Mustard Seed Grant Project—Urantia Book Outreach in Nigeria
Mustard Seed Grant Project—Urantia Book Outreach in Nigeria
By Karo Akamune, Maryland, United States
Editor’s Note: Karo, the global lead coordinator of the Christ Michael Center, was a recipient of the first round of Mustard Seed Grant awards in 2024. He shares his completed project of outreach in Africa.
The Christ Michael Center was founded in 2014 and has been in operation for 10 years. Our highest purpose is to learn and understand the undiluted gospel of Jesus, and to bring his message of love to the ends of the earth. Once we have wholeheartedly embraced the Master’s teachings, loving social service projects become a natural, organic outcome. Our goal is to bring the gospel of love, grace, and truth to every single country on the planet!
Over time we have built a community of faith-liberated souls eager to touch lives. We currently have over 20 groups across seven countries: Ghana, Jamaica, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Groups are run by coordinators who meet on WhatsApp, Google Meet, or sometimes face-to-face.
Cell groups cultivate a vision to perform loving service—any valuable project that will be a blessing to the general community. Visions include a Urantia Book Training Center (a one-year intensive training), drug rehabilitation center, marriage counseling center, healthcare clinic, and an orphanage. We also rely heavily on social media to spread the teachings of The Urantia Book to over 100 countries around the world.
The Urantia Book Café in Eku, Nigeria, is an example of a successful vision. The café has a library which includes several copies of The Urantia Book, a reading room, and a hall equipped with desktop computers for lessons in information technology. We provide free internet and training for web development, coding, and programming. Occasionally we distribute laptops and tablets to empower our trainees to start their own small businesses.
The café has been a huge draw. People come in to make use of the library and acquire computer skills and then get exposed to the fifth epochal revelation. Not only are we attracting new readers, the Urantia Book Café has had an impact on the lives of hundreds of people since its inception in 2022.
The book tells us in Paper 56 that “Love is the desire to do good to others.” 56:10.21 (648.4) Thanks to the Mustard Seed Grant, we received 50 paperback Urantia Books from Urantia Foundation. We already have twelve brothers and sisters eager to receive their own copy. We are confident that these books will someday enhance the spiritual lives of 50 Nigerian sons and daughters of God!
