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Deeper in the Jungle
“You
shall go out with joy and
be led forth in
peace…(Is.55:12).”
This verse at 5:00am kicked
off
the November 2009 Liberia
trip
by the 4-man team from the
First
Baptist Church family.
The main
purpose of this trip was to
follow
up the church planting
ministries
that FBC and OMS share in
Sinoe
County, Liberia.
After 31 hours of
travel, the
Team slept for 3 hours before
they
began a 91/2 drive to their
first
stop in Sinoe.
The ENI Mission
School hosted the four men,
OMS
Director, Andre, and the
Liberian
host, Jabah.
OMS Country Coordin-
tor, Rev. Sam Greene and
Church
Planter,
Rev.Abraham Pantoes
traveled with theTeam during
their
ministry time.
The team did a
workshop with
the pastors to resource and
to
encourage them.
Pastor Wade
shared the gospel at the
even-
ing outreach to 325 people
and
61 professed faith in Christ.
The
names of the believers were
then
recorded.
The new Christians
received a Spiritual Birth
Cer-
tificate and the promise of a
new Bible to be delivered by
Jabah.
They were directed to
The pastors of the pastors
and
churches in that area.
The Team shared
challenges
and encouragements at the ENI
Mission school before they
left
for the next stop.
Pastor Dave
shared the message on his
heart
to live out the biblical
duties
and responsibilities that God
has given through His Word.
The second stop was
a place
called Juarzon.
At a meeting with
the team and the OMS
leadership,
We discovered that church
plant-
ing had a different texture
in Sinoe
than the original plan.
The civil
war had caused 57 churches in
the
area to flee for their lives.
The new
churches were “replants”.
People
were moving back to their
homes
and land. 27 churches had
been
planted/replanted and 6 more
fellow-
ships were forming into
church fam-
ilies. 10 of the churches
were involv-
ed in the VCP program and 2
had
2nd
generation churches.
The pastors and
deacons workshop was fruitful and filled with
wonderful Liberian worship of God.
The
evening outreach celebrated
50 new
believers in Jesus Christ.
The third part of
the journey in
Sinoe, on Saturday Nov.7th,
took the
Team from Juarzon to
Greenville.
We
had run out of handouts for the pastors
and deacons workshop.
The business
gave us a 15 cent per copy break because they
used our gas and generator
to power the copy machine. We did
have enough copies for the workshop
and handed out gifts to the leaders.
It was a joy to go
visit our second
Graber Ministries Academy for
the
first time.
It was great to take them
supplies and meet the
students and the
staff.
Part of the church buildings that
they meet in were still damaged from
the civil war and did not have a roof.
We toured the port
and other church
buildings and saw beautiful sights and
more destruction from the 14 years of
civil war.
The outreach was in
the City Hall
building where the training
session had
been earlier in the day.
Another 32
people were saved at the out-
reach, including a pastor of
several years.
After the outreach,
the team
returned to Ricks Institute
for
a few hours without sleep
before
The Sunday
ministries.
The trip
that took 91/2 hours the
first
time took 11 hours the second
round.
The rainy season ran
extra long and the roads were
muddy and washed out.
Grace
of God, the 4-wheel drive
pickup
only got stuck 2 times.
Sunday morning took
the team
to share at the chapel
service at
Ricks Institute with host Dr.
Olu
Menjay.
Then the team shared at
New Georgia Baptist Church
where
OMS Country Coordinator,
Sam
Greene is pastor and church
planter
Richard Roberts is associate
pastor.
We finally got some sleep
after being
up for 36 hours.
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