Before I tell you the story of my recent mission trip to Liberia, let me share a bit of the history behind this West African nation. The third poorest country in the world, Liberia was essentially the United States’ only attempt at colonization in that it was established in 1820 as a homeland for freed slaves. Unfortunately, the abused became abusers as the former slaves treated the indigenous people like they were slaves. The distinction between the native peoples and the settlers from America never went away, resulting in the civil war a century and a half later. The fourteen-year-long conflict left the country devastated with most of the population living in fear and starvation. One of the hosts on my first mission to Liberia eleven years ago told me how he and his family lived off of one cup of rice at a time and an occasional banana and perhaps one piece of chicken if someone would share with them. It was during this time of devastation that Dr. Lester Sumrall brought in the Feed the Hungry ship laden with food and medical supplies to rescue the starving nation. Ever since that epic act of compassion, it had been in my heart to visit the country and bring further blessing to it as it was going through the healing process. When James Korha – a Liberian student of mine who, unlike many of my students who found jobs in America and forgot the need for the gospel in their home countries, had won my respect by going back to Africa upon graduation – returned to his homeland, I pledged to him that I would someday come and see his work. Later, when I met Sydney Thomas, the Liberian National Director for Every Home for Christ, I shared with him my interest in visiting his country and received his welcome as well, resulting in my first visit in 2014. Interestingly, it wasn’t until I was actually in Liberia that I discovered that Sydney had been the local coordinator for the bringing in the Feed the Hungry ship and distributing the supplies throughout the country.
By the time of my second visit to Liberia in 2020, Sydney had been reassigned as EHC director in another country; so, my full focus was on James’ ministry. His request was for me to hold a pastors’ conference in his home village which is in very remote area of the country on the border between Liberia and Guinea. The region had been devastated during the civil war, and, when the residents had come back to resettle their village after the war, they lacked the ability or resources to develop the proper infrastructure. James has taken the lead in organizing the citizenry to build a school so that the children wouldn’t have to walk an hour each way every day to attend classes in the nearest school. This trek was especially difficult in the rainy season when many of the children simply have to stay home. An additional impetus was the fact that one child had drown in the nearby river on the way to school the previous year. He has also spearheaded building a clinic so the villagers can receive immediate care in their own community without having to travel a long distance on the extremely rough and deeply rutted road, usually on a motorcycle, after an accident, when seriously ill, or when ready to give birth.
The entire village got behind the decision to construct these two buildings and volunteered all the labor and raised what little money they could to buy the needed supplies – essentially one bag of cement at a time. When I saw what they were doing, I felt as if I was watching a re-enactment of Creation when God said, Let there be light, and light suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Out of essentially nothing, the walls of the buildings were going up. Teach All Nations offered to help fund the purchase of a reliable truck for James so he could safely make the arduous journey over the nearly impassable roads from Monrovia to the village to bring in the needed construction materials for the project; however, a sudden turn of events interrupted everything. James’ wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor and urgently needed neurosurgery. Unfortunately, no hospital in the country is equipped for this kind of surgery, necessitating that she would have to travel to Kenya for the operation. Although Bili is a medical doctor serving at a Christian-based hospital, her salary is on a third-world standard, which barely covers their living expenses without savings for such emergency expenses. Therefore, the Teach All Nations board voted that the funds for the truck be redirected to cover the cost of the surgery and travel expenses. Unfortunately, the operation was only partially successful, and there had to be a second operation in Ghana, which Teach All Nations also helped finance. Eventually, there was another trip to Ghana which turned out to be totally unfruitful in that the surgeon was not even in the country even though his staff had scheduled him for Bili’s follow-up surgery. Eventually, the Lord did a miracle by sending a team of missionary doctors – neurosurgeons – to the very hospital where Bili works to do the necessary operation!
Even during the difficult challenges with his wife’s health, James and the villagers continued to work on the hospital building. When I presented our board of directors with the proposal that Teach All Nations offer further support to help the project, the question was brought up as to the need for equipping the facility once the building was completed. After some thoughtful discussion, the decision was made that we would go ahead with the construction and believe God that all the beds, equipment, and supplies would appear out of “nowhere.” Shortly after this board meeting, Peggy and I had lunch with the president of a ministry that operates a large hospital in India; so, I took the opportunity to ask him how he gets his equipment and supplies. He offered to connect us with an organization in Denver that collects used medical equipment and supplies from hospitals and excess new items from suppliers and passes them on for use in third-world countries. Peggy and I immediately made an appointment and discovered that they would supply a full forty-foot shipping container of equipment – worth half a million dollars – for the hospital if we could raise the shipping and handling costs of thirty thousand dollars. There was also the requirement of having an assessor visit the hospital to ensure that it was a legitimate operation and a suitable facility for the equipment they planned to donate. Before we had actively started raising funds for the cost of the container, we received a surprise donation that was sufficient to cover the cost of sending the accessor to Liberia to approve the clinic which was in the final stages of construction. Once he had given his approval, we launched our campaign to raise the funding for the container with the goal of meeting the budget in time to get the container paid for, shipped, and delivered to the hospital before the next rainy season when the road to the interior would be impassable. With the news that a four-year-old girl in the village had died of preventable causes because her family could not get her to the distant hospital serving as added impetus to our efforts, again, we experienced a “Let there be light” move of God as the funding came in over and above our normal operating budget and the cost of the mission trips we were to make during the period.
Last-minute complications and delays made us miss our projected target date for getting the container loaded, but we were still within the window of opportunity to get it shipped out to arrive during the dry season. On the day that the container was loaded, Peggy and I drove to Denver to witness the equipment being packed inside and to lay hands on the container and pray God’s protection and blessing over it as it made the long journey to Africa. Meanwhile, in Liberia, the residents were so excited over the completion of the building that they had a ten-day “soft opening” of the facility with doctors and nurses coming from the big hospital in Monrovia to see patients in the empty building. They brought their own supplies and medications with them to treat over two thousand sick people who came from all around the area with several hundred coming even across the border from Guinea. The container was dropped off in Spain to be transferred to another ship and wound up sitting on the dock there for about a week, making us a bit nervous that it might not arrive in time for the contents to be cleared through customs, be transported to the hospital, and set up in the facility before the scheduled grand opening and dedication that I was flying in officiate. Of course, the same God who created the whole universe in only six days had the timing totally under control, and the container arrived in Liberia, was cleared through customs without any delays, and was transported to the last large town near the village without any complications. At that point, everything had to be transferred to smaller trucks for the last leg of the journey over a road not suitable for big trucks. Unfortunately, a really bad rainstorm came up, making that last part of the journey difficult with the trucks getting stuck in the mud. With the help of some of the local people, they were able to get the trucks out of the mud, and they – along with all the cargo – arrived safely at the clinic.
My trip to the dedication service began as one near-disaster after the other. Bad weather in Colorado Springs delayed the flight to Denver. We landed just as the flight to Chicago was taking off. The next flight was fully booked, but I was first on the waiting list and did get a seat after everyone else had boarded. That flight landed in Chicago when the flight to Brussels was ready to board. Fortunately, I came in at the next gate to the flight. In Brussels, I was denied getting on the flight because I did not have a visa for Liberia. The problem was that my flight to Liberia was on Brussels Air and all the other flights were on United; so, when I checked the “travel ready” link on United, it only showed me the requirements for Belgium which doesn’t require a visa. To get things straightened out, I had to go to a counter outside the passport control. The line there was very long, taking me about an hour to get through. When I finally found the counter where I was to get help, there were over a hundred people ahead of me because there had been a canceled flight, and everybody had to be rebooked. When I finally got to see an agent after almost two hours in line, she told me that, since I had booked the ticket through United, I had to go to them for help. She then told me that their counter was closed for the day; so, I asked her about a hotel. She said that all the hotels near the airport were full because of the canceled flight and suggested that I take the train to central Brussels where there are a lot of little “boutique” hotels. I found a hotel online that is only half a mile from the train station; so, I booked it and bought a train ticket. When I boarded the train, it was empty, and it sat there for a long time without moving. I felt like I was in a Twilight Zone episode. A little later, I heard someone banging on the door; so, I went to see what was happening. It turned out that there was someone who was supposed to have gotten off at the airport stop but didn’t realize that this was his stop until after the doors had closed. Eventually, the train left the station with the guy still onboard. A young man with him had an American accent and seemed to know his way around; so, I started questioning him. He is from South Carolina and has been in Belgium for a couple years working with NATO. He helped me figure out how to walk to the hotel from the station.
To backtrack to the visa issue, a doctor who is part of the medical team that supports the hospital in Liberia was on the same flight. We had talked on the phone once; so, he had come up to me and introduced himself while we were waiting to board. When I got the news that I couldn’t board the plane, I found him and told him what had happened. He advised me that he could get the visa from the Liberia side and would help. One thing that I needed was in the safe at home. With the time difference, I had to wait eight hours for Peggy to wake up to call her. When I finally did get her, she took forever to figure out how to open the safe. She sent me a copy of the paper via WhatsApp, and I forwarded it to Liberia. I also applied for the visa online just in case. It turned out that both visas came through late the next afternoon, but in time for me to book a seat on the flight the following day. One thing that I haven’t explained so far is that I was actually just going to sit in the hotel in Monrovia for two days because there are limited flights to Liberia, and I did not want to arrive on the night before the early-morning drive to the clinic because I wanted some buffer time in case of any flight issues. So, the two hotel days in Brussels were essentially a tradeoff for two days in Monrovia.
The fiasco continued on the morning that I left Brussels because I took the wrong train to the airport. The one I used to get to the hotel went directly between the two points; so, I assumed that the return train would take the same route. It turned out that I was supposed to make a change on the return trip. Since I didn’t know that, I stayed on for several stops until I could see that we were outside the city. Finally, I had to get off, backtrack to the changing point, and take the right train. Thank goodness, I had left in time to get to the airport three hours before the flight. The mix-up with train plus an incredibly long line at security caused me to barely make it to the boarding area before they closed the gate. When I got on the plane, the Liberian lady in the seat next to me needed help her fill out her arrival form; so, I gave her assistance. When I asked her for her birthdate, it turned out to be the same as mine! I took that as a sign that things were finally working out after all the earlier confusion.
After a good night’s rest in Monrovia, we headed out on the all-day-long journey to the village and arrived there after dark. A sudden rainstorm caught us on the last leg of the trip – which happens to be the roughest portion of the trip and the section of the road that is in the worst condition. Fortunately, the truck I was riding in didn’t get stuck in the mud like the trucks with the hospital supplies did; however, our companion vehicle did get delayed because of mechanical trouble and the road conditions.
To say that the accommodations in the village are “rustic” is a gracious overstatement. To illustrate its primitive condition, I’ll just say that there is no running water. I bathed with buckets of water heated over a campfire built with wood collected from the forest. I even had to come up with a creative way to shave each morning – using my cell phone on “selfie” mode to compensate for the lack of a mirror. I didn’t even have a flyswatter to defend myself and my territory from an invasion of flies, the result of a neighboring farmer’s decision to clear a new piece of land thus dislodging them from their former residence.
Of course, the warm and welcoming villagers were giving me the best that they had to offer, the closest thing to five-star accommodations within a hundred miles of their little town.
My first two days in the village were dedicated to a pastors’ and leaders’ conference for about seventy delegates from churches in the surrounding communities including a sizable delegation from the neighboring country of Guinea. The theme of the meeting was “The Making and Breaking of a Leader” which I demonstrated by doing case studies of the lives of several biblical leaders, emphasizing the critical decisions that determined their success or downfall. Each day, I gave time for the students to ask questions. Of course, I did so cautiously – remembering that, when I opened the floor for questions in one African country, all the pastors wanted to know was how they could obtain visas to go to America. I was excited to see that these pastors had legitimate questions on how to be better leaders and biblical questions that demonstrated that they had been doing in-depth study and contemplation on the scriptures. Some of the pastors could recite the points that I had shared in the conference I had head there in 2020, and others complimented me by saying things like they didn’t want the conference to end and that they wished they could hear me teach every day.
Of course, the highlight of the trip was the grand opening and dedication of the new clinic. Although the clinic had been in use since the walls were up and the roof in place with a “soft opening” in which doctors and nurses from the capital came, bringing their own medicines and instruments, and treated about fifteen hundred patients over a ten-day period. The resident nurse had also been seeing a limited number of patients on a daily basis, but this was the first time that the facility was to be officially recognized by the government as a functioning medical facility. The all-day program included greetings from government officials, local village leaders, representatives from the medical board, clerical officials, a missionary doctor, and representative patients who had been treated during the “soft opening.” I was honored to give the keynote address and the dedication prayer. In my address, I referred to the clinic as memorial to those who have lost their lives because of the lack of a clinic in this remote area, a monument to the medical professionals who serve the hurting, a commemoration to the efforts of the local community and international supporters, a celebration of a dream come true for all who had believed that it was possible in spite of the insurmountable odds, and – most of all – as a tribute to God, the Great Physician. I centered the dedication prayer around the memorial that Samuel established at Ebenezer with the declaration, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us, thanking Him for providing the funds, the workers, and the staff to get the clinic opened and entrusting its future and advancement into the hands of the One who begun the good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. After the ceremony, I had a chance to talk with the representative from the senator’s office who had read a statement from the senator, offering any assistance possible. I asked him to see what could be done to get a paved road and electrical service to the area, hoping that these two projects might be next on the list of good works to be performed.
The following day, I was asked to minister in a joint service of the two churches in the village which was held on the grounds of the clinic so that the nearly one hundred patients who had come to be treated that day could also be included. Since it happened to be Palm Sunday, I began the service with a short message based on the Jesus’ statement that He had need of the donkey for the Triumphant Entry, not because He couldn’t walk into Jerusalem as He had done many times but that He needed the people recognize and praise Him as their messiah. I concluded the message with an altar call for those who wanted to recognize Jesus as their personal messiah and fulfill His need to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. I then said that since this was a combined service for two churches, I should be allowed to preach two sermons. At that point, I told the story of a medical outreach that a mission team that I took to Uganda took part in. I shared how we laid hands on the patients while they were waiting to see the doctor and many of them were healed without having their appointments. I concluded by calling all the church members to go to the waiting patients and pray for them. Afterward, I asked for testimonies of those who felt that they had been healed. After about half a dozen people stepped forward to testify that they had been healed, I then challenged the church members to make a regular practice of going to the clinic and praying for the patients.
Before I left for the eight-hour drive back to Monrovia the next morning, I had one last meeting with the village chief and elders who presented me with an appreciation plaque and honorary citizenship in their village which unfortunately will not help with future visa issues. During the drive, I had the opportunity to hear a broadcast by a radio journalist who had attended the dedication service. He devoted his entire one-hour program to two topics – the need for improvements to the road to the village and the opening of the clinic. He reiterated many of the points that I had made during the ceremony, including that many individuals had died because they couldn’t make the journey over the bad road to get medical help. The radio host emphasized how I shared about being inspired by how people had taken their own imitative build the clinic and had voluntarily worked to do as much of the construction as possible. I had to laugh out loud when he emphasized that I am an old man – mentioning it two or three times – and that I could be home, enjoying my grandchildren but made the effort to travel all the way from the US and then endure the trip on the bad road to be present for the ceremony!
Remembering that the Ebola epidemic broke out while I was in Liberia in 2014 and that the COVID pandemic broke out while I was there in 2020 – with my getting on the last flight before international travel was hauled – I was thankful when I finally headed to the airport without a national or international health crisis looming over the country. Of course, even if another plague were to threaten, I would have been reassured that there was now a functioning clinic in this remote area.