Seventh-day Adventists in west Nigeria are reporting a successful conclusion to what they call “the most ambitious Global Mission project in the history of our field.” Forty-two new Adventist congregations have been established in Kogi state, one of Nigeria’s 19 provinces, following three months of intensive effort by 46 Global Mission pioneers, or local lay-Adventist missionaries.

The evangelistic initiative aimed to share Christianity with the Igala people of Kogi state, a group in which there are few Adventist believers. More than 600 people have now been baptized, reports Onaolapo Ajibade, president of the Adventist Church in west Nigeria.

“We spent May to September 2001 recruiting Global Mission pioneers,” he says. “At the same time we were recruiting Igala interpreters, who were mostly non-Adventists.”

After training, the 46 pioneers and their interpreters went out to 56 different villages in the area. “Before the pioneers arrived in these villages, we had visited the king of each village to inform him about our program,” says Ajibade. For two months, the pioneers went house to house with their interpreters in their assigned villages to give Bible studies.

“The work of the pioneers was to get the villages ready for open-air evangelistic campaigns in January,” explains Ajibade. These were held January 12 to February 2, when 38 Adventist pastors and two lay people conducted outreach programs in each of the 56 villages.