The poor of the poorest are being killed and the world is watching and doing nothing.

It's so, it's so pathetic.

It's painful to the heart of anybody whose heart is full of compassion.

Welcome everybody. This is Simon Gilbo with Inspired and I'm thrilled this week to have Archbishop Ben Quashi with us all the way from Joss. How are you doing, Ben?

I'm doing fine, Simon. Thank you very much for having me on this podcast. Well, it's great to have you. In terms of introduction, I'm looking at Andrew Boyd's book,

neither bomb nor bullet, Benjamin Quashi, Archbishop on the front line.

In that, the intro says,

In the war zone that parts of Nigeria have become,

Archbishop Ben Quashi has survived three assassination attempts.

A brutal assault on his wife, Gloria, drove him to his knees,

to forgive and to find the strength to press on.

Islamist militants have Nigeria in their sights, but in Joss, the Anglican Archbishop Ben-Quashi is standing firm for the gospel.

Churches have been turned into fortresses, and Archbishop Ben now conducts more funerals than weddings

and baptisms put together. Yet his faith grows ever more vibrant and he has adopted scores

of orphans who live in his home including many who are HIV positive. The challenge of his message

to live for the gospel even the face of terror has never been so timely. Well that gives people a foretaste of what's coming. Ben, we

didn't actually meet, but we overlapped at the new Wineskins Missionary Conference just before

lockdown, wasn't it, in North Carolina? And I gave the opening talk and you, I think you gave

the end talk, but I was really sad that we didn't have the chance to chat there there so I'm thrilled that we got the chance now so listen there's so much that I'd like to hear from your perspective and from your life story but let's just kick off I mean I've read the book so I know this but lots of people won't have read it yet hopefully they'll want to get it having a foretaste here. But tell us about your childhood.

Obviously, very different background from most of us.

So what was it like being raised where you were in Nigeria?

I was born in 55, which means that I was, I'm a pre-independence child.

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