Helleman News: A brief review of 2006

2006 was an eventful year for us. There are many things we could mention, but we wish to reflect on just a few of the true highlights:

In January Magdalyn Aboh finished all the corrections on her thesis and received her PhD. Wendy had worked with her for some years, and she was very happy that Magdalyn completed her work succesfully.
In April our graduate students wrote their exams--they had to wait for the completion of the Nigeria-wide census to do so.
In May two students whom we had not personally supervised but whom we had helped informally, were examined for their doctorates. Adrian was the internal examiner for James Kiamu from Liberia, who wrote a thesis on what the Bible teaches about violence. Wendy served as internal examiner for Dogara Gwamna, one of our colleagues in the Department of Religious Studies at Unijos, who wrote about the role of healing in Pentecostalism. Danny McCain, the founder of IICS, supervised both of them.
Soon after these exams, we travelled to the Nigerian Baptist Seminary in Ogbomosho, where Adrian acted as external examiner for two PhD candidates.
In June we flew to Istanbul, and experienced what was a real high point for us as we visited our son David in that beautiful historic city.
Upon our return to Jos, we started courses for our undergraduate students, and prepared papers to present at the annual conference of the Nigerian Association for Biblical Studies that was held in July.
In September we travelled to Benin City, where we gave workshops for Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) teachers; these are part of a continuing education program for such teachers. Adrian focused on theology, while Wendy presented materials on the background of the New Testament.
In October we travelled once more to Ogbomosho in order to introduce faculty and graduate students to our handbook on the writing of a thesis, which we prepared for our graduate students at Unijos, but is also useful for all the seminaries that are affiliated with Unijos.
Back in Jos we participated in the examination of about twenty master's students, including three of Adrian's and one of Wendy's. An external examiner presided over these, and we were grateful to hear his remark that the quality of the theses that he has examined over the last few years has definitely improved.