Sundat 13th April - financial difficulties

Sunday the 13th of April
Church today was quite worrying. Rev Kenneth’s prayers were the things that worried me the most. He was praying for the survival of Amaudo and that god will not let work that has been done be stopped by financial difficulty and prayed for the work to continue. Everyone kept saying that not in my lifetime I could not see Amaudo fall apart with my own eyes - it must not be allowed. So I began to feel pretty scared about what financial troubles lie ahead. I know that for the past three years Amaudo has been paying staff salary with a monthly donation of £2,000 (two thousand pounds) from three kind individuals of Saint Luke’s Hospital Group their names being; Dr Chuma Igbokwe, Dr Jackie Tweedie and Dr Obi Mbamalih. The donation was first proposed to be going for one year but they extended it until March this year. When the current exchange rate gives you 233 Naira to the pound then you can see how much that money translated into and how hard it is going to be to gather money to fill the hole each month.

This week’s doctor loves Amaudo and although I haven’t written about him yet he is very intelligent and said in ward round he suggested the jerky walking of Pa Pa Isaac and another resident may be an indication of catatonic schizophrenia. Digressing from the point, the doctor came to church and listened to the preaching and the praying and felt moved to pledge N10,000 (ten thousand naira) a month. This translates to £46 a month and is a very generous but manageable donation. We also heard that house parent Steve lost his wife last night. Everyone moved over to his house after church to pray for him and sing a couple of hymns. Rev Peter read a bible passage and Steve seemed to be comforted by having everyone come to him to say their apologies.

I called up home worried about Amaudo and got Dad to transfer £500 from the Amaudo savings account across to us in Nigeria to help out for this month.