I flew to Lagos in late May, worried sick about the sermons I knew I would have to preach. Three of us— Levy, a Zambian nurse and youth worker; Ginna, a young American nurse; and me, a Canadian former petroleum explorer—were in Nigeria for 10 days to strengthen Hands at Work’s two youngest projects in Lagos and in the desert region Kano, training pastors, teaching home-based care, ministering to prostitutes, and teaching illiterate women. I sensed something about the trip would drag me to my knees. I thought it would be the preaching. It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.

It wasn’t the foreign setting that disturbed me. Though in Lagos the air was always hot and heavy and the dusty streets vibrated beneath the rumble of at least a million people on the move at all times. We slept in the home of the Lagos project leader, Pastor Rex. And each morning at 5 am the crackling cry of a prayer call blasted into the rooms from a speaker mounted on the tower of the mosque behind his house.