversed with animals and traveled to England, among other things. In May, when I was still working as a reporter for the Daily Press, I attended an event in Gloucester in which the Virginia governor, Terry McAuliffe, paid a visit to the historic site of Pocahontas' village, called Werowocomoco, on the banks of the York River. He hopes the site will become a national park, something that would truly put Gloucester on the map. Historians and government officials say that around the world, Pocahontas is more well-known than George Washington and other iconic American figures. They say that if Werowocomoco received a designation as a national park, visitors from around the world fascinated by the story of Pocahontas would pay a visit.  I bet I won't be explaining so much where to find Gloucester if that's the case.

Here's a link to the story I wrote for the Daily Press about Pocahontas' old stomping grounds becoming a national park: Werowocomoco story

Oh, and one other thing. We look forward to you paying a visit to see us in historic Gloucester.

The World's Strongest Man. And He Has ALS.

It would be virtually impossible to be living in America and have no clue about the ALS "Ice Bucket Challenge" that has inundated social media. It's the summer of the Ice Bucket Challenge.

Yet how many of us actually personally know people afflicted with "Lou Gehrig's Disease," as it's commonly known? What sort of interaction have you had with someone with ALS?

One of the most remarkable men I've ever met and spent time with is very likely nearing the end of his life in the unrelenting grip of ALS. His name is Jay Tolar, a man affectionately known in the Sabo household, and very likely many other households, as "Coach Jay."

In July 2010, my family traveled to Serving In Mission headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., for three weeks of missions training. For two of those weeks, Coach Jay spent time with my older children pouring into them a legacy that will likely span generations. It's a tribute to him that four years later his wisdom, his attitude, his grace and perseverance continues to have a profound effect on my children who had the privilege and honor to spend many hours a day with him. All of us got to know him and his wife Heidi and children Jake and Julie.

Coach Jay had been an SIM missionary serving in Nigeria, where he was born to missionary parents. A big strapping, athletic man at 6-foot-4, Coach Jay's body has betrayed him and is deteriorating. He is now confined to a wheelchair requiring everything to be done for him and I've received emails that indicate the ravages of ALS may be nearing an end.

I spoke and texted with my son Ethan, now 21, about Coach Jay earlier today.  Ethan told me that Coach Jay was amazing in how he was handling his diagnosis of ALS. There was no self-pity, no woe is me, no signs of depression from Coach Jay.

Coach Jay's faith and trust in God and God's plans was undeterred. He was a steady, immovable rock on sands that were shifting ever so mightily beneath him.

Ethan said that the best marriage talk he's ever heard came from Coach Jay. I asked him what it was about the talk that was so good.

"Just about treating your wife with honor and love in all situations and that in turn she will respect and submit to you," Ethan wrote. "About what it means to be a husband, laying down your wants and needs for your wife and family."

Here's how Taylor, now 22, summed up Coach Jay in an email: "What can I say about Coach? I only spent two weeks with him, but those two weeks will ripple through the rest of my life. He did so much more than teach me how to walk with God, to be a strong leader, a loving husband, a compassionate father, an inspiring coach, a man after God's heart. He exemplified it.

"He taught me that being a man isn't about killing, it's about dying. He taught me that every day men are called to die to their flesh, their desires, their needs, and put their wives, their children, their friends' needs before their own. He showed the beauty of hoping in Christ and the power of faith in Christ. I hope that, one day, I can become half the man that he is. To Coach, who always reflected his Savior, and now will know Him just as he also is known."

Taylor added a passage from Scripture: "Yet indeed I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." --Philippians 3:8-11.

I can't accurately convey how humbled and honored we are as a family to have spent time with Coach Jay. I know he will soon hear the words we all hope to hear from our Lord, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

Here's a video produced by the SIM media team on Coach Jay. God bless you Jay. We love you and look forward to a heavenly reunion with you.

Jay Tolar video

Burying Lizards Alive And Getting Rich Quick

                        Lizard/amphibian thought bubble: "Don't bury me alive!"

If someone told you to bury a lizard and you would get rich, would you do it? Perhaps on the surface it sounds silly to you. Or does it?

My day job as a missionary is communications manager for Transformational Education Network, an organization dedicated to bringing Christian education and computer skills training to young adults in Africa and the Caribbean. In that capacity I get emails from around the world and came across one yesterday that got me chuckling. Christie Dasaro, our TEN3 director in Nigeria, wrote about an ongoing "Computer Holiday Adventure" computer training outreach session that is being held at our TEN3 school in Jos, Nigeria. The session has 16 students, some of them touching a computer for the first time, she wrote.

Some good news out of the session is that two of the students gave their lives to Christ and six students rededicated their lives to Christ after a Bible lesson of, "What do you believe and why the Bible?" Christie wrote that she has "never been excited teaching CTO Bible like yesterday. To God alone be the glory."

She relayed one interesting story as the students shared beliefs in their culture. One student said, "If you catch a lizard alive and bury it, after three days you will become wealthy." That sounds patently ridiculous to us in America, eh? Not so fast. We have plenty of strange cultural beliefs: The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; Santa Claus; The Tooth Fairy (who, by the way, needs an income-generating strategy because the Sabo household has lost an amazing amount of teeth); Affordable health care. Coming from a culture in which a survey several years ago showed nearly 40 percent of lower-income people believed buying lottery tickets was a good wealth-building strategy, we better not judge.

The manager at the local convenience store near my house said she has many customers who spend hundreds of dollars a day on the lottery. I was in there once clutching Seth in one arm and a pop in the other and the dude in line in front of me dropped $600 cash on scratch tickets. I blurted out, "Feeling lucky today?" He looked at me and shrugged. When he left the clerk said he usually spends more. Wow. Just wow.

Christie ended her email about the student's lizard story by writing, "Thank God, the lesson opened his eyes to see the lies of the devil and know the truth." It's a small thing to have this child's eyes opened about a faulty community cultural belief. But in the big picture, through the TEN3 session his eyes are being opened to a much greater truth: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When I quit my newspaper job in May to work with TEN3, I left the relative security of more than two decades of work as a reporter knowing that in four years of missionary support raising through Serving In Mission, I had built up only about a year's worth of funds. I felt strongly the Lord's leading in becoming a missionary with TEN3, affirmed through much prayer and confirmation in Scripture, and have faith the Lord can supply the funding to continue beyond next summer. My faith isn't in burying lizards alive, or the lottery, or some other scheme, but it's in the God who has provided for me and my large family for the past 20 plus years. We lack nothing and have been blessed tremendously.

One other thing moves me to work with TEN3 and see lives transformed around the world. Our schools are open to anyone of any beliefs, but the gospel is proclaimed unashamedly. In her email, Christie asked for prayer for one of the 16 students, who is Muslim and is hearing in the class about the hope of salvation through Jesus Christ. In a world that seems to be coming unhinged, riven by violence, hopelessness, warfare, disasters and unfathomable turmoil, the only true peace is in Jesus. One of my favorite verses is John 14:27, where Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."