What the Lord Is Doing in West Africa — John 15

0:00 Good morning. Good morning. It's a it's a pleasure to be with you guys this morning. It's... It it really is is such an awesome thing if we think about it that as believers, we come from very different backgrounds, different tribes, nations, people, and tongues.

0:16 But yet we can gather together in unity, bound together into one body under one head by one spirit. And, and so it's a privilege to be able to break bread with you saints this morning. And now to share a little bit about, what the Lord is doing in West Africa. And, you know, I'm I'm often reminded that that it's it's a very big world and there's a lot of work to do. And, and I think there there are mission fields right here at home and there are mission fields, even to the remotest parts of the earth.

0:53 And what what amazes me is that our sovereign God is able to coordinate his work in in almost every country around the world simultaneously. It's an incredible thing. And, as we go into this, this presentation, the thing that I wanna highlight the most or or, emphasize the most is that this work is to be entirely to the glory of God. Brothers and sisters, that is our purpose. Jesus said in John fifteen eight, he said, by this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.

1:32 Again, in in Titus, I believe it's chapter three, that he says he he purified for himself a people for his own possessions who were zealous for good works. And again, in in Ephesians two eight nine, for by grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And so as I talk about Liberia, I wanna make this very clear that everything that we that we do in Liberia is entirely by the grace of God and should be solely to the glory of our great God. Now, if you, you look up here, ask your forgiveness, I'm missing my, my laser, but, this is Liberia, located in West Africa, and you'll you'll notice here a little star, it says Monrovia, that's the capital city of Liberia. And, I put a cross right here to, to kind of demart where we where we live.

2:40 We're in the Western section of Liberia, working among a tribe called the Gola, the Gola people. And, to give you an idea, we're very close to Sierra Leone, and, there's there's a lot of history there. I'm gonna give you a little bit of the history. How many of you here have ever heard of Liberia? Okay.

3:00 Most of you have. That's impressive. Many people haven't. How many of you know the history of Liberia? Okay.

3:08 That's great. There is... There are a few, and and I think it's important as Americans that we, we know the history of Liberia because we are very closely tied to this country. In fact, many people refer to Liberia as America's stepchild, and and that's kind of true in a sense. Liberia is a unique country and here's why.

3:30 If you look right here you see Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone was a colony founded by the British for freed slaves, freed British slaves mind you. And so slaves coming out of The Indies or or Haiti and so on were repatriated to Sierra Leone, where they would have freedom, but but still colonized, or under the the British Commonwealth. Like, Guinea to the North and Cote D'Ivoire, to the East, these were were again colonies founded by Western or European powers, but Liberia stands as this lone country between these that has never been colonized by a foreign power, or at least by a Western power. Liberia was the first republic in Africa, and is the oldest republic in Africa.

4:24 And what makes Liberia unique is that, it was founded as a colony for freed American slaves. In the eighteen twenties or in the early eighteen hundreds, there was a movement, called, an organization formed called the American Colonization Society. The American Colonization Society had some pretty big name people in it like Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and and some of these very influential figures, in the early days of our country. They had a desire, a burden, if you will, to help repatriate freed American slaves. And so, they they, through the American colonization society, were able to purchase the freedom of some slaves, and, they purchased ships, and they they took...

5:11 The idea was to take them back to Africa. Over the, in 1820, the first ships arrived in Africa, in in what we now know as Liberia, And over the course of the next couple of decades, 19,000 American slaves, our slaves in America were repatriated or relocated to Liberia. And, as the name of the country suggests, it's a land of liberty. For them, this was an opportunity not just to have their freedom, but also to have a sovereign nation, founded exclusively for Africans. In fact, in the Liberian constitution, it specifically says that no white person can be a citizen of Liberia nor can he own land.

5:57 They made very very certain at the beginning of their their country that this would be an exclusively African country. And so, Liberia again has this very unique history. In 1847, it was found, it was officially recognized by The United States as the Republic Of Liberia. Again, the first republic, the oldest republic in Africa. Just to give you a little context, here's Liberia highlighted in green, on the West African coast.

6:31 Now as I said, we're serving the Lord in Africa's oldest republic. With that unique history and tie to the to the American slaves, America has had a great opportunity to reach into Liberia. Liberia was the star of democracy in West Africa. It was a growing economy. The freed slaves, when they when they got off the boat, they had a constitution written.

6:54 They had a president selected. They they got off onto the land and they claimed it as their own. They staked their claim. They built plantations, they enslaved indigenous tribes to work their plantations. And the American...

7:07 There's some pretty neat literature out there, they they actually have documented the American Colonization Society remarking how the slaves were acting just like their slave owners, the freed slaves rather. Their etiquette, way they had servants in their house, and how they did their meals was all modeling what they had experienced in The United States. And so it's a little bit ironic, isn't it, that that freed slaves would come to an African country and enslave indigenous Liberians, indigenous Africans. As you can imagine, that was not welcome by the indigenous tribes. There were 15 other tribes in the country when these freed 19,000 freed slaves arrived.

8:20 The Gola fought them and fought them, and and, after many years of fighting, they were pushed from the coast up here to where where you see this cross up into the jungle. And they continued fighting even though they had lost ground, they continued their their fight. And finally, a delegation was sent from the the Liberian government along with the tribe who was aligned with them, and they went to the Gola chiefs, and in their dialect they said, Gola Kone, meaning Gola please stop. And the the Gola people take great pride in that because they did not stop fighting. They weren't the ones who sought peace.

9:01 It was this the the American Liberians who gave in and asked for peace. And to this day, they still hold that as a badge of honor. In fact, the district that we're working in is named Gola Kone, you know, a reminder of that warrior tribe and their history. And so, over the course of of the next hundred years, Liberia was growing economically. Finally, they were able to solidify the country.

9:30 But in 1980, the president, president Talbert, who was America Liberian, by the way, in Liberia before, the civil war, so let's say, pre nineties, if you were not a miracle Liberian, if you didn't have a direct link to a freed slave that was patriated to Liberia, you couldn't go to school. You couldn't hold office in government, and that meant that you had 15 tribes who had absolutely no representation in the Liberian government. It was exclusively controlled by the the American Liberians and specifically by the the freemasons who had a very very strong presence there. But in 1980, a sergeant, a young sergeant in his twenties by the name of Samuel Doe rose up and staged a successful military coup. He actually killed president Talbert.

10:25 He took his entire cabinet, tied them to poles on the beach in Monrovia, still there, shot them. He he he purged the Americo Liberian government, and a lot of the tribes applauded him. They said, this is great. We finally have an indigenous person as our leader. But unfortunately, Samuel Doe, who was from the Kron tribe, began to put people from his own tribe into power.

10:48 And as you can imagine, the other 14 tribes didn't like that very much. 1989, the civil war broke out. And the civil war started as kind of a fight between the Americo Liberians trying to regain power and the indigenous trying to keep power. And over the course of the next fourteen years, 1989 through 2003, there was a short break in between, but they fought. And at some point in the war, especially the latter half of the war, many people said they they almost forgot what they were fighting for.

11:22 A lot of rebel groups splintered over the course of years. For instance, in our village, the... A reb... It was taken over by a rebel group called the Ulemo, and Ulemo splintered into Ulemo j and Ulemo k, and this happened in Monrovia street to street, different warlords. You had General Mosquito, you had General Mosquito spray because he was fighting General Mosquito.

11:47 Gives you an idea of of the the chaos that took place in Liberia. Lot of atrocities, war crimes. Charles Taylor, who was the one who really started the civil war, is now in The Hague for war crimes. Cannibalism, giving crack and heroin to young kids, giving them an AK 47 and sending them out in the streets to start shooting. And so we're we're we're coming into Liberia post war.

12:13 2003, the United Nations stepped in, they brought peace, and, to this day, the UN mill is still in Liberia. It's the most expensive mission that the United Nations has ever had, trying to keep peace in this country. 2006, Liberia elected a president after the war, and she was the first female president in Africa. She's actually served her full twelve years, two six year terms, and currently, right as we speak, the Liberians are are electing their next president. And I ask you to pray for peace.

12:47 It's a contentious election, and there's a lot of fear about who might get in and if it would spark another civil war. So we'd ask you to pray for that. 2000, I believe, 15 Ebola broke out in Liberia. How many of you here have heard of Ebola, the Ebola virus? Okay.

13:07 How many of you have seen the documentary called Facing Darkness? Nobody. Okay. I would encourage you. It's it's a documentary put out by Samaritan's Purse.

13:18 If you have Netflix, if you have Amazon Prime or iTunes, you can get it. It's called again, Facing Darkness, and it's about Ebola in Liberia. And it gives you... It would give you a great insight into the country that we're working in. We encourage you to look it up.

13:33 Quick facts. It's about... Liberia is about the size of the state of Tennessee. There's a population of 4,300,000 people, there's 20 different languages, it's the fourth poorest country in the world. It was the second poorest country following the civil war, has now progressed to the fourth poorest in the world.

13:48 65% poverty rate, thirty five percent malnutrition, it was, and I gave you the history of how it was founded. So a lot of people ask me what language do they speak in Liberia, and, the the answer is they have 20 different languages. Every tribe has their own language, and then they have a general, what they call kolokwa or Liberian English. And I'll tell you a little bit about Liberian English as we come up. Now, my first exposure to Liberia was when I was serving with Ireland Outreach International, and, we were asked by Emmaus Correspondence School, ECS, to open up an Emmaus school in Liberia.

14:54 And in 2015, my visa to remain in Ireland where I where I was living was denied, and Lois and I were forced to come back to The US. And the burden that God put on our heart was for Liberia. But when we got back to The US in 2015, we couldn't get to Liberia. Ebola was was was at its height. There were no flights in or out of the country, and here's where it gets cool.

15:16 Alfred Varney was in The US right before Ebola broke out for a YWAM conference. When Ebola broke out, he couldn't get a flight back to his country, and so he got stuck here on a temporary protected status, refugee status, and guess where he was living? In Houston, Texas, and and then later in Arkansas. We we are from Louisiana. And and so here we are, we're we're we're forced to come back to The States, we're praying about another mission field, Liberia is on our heart, and here is Alfred Barney who just happened to get stuck in The US the same time that we were.

15:48 And, and it was during that time that we spent hours discussing the ministry, praying about it, seeking the Lord. If you ask my wife, what was it that solidified the sense of calling to Liberia? It was the time we spent with Alfred Varney, that the Lord had orchestrated that we spend together. And so, we were committed in October 2016. In July, Ebola was declared contained.

16:12 October, we were commended, and in March of this year, we we went to Liberia. We were there for six months and came back for the elections, and then we'll be going back in March, this time with a one way ticket indefinitely. But when we got to Liberia, we weren't alone. We had Alfred and Musu and we we really are privileged to be able to partner with them to serve the Lord among their own people. This is their family.

16:39 Alfred and Musu have an interesting history. They were separated for seven years during the civil war because they ended up in separate refugee camps, and, they finally were able to reunite. They... Alfred after that believed that God was calling him to serve full time, and he and his wife stepped out in faith to serve in postwar Liberia. Just an incredible story.

17:02 We were required by the Liberian government to form what they call an NGO, a nongovernmental organization. We named it the indigenous mission. It's kind of like a five zero one c three, but not as as regulated. We we founded the indigenous mission with the idea that this mission would be indigenous. And from the very beginning, it's a partnership between Lois and myself as missionaries and Alfred Imusu as Liberian, full time workers.

17:31 The idea with this organization is that eventually Lois and I will step out, and a Liberian will step in and take my place. We set it up in a matrix model, which we believe is a little bit more biblical, where Alfred and I are co equal, and no decision for the indigenous mission can be made without consensus between us. And and that's to in order to keep accountability. But eventually, again, our desire is that is that there would be no need for foreign missionaries, but rather indigenous believers can take the work and continue. Because the Gola language is the hardest language to learn in Liberia.

18:06 I I can study it for years, but I guarantee you I'm not gonna be fluent at it because I cannot make the sounds that they can make with their language. But a Gola person knows several different tribal languages. They know Gola, they know Vai, they know Sanpele, and so they have an opportunity to reach out into these neighboring tribes as missionaries and be able to speak the dialect. Musu, we we call her Ma Musu, and it's because she's very much a mother figure to us. She takes care of us, she cooks, and we ate entirely indigenous food while we were there in the village, and we never got sick because Musu took great care of us.

18:52 Put these pictures just to give you an idea. This is in the jungle, or they call it the forest, but it's it's a rain forest, very close to the Equator, very tropical. Really a neat place as far as wildlife and and plants, and so on. My wife is a scientist and she loves it. When we got to Monrovia, we were waiting on our, our vehicle to arrive.

19:14 We had we had imported a Toyota four Runner. And as we were waiting, we were stuck in Monrovia, and we prayed about what do we do Lord in the meantime until our vehicle gets here. And so one of the things we were able to do was step in and and work with the children's ministry. Musu continued this over the course of the three years that her husband was stuck in The US, and and every week, every weekend they get a 100 to 200 kids who come together, to hear the gospel, play games, and and be taught the word of God. And so we were able to step in, to that.

19:47 Lois, worked with the younger kids, teaching them, and Alfred and myself kind of focused more on the older, the teenagers. And here's what's really cool about this. You know, again, our desire was to get out of Monrovia into the village, but we were stuck. And and as we were stuck there, we we were working with kids, with Liberian kids, and I think the Lord used that to help us understand their language and to understand their culture. These teenagers, you know, again, I'm verse by verse through the Bible.

20:18 They're... I'm having to find relevant examples that they're giving me, and I was able to kind of pick up on the Liberian English, some of the phrases and wording that they use. And I think that the Lord used that to equip us for once we got into the village where English is a really difficult thing. And so we're we... By the time we got to our village, Lois and I were speaking some Liberian English or kolokwa, and I and I tie that directly back to working with these kids.

20:46 And that again was a sovereign hand of God. My... One of my favorite verses is man's heart plan... Man... A man's heart plans his way, but God directs his steps.

20:57 So we were able to teach them some games, Lois used the king of glory, done by, the Bransons who were working in Senegal, and, we had a great time with working with kids. We were also able to visit the ELWA hospital. If you watch the documentary, Facing Darkness, it's all about ELWA hospital. Really an incredible story. Samaritan's Purse, started building this hospital for SIM in I think 2011, and they finished it right before Ebola broke out.

22:00 The United Nations did not respond to Ebola. It was entirely Samaritan's Purse, SIM, being funded by God's people mainly from The US. And so it's just it built a wonderful testimony with the Liberian government. And so Lois and I were able to partner with Health Care Christian Fellowship, and what we do is is we would get together, we would pray, and then we would go ward to ward in the hospital visiting patients, bed to bed, sharing the gospel with them, praying with them, hearing their stories, encouraging them, and through that again, the Lord used it to equip us in in learning some of the culture, and and, we got some insight into some of the demonic things that still take place there, including one one girl who had been a victim of of a secret society ceremony where they sliced her stomach open. And this little girl ended up in the hospital, the nurses were afraid of her and asked us if we'd go talk, they thought she was demonically possessed.

22:56 And, and so we got some insight into these things that are present in Liberia. I was invited to speak at their monthly conference and you'll see a couple of white people in here. This is one of the doctors you'll learn about in Facing Darkness who got Ebola and came back to help contain it after he he recovered. Before we left for Liberia, we prayed that God would give us favor with the Liberian government. We...

23:24 If any of you have ever been to a third world country, know that one of the biggest problems is corruption. Liberia is one of the most corrupt countries in Africa. They're... They they they really squander a lot of money that we send... That The US, puts into their aid.

23:40 And and for missionaries, it's especially difficult because we don't pay bribes. And so when a policeman pulls us over because I'm white and he thinks I'm gonna give him money, I'm not giving him money. And so we end up sitting there and haggling, and they try to take your license and won't give it back to you unless you pay them, and they they have all these different tricks. You go to immigration, and immigration, you have to grease every palm, before you finally get your stamp and the passport, and and so on. And that's Liberia.

24:08 And so we prayed beforehand that God would help us to to avoid that corruption, and here again, the sovereign hand of God at work. Before we left, I I booked a room on airbnb.com in Cinquor in Monrovia. Anybody ever heard of airbnb.com? Yeah. I was surprised to know that they have rooms in in Liberia.

24:28 So we rented a room in a house, shared with other people. And when we got there, what we didn't know is that we were renting from the deputy minister of transport for Liberia. And one day she called me up and and upstairs to sit and she asked how are things going, and I said, well, we're having problems with immigration. We bought two year reentry visas, we've spent $600 on it, and when we got to Liberia, they stamped our passport for thirty days, effectively voiding our our visas. Very corrupt, and that's their way of making more money.

25:04 And so I told her this, well, as I was sitting in her living room, she called the deputy commissioner of immigration and naturalization, and within a very short period of time, we had our residence permits for Liberia. Yes, praise the Lord. What's cool about this is that we got these permits gratis, and and we went straight to the commissioner, and he himself told me, never come to immigration downstairs. If you come to the people, you know, the low low man on the totem pole, you're gonna have to grease every palm till you get there. In fact, he even instructed me, he said the official price for these residence permits is $50, don't pay any more than that.

25:41 And that's what we did. And so the Lord helped us not only to get our residence permits, but also to avoid corruption. When I I asked him how can I appreciate you, he said, look, when our war broke out, your country gave me a visa for my? Me and my family. He ended up in Atlanta, Georgia.

25:57 He got a scholarship. He went to college. He was very successful, and after the war, he came back to Liberia. He said, your people accepted us and and showed us kindness, I want to repay that. And and so he did.

26:10 The next thing was our container. Liberia makes its money through the ports, and they tax, what you import. Before we before it even left, there's a company called BVAC that inspects it, they seal it and that seal is not to be broken until you're present in Liberia, when they open it. And they also give you, a printout of what your taxes will be. Well, in Liberia it's not that straightforward, and we're supposed to clear it within ten days, after that we started paying storage, it took us a month.

26:43 It took us thirty days to clear that container from the port, And at the end, they they they ended up tacking on more to to our bill. But here's here's what's cool. Right in the middle of this, the most stressful time for me in Liberia, deputy minister of transport again asked me how are things going, and I said well, we go to the port every day, they want to bribe to let us in the port, we don't do that so we don't get in. This is what they're doing, they're holding intentionally holding us up so that we start paying storage fees. While I was in her living room, she called the head of customs at the port, and she chewed him out on the phone.

27:22 I kid you not, she actually got in trouble for that phone call, but through that we were able to get our container. And and this woman is not even a believer, but but the Lord used her to help us in Liberia. So we got our container, and we got our four runner. This is a 1998 Toyota four runner, it's about 20 years old, but make no mistake about it, she's good for the jungle. This was this picture was taken right before, we we got off the pavement into the jungle.

28:29 In fact, the first thing to go out on this 4Runner is the brakes. These are our bridges. These roads were built by logging companies in the nineteen eighties. Those logging companies are not in Liberia anymore, and so these roads are kind of just left. We come across bridges like this, this one the log had snapped because a big truck tried to go over.

28:51 The village people started waving us down and they you know, obviously we can't drive on that bridge, And so after discussing it they said, you can go through the river and come out the other side. And so we agreed, I threw it into four wheel drive low, got into the mud, the village boys got behind our vehicle and as we got into the water they pushed to make sure we had enough momentum to get across to the other side without actually sinking. When I got... When we got out, I opened the hood and there was mud just caked on the inside. All I had to do was take the air filter, knock it out, put it back in and we kept going.

29:25 So as my as my brother who is a prepper and not a believer by the way, as my brother would say, if you ever need a bug out vehicle, get a ninety eight four runner. And so now that we have our vehicle, we're able to get into the village. God has given us an open door to serve among the Gola people. The Gola people are are predominantly Muslim. There's...

29:47 The population in our village is about 2,500 people, and there's about 2,500 Muslims. I think the official population is 2,526, and we only have about 10 people, 10 Christians in our village. So gives you an idea, of the people that we're working among. The cool thing about this, is if you can see the map here circled, this is our village, Tahn, T A H N. Tahn, again, has a population of 2,526 people, but surrounding it is all these little villages that you see here, and the numbers are the populations in these villages.

30:22 And so what we do, what we have the opportunity to do is be based in Ta and reaching out throughout the Golokanee District, and reaching out into these villages again, which are almost entirely or almost exclusively Muslim. The cool thing, and one of the reasons that we have an open door, this is a neat story, a brother by the name of James Varney, he was a first generation believer. He was came from a Muslim family, he got saved. And after he got saved, he believed that God was calling him to leave his village to pack up his family and go to a land that he would show him. And, so James Varney in in in the nineteen seventies packed up his family and moved into this Muslim village.

31:06 And when he went to the chiefs, he asked for permission to to start a church. And again, these are all Muslims. These Muslim chiefs agreed on one condition, that he bring teachers to educate their children. And so, James Varney was able to go to Monrovia and convince two teachers to move to the village. They built a palava hut, which is just a dirt floor and a and a thatch roof, and they started educating these kids.

31:30 The first time that these children ever were, had access to education. Of the children that were sitting on that that floor, that that palava hut being taught by these two teachers, one of them is now the representative for the district, one of them is now the commissioner for the district, one of them is the clan chief, one is the general town chief, one of them is my colleague Alfred Varney. And so they... What they saw is the real impact that education had on their village. And, in the eighties, SIM missionaries heard about this lone Christian family, the Varney family, out in the middle of of the bush serving in a Muslim village, and they decided to move in and help.

32:10 Missionaries came in, they built a clinic, they built houses, they built an airstrip, they started bringing in supplies, and they also helped build three classroom buildings, which you can see here in this picture. These are three classroom building, classrooms. They built a church building for him. They had several people that had gotten saved. They started a small church.

32:31 And they also built a bible school dormitory room, and and opened a bible school. That was in the nineteen eighties. I think the first... The church building was erected in '85, but in 1989 when the war broke out, the missionaries pulled out, and there have been no missionaries there since the nineteen eighties. And so we're the kind of the first missionaries to come back to this place in thirty years.

32:54 And and what's cool is that we have the opportunity to step in and partner with the Varney family, just like those early missionaries did. And we have the opportunity to take these buildings, have not been used by the way for about thirty years, renovate them, and put them back to use for the glory of God and the spread of the gospel among the Gola people. We we were welcomed by the village, it's it's very customary in in Africa in general to go to the chiefs, the elders of the village and ask for permission to to serve in their village. And so we did that, the Muslim chiefs agreed and, they extended the same condition to us as they extended to the early Christians, help us with education. And so, that's the condition on which we we are able to serve in this village, and so we've we've opened a school, and I'll tell you about that.

34:09 And so afterwards I asked, well what does this mean? And they said, the white chicken represents their white heart or pure heart towards the stranger, that they have good intentions. Handing it to you and pulling it back is their way of saying, you are welcome to our village, but you don't have to be here. You are welcome to our village, but remember this is our home. You're welcome to our village, but basically tread lightly.

34:32 It's a warning from the the warrior tribe to be careful, as we... We're welcome there, but we're there by their their their welcome, and so we have to abide by some of their rules. But this is what's cool, the, the chief, or rather the commissioner stood up and he he reminded the village people of the history that I just gave you of the the first Christian family to come to the village and how they brought education and how it impacted their village. He he reminded them that the missionaries brought a clinic for the first time they had health care in their village. And this is what he said.

35:08 This is this is incredible to me. He said, and they did not ask for anything in return. This is the Muslim commissioner reminding these Muslims of what the Christians did and what stood out to him was unconditional love. The unconditional love of God. And in fact, when they when they told James Varney, you can start a church if you bring teachers, they said your students and your school can be the church members.

35:37 And obviously, they didn't take that deal. They wanted people who were born again to be in the church. But that's the testimony, and somebody said we're we're kind of standing on the shoulder of giants coming in on the coattails of the early Christians, early missionaries before the civil war, who showed a testimony of the love of Christ in an unconditional way. And so we're thankful for that. After the war, when the war broke out, the Yulima rebels took over this compound, the buildings that I just showed you, the classrooms, the church building, and the Varney family home, and the dormitory.

36:11 The the the rebel commander chose to make this his headquarters, and for that reason, buildings are still standing. Most other houses were just gutted, stripped, and they would sell the materials. But this survived because the the commander of the rebel group decided to make it his headquarters. When that happened, a lot of the Christians were dispersed out. They went into different refugee camps.

36:33 Post war, only a few of them came back. But the Varney family came back and again opened the church and begin and start, continued their ministry. Now that we step in, we... Alfred and I prayed about it, and what we decided is that we want to teach, expositionally or exegetically, book by book, verse by verse, chapter by chapter. And he he prayed about it, and he decided to teach on the gospel of John.

36:59 And there's a there's a good reason why. The purpose statement of the gospel of John, at the end it says, the many other things Christ did, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and here it is, the son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. Now that that seems obvious to us coming from a Christian culture, but for Muslims, or especially these believers who came out of Islam, the idea of Jesus being the son of God was heresy. They believe that Allah would not allow his prophet Jesus to suffer on the cross and and replaced him with a spirit or ghost and fooled the people. They deny the death and resurrection of Christ, they deny the deity of Christ, they deny his sonship.

37:46 And so teaching through the gospel of John is a way of helping solidify that they may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing they may have life in his name. I prayed about it and I chose to speak on Ephesians. And the reason I chose the book of Ephesians is this. If you break down the book, the first chapter reminds the believers of who they are in Christ. Chapter two, who they were without Christ, and introduces them to salvation by grace through faith, to the distinction between the church and Israel.

38:15 And then in chapters four to six in the Hortatory Discourse, you have a practical exhortation for almost every demographic you can find in the local church. And so it's it's a great book to start with, and and so we did that. And and what I found is, you know, teaching verse by verse is not very easy when most of the people in your congregation don't speak English, or don't read English. They speak Liberian English, but that's not the English of the Bible. And so there's a lot of vocabulary in these...

38:43 The... In in the English Bible that they don't know. And so what I found is instead of teaching verse by verse, I'm more teaching word by word through the book of Ephesians. The entire time that we were in the village, I got through two verses of Ephesians chapter one, because we spent the entire time defining words. The idea is is that once we get to the end of the chapter and we have vocabulary defined and they have some comprehension, we'll go back and teach with that with that understanding in mind.

39:51 This is the Sunday school. Lois and Musu kind of focus on that. Now, James Varney, this this man that you see here, who's 96 years old by the way, still brushes his farm with a machete. He gave us Gola names, and when he came to the village, he was given a Gola name, and his Gola name is Dja, d j a. It means settler, one who comes to settle, because he moved from his village to settle there.

40:18 So he gave me his name, and so now my my Gola name that I go by in the village is Jafua. Fua means white, so I'm the white settler. James Varney is the settler. Lois's name was, he gave his wife's name, which was really an honor to get his namesake. For Lois he named her Tenejuku, which means beautiful woman or fine woman.

40:41 There couldn't be a more appropriate name for my wife. And we later we later, they added another word to it, so now she's called Tene Juku Zena, because in their culture, a twin, an ident, a twin, the firstborn twin is named Sino, the second born is named Zena. And we were walking through the village visiting the huts and and Lois, was introduced to a lady and and our colleague translated and said, told us that she's a twin, an identical twin. And my wife said, I'm an identical twin. And this lady, she looked at her intently, and she said something in Gola, and my colleague laughed.

41:19 Later I asked him what it was, she said, this woman said, I didn't know that white people could have twins. So it's just really neat. So Lois' name, she was a second born twin, so she's Tenijuku Zena in the Golov culture. Now, again, the condition extended to us is help with education. There's a government school there.

41:42 The mission school was taken over by the government after the civil war. It is the only school for the Golo Kene District. There's 500 students and the government only maintains five paid teachers. So my math people in here, what's that ratio? A 100 to one.

42:00 And so what happens is that many kids just don't real... They don't get any quality education. I mean, we have kids... I have a 12 year old in our k two class, to give you an idea of of the level that they're at. When when you have an overcrowded classroom, a teacher cannot teach that many kids, especially for them the most populated classes are the ABC through first grade or the pre k through first grade.

42:24 And so, as part of our agreement with the village elders, we decided to do a summer school in the month of August. And the reason we did that is because they were taking their standardized testing while we were there, and the principal gave us a report following the results of the test that only one student out of 500 passed the government standardized test to pass to the next grade. That means that you have 499 students who could not even pass to the next grade. And so what we did is we asked the teachers to identify 200 of their students who were doing the worst or who are not picking up, and we'll we'll tutor them for a month, the month of August. And so we did that, ended up with 234 kids, we, we're two of the people in our our, church are high school graduates, and in Liberia if you have a high school diploma you can teach pre k through first grade legally.

43:18 And so they partnered with us, we ended up with a total of five teachers and four cooks, and over the course of a month, the month of August, we basically tutored these children. Sorry, this is this was our morning chapel time, if you will. And we used a curriculum called thinking tree. Thinking tree is is kind of focused towards kids who have disabilities or learning disabilities, but one of the things they do, they have a curriculum called teach your child to read with a 100 bible verses. And so we had 200 Muslim kids being taught how to read, write, spell vocabulary exclusively from the word of God.

44:00 Isn't that cool? If you go onto our website timliberia.org, you'll see a video. I have a video of the kids reciting, these Muslim kids reciting their Bible verses. Again, that's timliberia.org if you're interested. And and this kind of is similar to the church where we're teaching word by word through a verse.

44:20 So for us, was an opportunity to give the gospel to these kids. Our prayer is that it would reach into the home that their parents would get saved. And doing the summer school was great because the village people told us, the clan chief said to me the day we had our meeting with them, he said, talking about it is one thing, but seeing is believing. And so for them to see this summer... Month long summer school, we fed their kids for a full month.

44:48 We we we taught them, we got teachers, we organized it with 234 kids. For them, it was a tangible sign that we meant what we said. We're gonna do what we said we we were going to do. And the Lord blessed that, and and we had a lot of parents coming up to us after the summer school asking if we could start a school. And and so we did that.

45:14 Sorry, let me get to that picture. By the way, this was our team. These are our teachers here, and these are the cooks back here, and and we were really thankful to be able to partner with help these kids. This is them cooking for 234 kids three days a week, and it's over exclusively over a wood fire. You know, we had the parents send their kids, they had bundles of wood on their head to come and they got fed rice and beans three days a week for the summer school.

46:03 Because in the rainy season, when it rains for six months straight, the water just washes down and it washes mud into these classrooms, and it washes out the foundation. So what we did, the first thing we did was to build, to cut a drainage, build a retainer wall, actually ruined the road by the way by doing that, and we were able to clean the classrooms up. Right now they're being painted, had to replace some tin on the roof, but now it's in use for our kids. We have 80 students, we're working up towards a 125 kids in our classes. This is a Palava hut and it's just kind of an outdoor classroom where we get to teach science and some of those things.

46:40 So we started out fairly small, had about 30 kids that that were enrolled. We're offering basically scholarships where if the parents cannot afford to pay 1,400 Liberian dollars, which is less than 10... Was about 10 US dollars a year that we... That the school charges to help pay for the teachers. But families that cannot pay are still allowed to bring their kids.

47:04 What our hope is, is that eventually the parents who can pay that small fee will help subsidize the kids who cannot pay. And that's kind of what we're working towards right now. And so these are just some pictures of the classrooms. We took pieces of plywood and painted chalk paint on them, and that's our chalkboard. This is our ABC class, just really incredible group of kids.

47:31 The parents are excited because they, this was something they asked for and and and it was given to them, a school opened for their kids. Lois Lois had to kind of make a, an ABC chart. The challenge there is you know a lot of times we'll say A for apple, right? Well in the jungle apples don't grow, and so we had to find relevant you know examples and Lois did all that working with the kids trying to figure out examples. Now, I mentioned that the missionary started a Bible school.

48:04 This is the Bible school dormitory building and you can see when it was built in the nineteen seventies, this is where the ground was. And over the course of thirty years with rainy season, it washed out the foundation and you can see here it undermined it. Right now, these dormitory buildings are being used for our orphanage. We have kids, who live in these these these rooms. I I recently just sent money to build a bathroom for them, and and so it's...

48:32 We're steadily fixing this up using it mainly for the orphanage. But what we're praying about is in May, opening our bible school. And what we want to do with the bible school is get, believers from around the Grand Cape Mount County that we're in, together and teach them English, number one, and then teach them the bible. But we also want to teach them practical skills. And so we have...

48:55 We do have several people who are partnering with us to help teach African horticulture, animal husbandry, and some of these things that we can incorporate into our bible school. And so that's kind of our step. This is our team. This is the Varney family, Alfred and Musu Varney, Ruth and and Collie Harris, and this is James Varney, the first Christian to uproot his family from their village and move into this Muslim place. Again, 96 years old still serving the Lord, even after thirty years of civil war destroyed their ministry.

49:27 This is his him and his wife and this is my colleague Alfred. Kali, we we put on staff. We we now have five teachers on staff. We have a principal, custodian, and a facilities manager. Collie is our facilities manager, and this is what's cool, he he...

49:41 We were able to find somebody with a chainsaw and a guide that could mill lumber for us. And so he milled a bunch of lumber, Collie worked with nothing but hand tools for a week straight to build these desks, all by hand, and with wood found in the jungle right there and and made. So it's pretty cool. We're really thankful for the team that God has given us. And and I emphasize again the indigenous mission, the idea is that it needs to be indigenous, and and so that's what we're working towards.

50:11 Orphanage, we've got some stories about some of these kids, won't go into it, but basically the Lord has not allowed Lois and I to have children, biological children, but he's given us some surrogate kids. This guy, his name is Simeon. This is his sister Princess. The mom actually asked if we can adopt the two of them. And so we're we're praying about that.

50:35 We are sponsoring them. And then we have about 10 other kids that live in those old bible bible school dormitory buildings. And they get one meal a day, and for them that's that's good, otherwise Simeon, his life was just roaming around the village asking for begging for rice. And so now he's in school at 12 years old in k two, and his sister is is in sixth grade. And anyway, so this is...

50:59 These are our kids. I I was able to teach them some American football. You know, outside of America, football is soccer. And so they they love soccer, but American football I think is starting to catch on for them now. In fact, this is their first dog pile.

51:19 I mentioned agriculture. One of the things that we're doing is our goal, our stated goal from the very beginning is to create a ministry that's self sustaining and self propagating, self perpetuating. And the way that we we intend to do that is to, invest in agriculture. And so we've invested in two of our colleagues farms. Collie, has a pineapple farm and this...

51:42 And you can see them in the ground here. These are all pineapples. And when it when it comes time for harvest in the dry season, he's gonna have a ton of pineapples to sell. But here's the catch. You...

51:53 There's no market in the in the village. Nobody has money. And so the only place to make money is to send it to Monrovia to get sold in the market. But by the time you pay somebody, remember it takes seven hours to go 78 miles, by the time you pay a vehicle to take your goods, you pay somebody to sell it for you in the market, and you pay to store your things in the market, your profit is eaten up. And so what we did is we invested in this and we said, Collie, when your pineapples are ready, we'll load our four runner full of them, we'll take them out to the market, Musu will sell them, and you will get a 100% of the profit on the condition that you invest some of that profit into the ministry that were word, the orphanage, the school, and so on.

52:32 So it's our way of helping them economically, but also helping to create sustainability in the ministry. Grow peanuts, cassava, a lot of a lot of tropical fruits and vegetables. Rice grows out there, they don't really grow it much anymore because they're eating Chinese rice. There's also palm trees. The missionaries planted these in the nineteen eighties, and these are cool because from the palm fruit you can make soap, you can make oil to cook with, and you can also make a soup out of it.

53:00 They call it palm butter soup because it's really, you know, high fat content. It's really good. Sheep and goats, we had to build a fence because the sheep were hanging out at our mission, and we sent word to actually we're right now we're in the process of buying some sheep and goats, and that will be exclusively for the orphanage and the school to help feed the kids. There are a lot of Muslims. Goats are raised there not for food, but for sacrifices.

53:28 In fact, the day we had our graduation, the imam came out and and told the whole the whole village that they had to pray twice that morning and sacrifice. It was his way of trying to stop us. So we sent word around, that once they were finished sacrificing, come to our meeting. But, we were invited to a traditional wedding, and in the Gola culture, you have to pay a dowry for your bride, but it's it's not the husband that pays the dowry, it's the brother of the groom that pays the bride price. And so we we we were in this traditional wedding and the, the governor of the Mendingos, a Muslim man, was giving his daughter in marriage, they were negotiating the dowry, and, he he named his price.

54:08 He said, for my daughter, it will be two cows or a 100 US dollars, $50.50. Now, nobody in the village sees a $100 in a year, so that's that's outrageous, and they negotiated it down. I went up to the Mendingo governor afterwards and I said to him, it's good to keep a high price on your daughter, and he smiled and he he said, well I have another daughter and I'll give her to you for three cows, a 150 US dollars. My wife was standing right there, she asked her what do you think about that? And then he even pointed out behind him, we were standing in front of his huts, and he said this is my big wife and this is my small wife.

54:45 So Muslims tend to be polygamous. Chickens, the idea of a chicken coop and raising eggs is not not common to them, so we're introducing the idea of a chicken coop and a chicken tractor. We actually have a container that we're packing up right now, getting ready to ship out there. I've got everything we need to to start to our farm. We're looking forward to that.

55:06 We're also, planning to... We're in prep to build a house. This is where we lived while we were there. This room was built on for missionaries, and what makes it unique is that they built a bathroom. Nobody in the village has a bathroom in their house, that's taboo.

55:21 But we were... They they did that for us, and, in turn, we actually built another bathroom across the hall for the family so that they're not having to use the outhouse anymore. But this this is very temporary, the roof leaks, a lot of our stuff gets wet. Our clothes, we cannot keep them from getting moldy because it's so hot and humid. And so we're we're planning to build a duplex in in partnership with Alfred Varney.

55:47 We're we're building basically an apartment for Lois and myself, an apartment for them. And I thank the Lord. We have two engineers that are in the process of getting ready to come to Liberia to help us with construction. One of them has already drawn up our blueprints and we have a short term mission team getting ready to go out to help with the construction. We praise the Lord for that.

56:06 Right now this is the kitchen. They cook over an open wood fire. And so we ask you to pray for for Liberia. If nothing else, please pray that the Lord would raise up laborers to go out into his harvest, and specifically that God would raise up from among the indigenous believers men and women who would want to serve the Lord among their own people. We we ask you to pray for our school, Grace Christian Academy.

56:34 Pray for the local church in Ta, the small group of believers that we're working with. Pray for our orphans as we're kind of expanding that a little bit. Pray for our agriculture prod project, but most importantly for the spread of the gospel, for discipleship, and training Liberian believers. We, you know, we're stepping into this ministry, it is pioneering as somebody mentioned, but with the stated goal that ultimately will become indigenous. So please pray with us in that direction.

57:07 And this is the last thing I'll say, on the back table there there's my wife has a sign up sheet if you want to get our newsletter. We send out an email bimonthly, so every two months, and it's almost exclusively pictures, so don't don't worry about along somebody's set up reading a missionary book. If you would like to get that, please sign up. We also have some prayer cards back there. It's got our website, and our website has the video I was telling you about, and all of our contact info if you want to get in touch with us.

57:36 One of the things that we want to do as as as missionaries and as part of the indigenous mission is to facilitate short term missions and long term missions. And so what we're doing is we're offering to any believer here in The US that wants to come to Liberia either short term or long term to do... To preach the gospel or help with construction or do medical mission, whatever it is, that we will help them, in the process. We have a travel agent that provides the services for free. We can organize the flights.

58:04 We we can organize visas. We can tell you all about your vaccines that you have to get, medicine, everything. Basically, we will we will help you step by step and to enable you to come to Liberia. And so if if the Lord, you know, tugs on your heart to to come to Liberia to serve short term, please please contact us and we'll we'll pray with you about that and give you some advice on it. Thank you guys for the time.

58:55 And father, we recognize that this is this is a big body of Christ, and and you are at work in amazing ways. And father, we recognize that as Jesus said in John fifteen five, that without him we could do absolutely nothing. And so Lord, we we submit this to you for your glory, that you may be honored, recognizing that that these things were not in my plans, but they were in yours, and so you get the glory, father. We we commit it all to you. We thank you.

59:22 I thank you for this group of believers. I pray that you would bless them, bless their testimony as a light in this community. And, father, I I just commit them to you, and thank you for the fellowship that we can have in Christ. In Jesus' name. Amen.