Abigail's Story

by Barb Blyth

Abigail? Who is Abigail? The note Luke brought home from Hillcrest school said that the National Honor Society was sponsoring a food drive for the benefit of Abigail, an HIV-positive widow with eight children whose home was torched in the Jos crisis of November-December 2008. Later, at Bible study, Jean Garland told us about one of her best friends, Abigail, who turned out to the same woman, someone strong in her faith that Jesus had saved her and that God pays close attention to the needs of widows and orphans.

Abigail was fifteen when she married. After the wedding, she discovered she was the second wife. It wasn't long before her husband, a taxi driver, took yet another wife.

This family would have been horrified to be known as anything but Christian. They certainly were not pagan, Muslim, idolatrous, or superstitious animists. But Abigail's husband was not a faithful husband. One by one, he infected all three of his wives. Over time the first wife died, the third wife likewise, then the husband, leaving Abigail to care for her own eight children plus the other orphaned children in the family.

Life was hard, but Abigail believed God was taking care of her. She had her own simple little home. She and her infected children regularly went to the Spring of Life center to collect their anti-retroviral drugs.

Then on November 27, 2008, the first day of the Jos crisis, some Muslim neighbors burned down her house. Abigail and her children escaped with the clothes on their backs, but everything in their home was destroyed. Even so, God has convinced Abigail of his care and compassion. Hearing of her plight, Christians in other countries have sent funds to replace some of her loss.

I think Abigail was astonished when one of the perpetrators, the only one released from jail, came to her and asked for forgiveness. He said he couldn't sleep because of the evil he had tone. More surprising still was that Abigail told the guilt-stricken man that she forgave him and that God was taking special care of her and her children because she was a widow.

So I will help and I will join the NHS food drive. Thursday afternoon I will drop off the carton I have filled with rice, milk powder, sugar, tea bags, bouillon cubes, soap, vaseline, and maybe some lollipops as a treat for the kids.

Who is Abigail? Now I now.