|
View Today’s Photos
It’s already Friday here in Brussels and we
arrived about 7:15am (1:15am Central time).
We’re sitting in the main area and will have to go through security
again to get to our gate. We have
about 3:15 hours before our next flight so we look at the shops, talk about
conversion rates and the escalator that only turns on when someone steps
onto it.
We’re talking about going on
to the gate so that we can find a spot on the floor and lay down. It’s not easy to really sleep in a plane
seat.
The wait at Brussels was uneventful and we were
pleasantly surprised to find that our plane for the Dakar/Monrovia leg was
a 757 which was much more spacious than the previous one. Gayla and I are seated together and Dave
is in the seat directly in front of us.
He’s being very quite and studying/journaling his way across the
world.
Gayla mentioned that she
really liked the dinner of beef tips last night which was a good thing
since it’s the same thing we are having for lunch on this flight. They’ve promised some Belgian ice cream
as well. I’ve managed to sleep quite
a bit on the first part of this flight (2 nights without much sleep finally
caught up). After lunch I swapped
places with Gayla so she could lean against the window and, hopefully,
sleep some. She’s getting pretty
tired. I remember the first trip
over and the anxiety of the unknown can be as tiring as the actual trip.
The previous statement makes
me think that I need to refocus on the mission of this visit. Always before I’ve had a focus for the
trip and it has stayed in my thoughts during the passage over. This time, perhaps because I’m trying to
make sure Gayla has a good experience, my thoughts have not been as filled
with the purpose of the trip. My
first thought is that this is something God has called us to do. If that parts not true then we’re working
in our own strength which has a much more limited potential. Secondly, the opportunity to reach 1,000
pastors and 500 business/governmental leaders with the biblical teaching of
God’s financial principles is huge.
If you can image the impact on a country of 3,500,000 people if the
dominate church leaders are all teaching their congregation the truth of
God’s word concerning financial integrity and ownership. God owns it all. That’s the ultimate truth to be
communicated. Second to that is our
role in God’s kingdom as stewards.
My pastor, Ron Gleaves, is working on these very truths in a sermon
series called “First Fruits” (download at www.crosspointcares.org). David’s pastor, Kevin Meyers, also had a
recent sermon called “Intensity” that calls us to absolute trust in God’s
provision for our calling (download at www.crossroadsconnect.com). Fifteen years of ultra destructive civil
war have disrupted the Liberian Christians’ understanding and reliance upon
the financial truths that the Bible teaches. If this Crown Event can be the catalyst
to restoring God’s trustworthiness in the lives of His people in Liberia
then it will have been worth the cost.
Speaking of cost. The conference is at one time very
inexpensive and at another not-so-cheap.
The thought that Service To Servants could provide $20,000 of
funding and support a two day conference touching 2,000 people is pretty
amazing. That’s about $10 per person
to teach each person, feed each person one lunch and provide each one with
the written tools to go back home and teach many thousands more. This, I believe, is partially what the
Scripture teaches when it talks about 100 fold returns (that’s 10,000% on
an annual basis by the way). It is
worth it. But there’s a lot more
actual cost than $20,000. Crown
Financial Ministries, Inc. has spent hundreds of thousands developing these
training resources and they are giving them away all over the world (we
simply paid to have the printing done).
They are also paying for 4 skilled trainers to travel to Monrovia and put on
this conference. My guess is that
time and expenses on their part for personnel alone will be $15,000. The STS personnel will have at least
$15,000 in travel and lost wages as well (paid by the individuals
themselves). And finally, the two
committees on the ground in Liberia
have invested hundreds of hours, and paid their own expenses, to make the
conference a reality. So I encourage
you to pray about providing funding to Crown directly through their website
(www.crown.org) as they do this work
around the globe (Matt Elsberry, a Crown employee and STS board member) is
in Kiev, Ukraine even now on another project and will join us in Monrovia
straight from Kiev. He raises his
own support for the opportunity to serve God at Crown. You might also like to make a monthly
prayer and financial commitment to Matt that would enable him to continue
this great ministry. See Matt’s November
Pray Calendar and October
Newsletter through these links.
It’s 7:38am Central Time
(1:38pm here) and Gayla is finally getting some sleep. In over 48 hours she’s only had perhaps 5
hours of sleep. Add to that the intensity
of a totally new experience (she’s never left North America much less
traveled to Africa) and the fatigue can be
huge. I did tell her that at least
she didn’t do what my brother Fred did on our first trip over. He contracted some virus just before we
left and vomited all the way from Baltimore,
Maryland to Accra, Ghana. That may be a world record for the most
distance a person every continually puked.
I have this experience that I
use to communicate how becoming involved in something opens your eyes to
what has already existed around you.
It involves buying a new car.
You shop and look and shop and look and then you find the new
edition of a car with some very unique color and buy it knowing that you’re
the only one in your city that has one.
On the way home from the car dealership you pass three others
exactly like it. That kind of the
way it’s been with Crown. We were
checking into our flight from Brussels to Monrovia and a young guy ahead of us asked if we were
going to Liberia. I said yes and the conversation worked
around to why each of us was going.
His company is sending him there to build some building for
Ameri-Care. We said we were going to
do some missionary work. Shortly
after that an older gentleman came over and asked what type of missionary
work and with whom. We mentioned the
Florida
churches, the Children’s Village and then about the Crown conference. As it turns out this man was a missionary
to Mali for 28 years and
the couple traveling with him to Dakar were
career missionaries from Senegal. And they are going to Dakar to teach Crown’s material in a
seminar there. That’s not the only
“car” like ours I’ve seen lately.
We’re about 1.5 hours out of Dakar now and our
promised ice cream hasn’t shown up yet.
Upps, I spoke too soon. Here
comes the ice cream. Shortly after
that we land in Dakar. Several people get off but no one gets
on. They refuel and about 45 minutes
later we are off again for Monrovia. It’s only 1:40 in flying time. During the layover at Dakar
we meet a Catholic nurse from Milwaukee who
is on her second trip to Liberia. She met President Sirleaf a couple of
weeks ago at a university where she was receiving an honorary doctorate and
said that her main focus was to cure corruption in the government, bring
business to Liberia, restore the medical system and improve education.
We land in Monrovia and Dave and Gayla’s education
begins. It takes a little while of
standing outside the terminal before we can get into the customs area. It is the usual madhouse. We have no problem clearing customs but
getting our luggage is the regular disaster of one small room full of
people trying to get bags and then negotiate a way through the baggage
check lady and into the actual baggage check portion of customs. We have six large bags. They begin to look into the bags and some
guy at the end ask “Missionary?”. I
say yes and he starts grabbing our bags off the table saying “missionary,
missionary”. The people in charge of
the checking process seem opposed but no one stops him. He gets us outside and then wants $5 for
“helping” us. I give him $2 and he’s
not satisfied but we move on.
Thankfully (and as always) Shadrach and Jeremiah are there to greet
us and get us out to the truck. It’s
completely dark so the ride back into town is not as interesting as
usual. Dave and Gayla are amazed at
the number of people walking up and down the highway. As we get closer we begin to see the
roadside stands where people are selling food and other items. It takes about ½ hour or so to get to the
house in Paynesville.
Gertrude and her sisters have
been busy preparing two rooms upstairs for us. In “our room” there’s now a bedstead for
the mattress which makes it much easier to get in and out of bed. They did this for us and we are
grateful. Dave’s room is nice as
well but his mattress is on the floor like I’ve had every time until
now. They have also prepared a large
dish of rice and beef with a very flavor able seasoning. Gayla, Dave and I enjoy a large plate of
food and then leave to unpack and go to sleep.
View Today’s Photos
|