Thanksgiving 2018 In Pictures

Hey Friends, 

This is Odie reporting in today. I hope your Tuesday is going well. We are trying to stay warm here in frigid Ohio. 

Nigeria 

Did you see both of my Dad’s updates from Nigeria yesterday? There were two different blog posts. You can click here for post number one and click here for post number two. I am glad that we can read the details of their trip to Nigeria and see pictures often. It sure looks like they are having a great time with all of our friends.

Thank you for praying for my parents while they are away! Those prayers are being answered. They are having a wonderful trip. 

Ohio

Last week was spent celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. I am privileged to be in two wonderful families, my Dad's family and my Mom's family. I am grateful for each holiday I get to spend with them! I love all of my family and I thank God for them. 

I owe a huge thank you to my family members! They are making sure that I have everything I need. I appreciate all of their assistance and rides to where I need to go. Thank you from the bottom of my heart! 

I have a bounty of Thanksgiving week pictures. I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride. Warning this is picture overload.

Morgan Thanksgiving Dinner 

Thanksgiving Day we had a Boggs Brunch. 

Saturday afternoon we had a big Boggs Thanksgiving feast. 

2018 Thanksgiving is in the history book. It was wonderful to be with family for Thanksgiving this year. Thank you for reading today. I will close for now. 

Odie 

Our First Week In Nigeria

This is our second post of the day on Monday, November 26, 2018. If you are signed up to follow by email, you should receive notice of this post Monday night, but there is another post you will want to see. The first post today is full of great pictures from the weekend. If you are logging on and seeing this post, follow the link in bold type in the previous sentence or scroll on down to the earlier post. You will love the pictures.

Time Change and Sleep
The time change coming to Nigeria whips up on us every trip. Usually, we can go to sleep about 11:00 PM which is 5:00 PM eastern time. Then we wake up about 3:00 in the morning and are wide awake. Why would we wake up at 9:00 PM eastern time? We have never been able to figure that out. Some nights we can sleep more later and some nights we can not.

The first three nights in Nigeria we were able to go to bed earlier. However, we had been in central time for several weeks before our trip here so we have been waking up at 2:00 AM each night. After about 4 nights I began to be able to go back to sleep and get a little more rest. The exact opposite happened to Kelly Jo. On the 4th night, she woke up and could not sleep at all for two days.

We did not want to alarm everyone, but we told a few friends and they went to prayer. I am very thankful to report that Kelly Jo was able to sleep Sunday night and I made sure she slept as much as she wanted during the day Monday. Praise God! I know it might seem better for her to get up Monday and stay awake until bedtime, but at this point, she is taking sleep whenever it comes.

I put up a post at midnight eastern time with oodles of pictures from Friday night and all day Sunday. The post the day before had mostly pictures from days two and three of the Minister's Conference. There were gobs of pictures between the two posts.

I hope I have not sent some of you into picture overload. Perhaps you can muddle through another week of an abundance of pictures. A few of you come here for the profound writing (😀) but keep in mind, all the others come here for the pictures. 

My dear wife falls into the picture loving category and I have to say I lean toward the pictures myself. I know that I will love looking back on these pictures years from now. I am already overcome with emotion looking at them right now.

In one way it is difficult to believe that we have been in Nigeria for one week already. There has been a bunch of activity packed into this first week, that is for sure. I have preached ten times the last five days and my voice and my body can feel it.

Only three of those sermons would fit the profile of my normal 30-40 minute revival sermons. Bro. Shobanke and his team want me to pack as much as I can into the Minister's Conference and about 90 minutes each sermon would be perfect for Bro. Shobanke. I can not quite make it 90 minutes "most" of the time, but each session is usually an hour or more. 

Then we spend time praying in the altars and with individuals. After service, we go into Bro. Shobanke's study and meet and visit with the people that wish to talk to us. We love every second of it even though my voice is getting rougher by the minute.

Sunday morning Bro. Shobanke had requested me to teach/preach to the combined churches on a specific topic. He wanted me to take my time and drive the points home, so I was over an hour Sunday morning too. I understand that most of the saints in the US would revolt, but that is what Bro. Shobanke and his people want. 

I can assure you that no one was leaving church early to go to McDonald's or Golden Corral. Not one person mentioned missing "the game" Sunday because of a long service. That was certainly refreshing.

This second week should pass at a more relaxed pace. We have only three more nights of the outdoor Gospel Crusade. This should give us a little downtime and rest for our voices and bodies.  I do strain my voice in the crusade services because they are outdoors and I am praying with people too, but the sermon length is more in my normal 30-40 minute range.

We will spend Thursday at the GoodNews Christian School. We are looking forward to that very much. It is always one of the highlights of our trip.

Then we will travel north to Ibadan to preach for Pastor Kuye at Landmark Christ Mission. It will be a joy to be back in Ibadan with Bro. Kuye and all of his people. Although we are blessed to spend time with Bro. Kuye each time we are in Nigeria, our last visit to his church was in 2012.

We plan to travel back to Abeokuta Sunday night by God's grace. Monday afternoon we will begin our long journey home. I say home, but I really mean our long journey to the bus in Tennessee. Home is where the BoggsMobile is, you know.

Thank you for joining us on our journey.

Davy

November 26th From Nigeria

I posted pictures from the Minister's Conference yesterday. I normally do not post much more than our view out the front window on Sunday so you might want to check out yesterday's post if you missed it.

Today will serve as a report on the rest of the weekend.

I mentioned that I was asked to preach one service of a camp meeting Friday night. The group is called The Evangel Faith International Mission and this was part of their 2018 National Convention. It is held on their camp meeting grounds about 20 minutes from Bro. Shobanke's main church.

Bro. Shobanke has known of these churches for many, many years and they have had fellowship in years past. One of the teams that came from Export Bible Institute came during this same meeting years ago and visited it too.

Some of the leaders came to the Minister's Conference Thursday morning and brought a letter from their Overseer inviting me to preach. I was honestly reluctant to do so, because I knew my first obligation was to the Minister's Conference, but I am so glad that I agreed to go. They received us so warmly and we had a wonderful time. Thank you General Overseer M. G. Kafaru.

Here are a few pictures from Friday night at the 2018 National Convention of The Evangel Faith International Mission.

I have already reported on Saturday so the rest of the pictures in this post are from Sunday. The morning service was a combined service of all the Abeokuta area branches of Christ Ambassadors Holiness Church. The service was at the main branch where the Minister's Conference was held.

First things first, we greeted all of the Sunday School children and passed out suckers to each and every one. I love these kids and we are not through passing out candy!

The Sunday morning service was great. They responded tremendously to the preaching. At the end of the service, we gave small gifts to Pastor Isaac and to Bro. Shobanke. We also showed them a short video that Odie had recorded for the church and they recorded a response. It was a lot of fun!

Pastor Isaac made a presentation to us that had me in tears. I mean really in tears. They were the cannot hold back blubbering tears!

These are all of the Pastors from the Christ Ambassadors Holiness Church. This is a great group of men that are working on the front lines for the cause of Christ. They are the real deal and I always feel like such a pretender among them.

This is Bro. Shobanke's granddaughter Damaris. She is a sweet child.

She tried on my reading glasses and we all got a kick out of her response.

Sunday evening was the first service of the Gospel Crusade. The crowd kept getting bigger all evening and many folks responded to the preaching. It was a great first night.

The temperatures are just about perfect for the crusade. It was in the mid 90s when we began, but the humidity was low. The humidity has nearly killed me here before so I am thrilled with the temps and humidity.

That pretty much wraps up our weekend. We have three more nights of the crusade left. Please pray that God will have his way in the meeting. May God bless you for holding us up in prayer.

Davy