Green Tea and Mob Justice

I’m feeling rather African tonight. I’m sitting around a table with 4 UN soldiers from Gambia, drinking green tea and listening (involuntarily I might add) to Gambian music. Never mind the fact that the tea is so “green” that I can practically taste the grass in it and that the music sounds like the same line repeated over and over again about twenty times – it’s still an interesting experience. I’m in a guesthouse, by the way – I’ve been staying here since I got back to Liberia two weeks ago. The UN guys are staying here for a while as well – they just came to Liberia a week ago and are doing some training in the city before being deployed somewhere else in the country. They are all Muslim and we’ve had a couple interesting conversations – pray for them please!

I’ve restarted most of my usual workload since returning – Sunday School, Bible Club, Reading Club, music lessons, and teaching at the Christian School. I was very encouraged to find that the children’s work in the church went on well in my absence, under the direction of Nathan Barco (the young man who’s the official leader of the Sunday School and has been working alongside me since I came here a year ago). There was a slight decrease in attendance which I had feared, but Nathan didn’t let it discourage him. He told me today that he didn’t mind how few kids were there, he was determined to start each meeting on time. He’s been teaching the Bible Club lesson each Wednesday since I returned, and he’s doing really well. Please keep praying for this young man – he certainly has a heart for the children’s work.

I’ve been teaching my Bible class at the Christian school the story of Noah and was reading again of how the earth in those days was corrupt and filled with violence. I got a very dramatic glimpse of the violence and corruption of Liberian society on Sunday after church. I was just getting into the car to head home when a lady who was getting a lift home with me suddenly shouted, “Don’t kill him! Don’t kill him!” For a minute I thought she had gone crazy but then I also looked across the road and saw a crowd gathering. We ran over to find that the men in that house had caught a thief on their property, caught him apparently red-handed, and were now taking justice into their own hands by stripping and beating him.

It took some time to calm them down, but we eventually convinced them that they should send the man to the police station to be charged for his crimes. An off-duty policeman came on the scene and showed us his ID and then took the man off to jail. We haven’t heard anything since Sunday so I don’t know if the offended parties actually decided to prosecute him or not. They were protesting that the reason they were beating him was to teach him a lesson because the police and court system are so corrupt that they would never get justice from them. Sadly, they were right about the corruption.

What really astonished me about the whole episode was the absolute violence and cruelty that exploded in front of my eyes. Certainly, the men had a right to be angry with the thief, but they actually seemed to relish beating him. And the crowd of young men who gathered were eagerly joining in on the beating, even though they had no idea if he had done anything to deserve it. I asked one of our church men afterwards if he might actually have been killed if we hadn’t been there. He said yes, it was very likely. He said that Liberian “mob justice” often results in the person being beaten to death, and then his body is thrown on the road. As I said above, I was astonished at the violence and cruelty, but I was also scared – not for myself, but for Liberia. Not just because of the potential for physical violence that was evidenced, but because the episode gave a glimpse into their hearts. There is much talk of peace and reconciliation here, and education and moving forward and “building Mama Liberia”, but the bottom line is that nothing but the Gospel will change Liberia for the better, because nothing but the Gospel can change the hearts of wicked and violent men.

First year anniversary

It's hard to believe that on Thursday I will have been in Liberia for one year! Actually, I don't know how this will work because I'm actually leaving the country on Thursday to go home for a few weeks -- so does that mean my one-year anniversary won't be until I get back?
Anyway, the Mission Board has asked me to bring a report at the Easter Convention (I'll be showing a DVD presentation at the Friday night meeting by the way, if any of you can make it!) and I'm going to take a few weeks' annual leave while I'm home. I'm looking forward to it! Please pray for safe flights and for help in reporting at the Convention -- and for a restful time with my family!
My lease on the apartment actually expires on Thursday as well so I'm in the throes of packing -- I'm going to store everything in an empty room in Rev. DiCanio's house while I'm gone. When I return, I have a couple months booked in for a room in a guest-house until there is other accommodation available. I'm thankful for the provision of this guest-house -- the owners are a Baptist missionary family so the location is quiet and secure!
I have to give tests tomorrow at the school where I teach Bible and Reading, and then get all 80 or so of them graded before I leave, so the pressure is on!
The work at Dwazone is progressing -- the security wall is 3/4 done, the water tank is being put in, the windows are installed, most of the electrical fixtures are in place. Thanks for your continued prayers!
Please pray for a 12-yr-old boy named Abraham who is one of our most faithful students at Sunday School, Bible Club, Reading Club, and anything else that's going on. (He is taking keyboard lessons as well.) More importantly, he's professed salvation within the last 6 months and has shown encouraging signs of growth and interest in spiritual things. He has recently been diagnosed with Hepatitis B. There is no cure, but the doctor has prescribed anti-viral drugs to slow down the progress of the disease. This has been hard on Abraham (and the whole family --- they will all have to be tested to see if they also have Hep B). It's especially scary for Abraham because his "birth pa" died of the same disease, and his older biological brother has it also. Abraham is living with a family here in Monrovia who have taken him in and sent him to school, while his biological mother is living in the interior with her other children. Hep B is widespread here in West Africa -- it is highly contagious but the vaccine is only given to some health workers, probably due to cost issues. So there's really no control on it. Pray for all involved, for the family who are struggling to come up with money for these expensive drugs, and especially for Abraham himself.

Many people have been wondering how the building project is going so I thought I should give a little update here. The first house is almost finished -- Rev. DiCanio is living there already. There's no running water yet, but the drains are working so he can wash/flush etc with buckets. (I won't go into more details! LOL) The window bars are in place but the windows still aren't installed -- please pray that this will be done very soon! It's wonderful being right on the ocean front, but there are drawbacks too -- like the salt air which coats everything and corrodes metal very quickly. So the sooner the windows are installed, the better to protect things inside the house. The generator arrived last week so they have electricity at last -- only at night of course because it would be far too expensive to run it 24/7. The generator house is built, septic tank is done, and they're working on the security wall.
We've been able to get a month's extension on the lease for my apartment, which is a relief because I was supposed to be moving out on February 15th and I didn't have anywhere to go yet! So I'll be in the apartment until I go home for the Easter Convention, and then when I return, I'll be moving . . . somewhere :-) Lord willing, there will be something built at the site by then so that I can move in.
The rest of the work is going on as usual. I've had a rather long break from school, because the Ministry of Education changed the dates for exams and the second semester start date, but school opens again next Tuesday so I'm busy getting ready for that. I've been glad that there's been no school, actually, because things have been SO busy! With Rev. DiCanio being away and then having to spend so much time overseeing the building project, I've been helping out with other administrative type things which take up a lot of time.
The reading club has really grown recently, with a lot of new kids coming. Last Tuesday I read with 17 children/young people between 3 and 5pm. It's great to see the interest, and kids bringing their friends along, including some who don't attend Sunday School here. But the increased number of children means that I'm really rushing to let each one have a few minutes reading with me individually. I would love to extend the Club time to 3 hours, but there just isn't time at the minute. Pray that the interest will continue, and that I'll find a way to accommodate all the kids who want to read. Of course, for those of you who may not know, the children can all stay for the entire two hours and read silently from the books that we have on the shelves, while I call them one by one for their individual reading time with me. Well, I say "silently" -- that's the plan anyway! :-)

A belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! I was thinking yesterday of Joshua 13:1 -- "There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." This is true in my personal walk with God -- in my knowledge of Christ and my love for Him, I have SO far to go! (And it's struck me recently that every time I take a step forward in this regard, my eyes are opened a little more to see how much more land is there to be taken, land that I hadn't even known existed before this.) And then of course, in the work here in Liberia, and in the work of God world-wide, there is SO much land waiting to be possessed for God and His Kingdom! May we see great advances made this year!
Thank you for your prayers for the Children's Day service. The Lord helped us all -- a few first-time parents came in to the meeting, the children did a good job and things ran relatively smoothly, and everyone heard the Gospel as Rev. DiCanio preached. Pray that this Word will bear fruit!
Rev. DiCanio is at home over the holiday period for a well-deserved vacation, so pray that things will run smoothly in his absence! The work on the building project has been slowed down while he's away, which I'm rather thankful for! They are working on the generator house, and I'm keeping an eye on that (not that I really know what I'm looking for LOL).
Thank you all for your prayers for me through the nine months that I've been in Liberia. And keep praying with me and for me in 2013! May the Lord bless you all.

We had our first women's Bible Study this evening in the Paynesville church. It's something that the women have been asking about for awhile, but we've only gotten around to getting it organised at this point. To tell the truth, I don't know many of the women very well yet because I've been spending so much time with the children! Even after the Sunday service and the prayermeeting, one of the kids usually manages to get my attention with a question, or "Miss Joanne, can I say my verse to you?" so that by the time I get outside, a lot of the women have already left. So hopefully this will be a means of getting to know the ladies as well as ministering to them.
I've been teaching on the Ten Commandments in the Wednesday Bible Club, and I've been challenged by how foreign the law of God is to many of them. One 11-year-old told me that he didn't know what the Ten Commandments were until he started hearing about them in Bible Club. Until a couple of years ago, he lived in the bush and it seems went some of the time to a Jehovah's Witness church; then his father died and his mother was left with 5 or 6 kids to raise. So she brought this boy to a family in Monrovia and asked them to take him in and send him to school. (I'm not sure if there was a prior connection between the two families -- I don't believe they're related in any way.) This family attend our church, and now the boy is one of the brightest and most conscientious students in the Sunday School, Bible Club, Reading Club, and anything else that's going! More importantly, he's showing some encouraging signs of a work of grace in his heart. Pray for him and others like him. This is just one story out of many that could be told.
We are planning our first Children's Day Program for the Sunday School in Paynesville FPMC. It will take the form of an end-of-year program, where the parents will be invited and the kids will be presenting what they've learned during the past year. It's planned for the Sunday service on Dec. 16, Lord willing. Please pray much for the preparation and the day itself.
Continue to pray for safety on the roads. There was an accident a couple of weeks ago just outside the Christian school where I teach. A drunk man drove his lorry off the road and knocked a 20-ft container over, crushing two men under it. I went down to the scene, and at that point they had pulled one man out, but he was very dead, and they hadn't realised yet that there was a second man under there. It is certainly sobering, and sickening, to see the low value that is placed on human life -- not only through the carelessness of the drunk driver, but also in the people who were standing all around talking excitedly and taking pictures of the dead man on their phones!
Pray for the 15-minute radio broadcast that goes out on two different stations each Sunday. Rev. DiCanio is airing Dr. Cairns' series on the Law of God at the moment. Pray that people will be brought to see their sinfulness before God and their need of Christ. A man visited last Sunday who had heard the program -- the first visitor we've had as a direct result of the radio broadcast.

At the beginning of September, I started helping out at a nearby Christian school a couple of days a week. I’m teaching Bible and Reading to 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th graders, and then doing a choir or singing class with high school students once a week. The students are from quite a mix of backgrounds – a lot are from Pentecostal churches, and several are Muslim. They are also at quite a mix of levels academically -- in the fifth grade class, for instance, most of the kids are between 12 and 15, but there is one 19 year old who is a very poor reader! And then in the 6th grade class, I have one or two good students who work hard and get top marks -- and then there is a boy from Guinea who speaks French and very little English -- and certainly can't read English. I have no idea what he's doing in sixth grade! He doesn't speak enough English for me to find out if he's actually at sixth grade level if everything was in French. I spoke to the principal about him, and he promised to look into it, but then the boy hasn't been at school for the past week. I asked the other kids where he was, and they told me that he had washed his uniform and hung it out to dry and someone stole it! And he's not allowed to come to school without a uniform, for security reasons.
Please pray not only that the kids will learn academically, but also that their hearts will be opened to the Gospel. Pray that the singing class will be the means of teaching the young people solid hymns and choruses – all that they know so far seem to be Pentecostal-type choruses. They're very keen to learn new songs -- so I'm happy to take advantage of that and teach them some good ones!

Encouragements

I've been here five months now! Hard to believe :-) I was having a bit of a self-examining session the other day in light of that and thinking of what the Lord has done in these five months.
I've been really encouraged by the Bible Club the last two Wednesdays. We've had approximately 30-50 kids at Bible Club ever since the VBS in July, and they have been very enthusiastic -- but also getting noisier and more unruly each week. So 2 weeks ago, I had to be very serious with them (cross in fact) and gave them quite a lecture on their behaviour. They were still mostly listening well to the lesson, but the rest of the meeting was getting out of hand. So both Nathan Barco (the man in charge of the children's work) and I were quite sharp with them and told them they need to mend their ways or they'll go home for good. We were pretty burdened about this -- because there's no point in their coming to the meeting if they are causing so much noise that they can't hear the teacher, and more importantly hear God's Word.
But last week and yesterday, we saw a dramatic improvement in behaviour! And I don't believe it was simply our scolding that made the difference -- it's the Lord settling them down in answer to prayer. So we are thankful!
We're encouraged by a couple of kids who really are wanting to learn the memory verses, and even one or two who have attended the prayer meeting and prayed in public. We don't know their hearts, of course, but these are encouraging signs! Pray that soon, if it's the Lord's will, other teachers will be raised up so that we could divide the children into classes and teach in a manner better suited to the different age groups. When I consider the folks in the church at present, I cannot think of one person who is even near to being ready to take a class! So I'm glad that the Lord is in charge of the work, not me, and He is the One Who does exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think!
And while you're praying for teachers, you better also pray for more space! At the moment, we only have the one room for the children. If we were going to divide into classes, we would need somewhere to put them. Thanks for your continued support in prayer.