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Then, as the sun rose shortly after 6 a.m., they began to hear screams and gunfire in the village behind them. Villagers were running in every direction as the air filled with smoke from burning homes.

The militants had attacked the village from another entrance, and Timothy felt helpless as he thought about his family, his church and his predominantly Christian village. “In all honesty,” he said, “even though the Bible has told us that these things would happen, the first question I asked was, ‘God, where are You?’”

Timothy’s wife, Rifkatu, and their 3-year-old granddaughter, Uma, had just finished praying with their lead pastor’s family at the church parsonage when the attack occurred. Rifkatu heard the gunfire and screams when she stepped out with Uma to get some fresh air.

After scooping Uma up in her arms and running back inside to alert everyone, Rifkatu and the others hurriedly left the pastor’s home, which they knew would be a target of the radical Islamists. Running as fast as she could while carrying the toddler, Rifkatu stumbled repeatedly. And the more tired she grew, the more afraid she became. Seeing another villager get shot only added to her terror. “The fourth time I fell, I could not get up because my body was weak,” she recalled. “I could not carry [Uma].”

When a young man, also fleeing from the militants, saw Rifkatu struggling, he took Uma from her so they could both run to safety. But the young man soon grew tired from carrying the child and decided to hide her in the bush and continue running on his own. Rifkatu had run on ahead until reaching cover in the bush. “I do not know how God did it,” she said of her escape. “I found a place and hid. I lay down there till morning.”

Rifkatu had run so far that she lost track of how to get home. When she felt it was safe, she started the long walk back, arriving at 10 a.m. the next morning. Once home, she asked if anyone had seen Uma.

That’s when she learned that Uma had been killed, her body discovered along with those of others shot by the militants. The lead pastor’s wife, with whom Rifkatu had been praying, was also killed as she fled. She and Uma were among the more than 70 villagers killed in the attack.

Thankfully, Timothy and Rifkatu’s four children, including Uma’s mother, were not in the village at the time. The family’s home, located on the outskirts of the village, was also unharmed.

Picking Up the Pieces

About a week later, the family traveled to another village, where they spent three months mourning Uma’s death and recovering from the trauma of the attack. Rifkatu suffered nightmares and anxiety as well as deep grief. But through prayer, reading God’s Word and spending time with family, she grew stronger and her grief became more manageable.

At the end of June, they returned home to help their church recover. Much of the church building had burned, along with all of the musical instruments inside, and the parsonage had been completely destroyed by fire. In addition, the lead pastor had left the village, grief-stricken over his wife’s death and overcome with guilt that he had survived.

Timothy took over as lead pastor, but he struggled with his mentor’s absence even as many in the church struggled with their own painful losses. Several church members lost their spouses and were forced to live in poverty. “People are tense and very scared now,” Timothy said. “If something small happens, people will start running. But we are encouraging them.”

Through it all, Timothy, his family and the church have found encouragement through Christ. “He helped us understand that these events are things that will pass,” Timothy said. “Whatever is happening today will pass tomorrow. What strengthened us is in these events will become our story. We have faith that one day Christ will avenge us.”

Timothy’s family still grieves for those lost in the attack, but they’re also grateful for what they have gained. “Honestly, before this attack our faith was broken,” the pastor said. “Hearing about the attacks happening in other places shook our faith. But after it happened to us, our faith increased. Even if it happens to us again, we will not be afraid.”

They have no intention of leaving their home, despite the risk of another attack. “We stay here because this is where our faith is strengthened,” Timothy said.

Not Backing Down

After the attack, another pastor from Timothy’s church was killed while visiting a neighboring village. Timothy knows that working to advance God’s kingdom isn’t always safe, and he’s OK with that. In fact, the risk assures him that he is on the right track. “If you are in a peaceful place without any challenges, you will be far from God,” he said. “But if there is persecution, you will be close to God.”

VOM has helped pay his children’s school fees and provided his family with additional financial support since the attack. Timothy has used some of the support to start a farm, where he grows corn and rice for his family and also to sell for additional income.

“It is not by our doing, but it is the grace of God that this help has come to us,” Timothy said. “If not for this support, we do not know what we would have done. We are incredibly grateful. All the help and support mean so much to us. We are full of joy that we are part of a family who loves us and is praying for us.”

Pastor Timothy asks that we pray for his family’s courage and strength as well as for his village as they all continue to recover from the attack.

Naomi had already experienced suffering. When her husband died in 2009, her in-laws, who in Nigerian culture would be expected to help her and her five children, rejected her. With no other options, Naomi moved in with her parents in the town of Gwoza, in Nigeria’s northeastern Borno state. Hoping to rebuild her life, she set about the work of providing for her family and educating her children, the youngest of whom was only 1 year old when his father died.

Not long after their move to Gwoza, a violent Islamist organization began gaining power in the area, advancing its goal of “purifying” northern Nigeria for the sake of Islam.

The Attack

Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is forbidden” in the Hausa dialect, began waging an insurgency across northern Nigeria, targeting military installations, police stations, government buildings, churches and civilians, primarily in Borno state.

By 2014, conflicts between Boko Haram and Nigerian security forces had become common as the insurgents fought for control of Borno state’s capital, Maiduguri. Frustrated at its failure to gain control in Maiduguri, Boko Haram turned its attention to the majority Christian community of Gwoza and its 300,000 residents. While previous offensives in the area had been announced by letters warning civilians to clear out, the Gwoza attack came unannounced. “This time they came without warning,” Naomi said.

The day of the invasion, Naomi was working on her plot of farmland outside the city when she heard distant gunfire. “The Muslims who were at the farm with us told us to be careful while going home,” she recalled, “because they knew what was happening.”

Naomi’s first concern was for her children at home. But as she rushed down the road toward town, she and several other women were caught by Boko Haram fighters. “They asked us to show them the houses of Christians, and they challenged us to renounce our faith,” Naomi said. “They threatened to kill us if we did not.”

After Naomi pleaded with the militants to let her go, telling them she was a widow with children, the group’s leader took pity on the women and released them.

“All I could think about was my kids,” Naomi said. “My mother said I should be careful, but I told her I did not care if I got shot. I started running.” She ran past the horrific scene of headless corpses as she searched for her children. And after she gathered her family, they ran into the forested Mandara Mountains, where they would remain for the next two years.

Hiding in the Mountains

After reaching the mountains, they found others from Gwoza who had fled the attack. The children slept in caves with their parents guarding the entrance, while some people slept in the grass. But the danger below was never far from their minds. “Day and night, there were bullets everywhere like water,” Naomi said.

For the first few days, the refugees ate whatever edible leaves they could find. Then, after deciding the attack must be over, they carefully returned to their homes. Within hours, however, the sound of gunfire returned. “We thought the terrorists would not come back again,” Naomi said. “We did not know they had gone to their Muslim friends in our community and had started living with them in their houses.”

Naomi and the others kept hoping they’d be able to return to their homes, but Boko Haram never left. Naomi felt desperate and alone. “I had only God,” she said, “and I talked to Him. He gave me the strength I needed.”

Naomi, her children and several thousand others lived on the mountain for two years before fleeing to Cameroon. “The morning we left for Cameroon, Boko Haram followed us,” Naomi said. “They were shooting and detonating bombs.”

Sojourners Return

Naomi and her children stayed in a Cameroonian refugee camp for two months. But conditions in the camp were very difficult, and more than 300 refugees had died by the time Naomi and her children returned to Nigeria, guided along the way by ethnic Fulani herdsmen.

When Naomi and her children arrived in Jos, a city in central Nigeria that had not yet been affected by Boko Haram, they stayed at a camp for internally displaced people until being told they had to leave. “I did not know where to go,” Naomi said, “so I cried to God.”

Some months later, front-line workers became aware of their situation and provided assistance. They helped the children get started in a good school and eventually helped the family move into their own house. Today, Naomi’s older children have graduated from high school and continued on to vocational schools. Her youngest child, a teenager named Samson, was a toddler when his father died.

Life as a single parent has not been easy for Naomi, but as she looks back she realizes that she was never alone. “Since the passing of my husband, God has kept me,” she said. “I have always had faith in God. The attack only made me stronger in my faith.”

She draws inspiration from her namesake biblical heroine, the mother- in-law of Ruth, who also was a widow and sojourner in a foreign land. “My name is Naomi, and I want to be like the Naomi in the Bible,” she said. “Pray for me, that with the help of God I will not fail.”

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At about 4 a.m. on the morning after a local election in Jos, Nigeria, Ibrahim awoke to someone banging on his apartment door. “They have come!” his niece cried out. “They have started!”

The 2008 elections had been particularly divisive. Before results were even posted, members of the city’s predominantly Muslim Hausa-Fulani majority began protesting the Christian candidate’s expected win.

Ibrahim jumped out of bed. He knew his niece’s warning meant Christians were under attack in the town where he was serving as an election worker. Thankfully, his wife, Ana, was safe at home in a different city.

By the time Ibrahim came out of his room, his niece had already left and he noticed that the neighboring tenants were gone, too. Hearing gunfire, he looked around and saw people running away. Ibrahim, however, ran toward the gunfire to see the attackers for himself.

“What I saw was dreadful,” he said. A parade of militant Islamic Fulani armed with sticks, machetes and guns were chanting, “Allahu akbar! Come! Let us fight Jihad!”

Ibrahim ran back toward his apartment to help protect his neighbors. Along with other Christians, he helped women hide in a church, barricaded roads with whatever he could find and threw rocks at the approaching mob to slow them down.

“We tried to curtail them,” Ibrahim said. “I thought to myself, ‘With this number of people, can’t they just overrun us?’ I knew that God was with us.”

As he passed a burning house, Ibrahim heard the sound of children’s voices. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his mouth and entered the smoke-filled structure. But as he walked through the house, he noticed the silhouettes of two men crouched in a corner. One of the men, who had been waiting in ambush, shot Ibrahim in the face. “I heard a loud sound and found myself on the ground,” Ibrahim said.

In severe pain, he covered his face with his hands. A young man who had heard the gunshot soon came to his aid. Unable to carry Ibrahim, the young man dragged his nearly lifeless body until three other people arrived to help carry him to a medical clinic, where physicians began work to stabilize him.

After losing hope that he would survive, the doctors turned to other attack victims who appeared to have a better chance. But one nurse, realizing Ibrahim was still conscious, gave him medication, stopped the bleeding and treated his wounds. He and three other gunshot victims were later transported to Jos University Teaching Hospital, where Ibrahim’s sister caught up with him.

Then they got the bad news: A CT scan of Ibrahim’s skull revealed that he would never see again. Ibrahim burst into tears, but his sister quickly reassured him. “Have you forgotten God?” she asked.

Lying in the hospital bed, Ibrahim surrendered his life fully to Christ. “I was not born again before the attack came and I lost my sight,” he said. “I gave my life to Christ after the attack happened. Since then, I have not looked back.”

Looking to God

The riots in Jos ended when the Nigerian government deployed the army to restore order. But at least 761 people, both Christians and Muslims, had been killed and hundreds more injured. And about 10,000 people had fled their homes as they were burned along with churches, mosques and schools. To this day, Ibrahim doesn’t know what happened to the children he tried to save in the burning house.

After a month in the hospital, he was finally discharged. And as soon as he was able, he went to church. The first sermon Ibrahim heard was on bitterness and how we should forgive those who hurt us. He had felt vengeful since the attack but changed his mind after hearing the sermon. “The message really gave me insight,” he said. “I saw that the best thing was for me to forgive, so I forgave.”

With mounting medical bills, Ibrahim and his wife struggled financially after the attack. They had little help from family, and relief organizations ignored their requests for help. “Not getting assistance was a low point for me,” Ibrahim said. “I had organizations coming to interview me. Many people came and went, and I never saw them again.”

Ibrahim learned Braille during this time and found encouragement in a Braille version of the Bible. “I strongly relied on it,” he said. “I did not understand anything in the Bible before then. That’s what was giving me peace of mind.”

Ibrahim asks that people pray for his continued healing and for perseverance in faith. He knows another Islamist attack could occur anytime, but now he knows he’s not alone. He was touched to learn from a front-line worker that Christians around the world are praying for him.

“The larger body of Christ cares about me?” Ibrahim asked. “Wow. I’m extremely glad, incredibly happy. I just find joy being a part of the family of Christians.”

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