Sunday, 3/21
Pastor Joseph picked us up early for the church service at Trumpet of Faith Baptist Church. I have preached at ACFI churches, Methodist meetings, Pentecostal services among others, but this is my first message at a Baptist church in Liberia. It’s about time, and this one will be broadcast to all Liberia.
Pastor Joseph is a great host and friend and both Isela and I look forward to many years of fellowship with him. Though I prepared a new sermon and used the projector and PowerPoint, it all ended up at the same place, ‘Be Filled’. Pastor Joseph had assigned me the topic for this week, ‘Stewardship of Time’, one of my weakest areas personally but the passage God seemed to focus on was ‘Redeeming the Time’ from Ephesians 5, two verses before ‘Be Filled.’ Isela and I sang ‘Fill My Cup’ and were being sent out to all Liberia and the total radio time was constrained to 30 minutes. The service was great and the people were wonderful. At the invitation, the entire church came forward to pray and be filled with the spirit. My goal here has been to keep it simple as possible rather than trying to be too smart. They have a challenge just understanding me so I have been speaking slowly and simply, to God be the glory.
After the service we went to see Nyamah and Helen, two of the UMC people at their compound and they shared bowtie pasta with us. It was really good after all the Liberian food we had endured. Helen is deeply involved with Education and was a great source of info for the current condition of Liberian schools. I have already written about the student/teacher ratio at 75+ to 1. That is with only 34% of students attending school. If all children decided to attend, the ratio would be over 200 to 1. Only 12% of students attend government schools while the other 88% attend private or mission schools which charge tuition and fees. I am more convinced than ever that their current situation is unsustainable and a complete rewrite of the curriculum and program is in order. I hope we have a chance to present our concerns but I have no confidence that MOE will listen. They have too much invested in their current failure to change everything now. Nyamah is the UMCOR representative (United Methodist Committee on Relief) which is the Methodists NGO worldwide. She has been so instrumental we have asked her to be on the Liberian Board of Directors and she has agreed. She is now our international Liaison and will handle many things in our absence.
We had been scheduled to have dinner with the VP and family, but son Ignatius called us and cancelled.
After visiting at the Methodist compound we jumped a taxi for the ride home but they dropped us at ELWA Junction, which is a veritable chaotic throng of people, very close to the murder site the day before and both of us were concerned but I saw a UN style vehicle and asked them for a ride. As it turned out, they were Peruvians and spoke Spanish. When they spoke to Isela and they began to communicate they were happy to oblige us and we were happy too. Thank You, Lord.
Earlier at Trumpet of Faith, Pastor Joseph gave me the first ever Liberian love offering. He gave me the 500 Liberian dollars I had given him for gas earlier in the week but it was such a blessing to us. Much to our dismay, armed robbers broke into his house later that night and attacked he and his wife. They took all their little money and when they saw his wedding ring were about to chop his finger when he said, “No, no, I’ll take it off for you”. As the thugs were finishing the neighbors came into the house and the bad guys fled. God protected the young pastor and his family and all they lost was a few possessions.
Will write more later,
Fred and Isela