Fr. Kingsley

His story:
He is a diocesan priest in Nigeria who received his masters in philosophy in rome this past year and is headed back fro a two year program to get his doctorate. his mother died when he was 13mos old and slept with him in the church one night about a week before her death. She was a very holy woman and it is believed by his village that she consecrated him to the Lord on that night. So he entered minor seminary.. found it too hard after 3 yrs... left for a year... came back and re-joined his class. Went on with his studies and became very sick. Had a very back case of sinusitis and had a growth inside one of his nostrils which blocked his breathing and was continually bleeding. He took a break from seminary to have a total of 5 surgeries.. all the same performed by different doctors and nothing worked... tried to come to the US or go to Australia for the surgery but was neglected a visa. He finally said to the Lord after 2.5 yrs of this that if God wanted him to be a priest he would just have to help him and he asked to go back to the seminary. His bishop told him he could either take the backlog of exams and join his own class for the last semester or join the class two years behind and do it at a normal pace. He decided to take the backlog of exams and in this, the last semester of classes he took all the exams from the past 5 semesters he missed, then ended with the present exams and the overall exams at the end of seminary. The Lord showered him with His grace as he ended up coming out as the highest grades of his whole class and was able to be ordained with them.

His mission right now is in helping widows in his country. When a woman's husband dies, the fault is placed upon the woman and she is then ostracized and often banished from society.. her children are taken away and put under the care of one of her husbands brothers or family and there are often very challenging customs the woman must endure such as being made to sleep in the same room with her dead husband's body for a few days or even one that water is poured into the coffin, over the corpse and she is made to drink this water. So, these women are left w/o a job, a house, money, or even family in many cases and are dying of hunger and depression. Fr. Kingsley swore to take care of these women and would give most of his monthly stipend to these women when he was over there as a parish priest for his first 3 yrs of priesthood but is now trying to start a foundation which will not only give them money for food, but also provide them with loans to help create a business and be able to sustain themselves.