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Day’s Journal
Harbel, Firestone
Crown Financial Ministries’ Pastors’ conference is today and tomorrow. See the schedule here.
This morning started early as
I was up doing some work on the computer.
Yesterday’s pictures didn’t upload correctly so I gave up about
midnight last night and started again as soon as the generator was on this
morning. They went fine this
morning. (If anyone thought there
were no pictures yesterday please go back and look now.)
The R.E.A.P. personnel came
in for breakfast this morning. R.E.A.P.
is the NGO that Christine heads. It’s
involved with training and other educational efforts, especially for young
people. She has an inexhaustible energy
level when it comes to helping children. I had to pull out immediately after
breakfast but before Ridge’s morning devotion (don’t tell him I said this
but he does a tremendous devotion each morning). Matthew, the taxi driver, showed up at
8:30am and we quickly loaded all the stuff for the Crown conference into
his car and took off to pick up Alphonso Perkins and then make it over to
the Minister of Transportation’s office. We had traffic problems plus the
Transportation offices had been moved so we were late. Fortunately the minister was a few minutes
later.
The session with the
Transportation Minister lasted quite some time and we discussed mass
transit, intra-country airlines, barge shipping and trucking. He is supplying me with some detailed
plans they have drawn up on a mass transit system and is also putting me
into contact with people who have the most knowledge about the 6
functioning airports in Liberia.
They are in desperate need of people
to partner with them to bring in these services. Both of these areas are far beyond the
ability of STS to handle but we can make contacts within the mass transit
and small airplane industries to see if there’s a way to help them and to
designate some of the profits for Christian work in Liberia. There are no impossible opportunities when
you have such a Giant God. We talked
about truck transportation which is something we may be able to accomplish
and he was favorable toward that as well.
I think Bro. Perkins and I may have lunch together on Sunday.
After our meeting we dropped
Bro. Perkins off at the Vice President’s offices and went to Providence
Baptist to pick up Pastor Harris and also the projector screen. We left there, stopped at the supermarket
(yes they have one down town) and picked up some bottled water and a bag of
ice for the trip out to Firestone. We
were at the meeting place for Pastor Reeves about 30 minutes early so John
Harris and I walked out onto the beach behind the U.N. office building and
stood for a while. What a beautiful
beach area. Hardly anyone uses it.
Pastor Reeves arrived about
15 minutes early so we loaded up and went to Robert Cuppah’s to pick him
and the resource books up. Then it
was off to Harbel. Harbel, Firestone
is just east of the airport perhaps 5 miles or so. I always thought Firestone was the area
that I’m finding out is Harbel. Firestone
apparently has hundreds of thousands of acres all over Liberia
which is broken down into 45 districts. That’s pretty big. When we arrived before 2pm some people
were already waiting for us. We were
greeted warmly and began setting up.
I purchased a small, portable projector just before I left on this
trip and it works great. It would
have been nice to have had cables to connect the laptop to the sound system
so we could have played the DVD with the Crown testimonies but we didn’t
think through that early enough. I
probably should leave this project over here for Crown but will think about
that a little more before leaving. We
may be able to provide another one by sending it with someone later. They will not be able to have any
conferences until we can get more resource books to them anyway.
Robert took the first session
and did a great job. He was
passionate about God’s ownership of everything and the balance of the
session went equally well. The
people in attendance were paying strict attention and responded throughout
the session. We took a 10 minute
break after the session and then Pastor Harris took session 2. He used humor through session 2 and the
participants responded enthusiastically. I’m really impressed with him and want to
build a relationship with him while I’m here.
After the completion of the
second session we spent some time talking with the people there and then we
packed up and started back to Monrovia.
It’s not a terribly long drive but
traffic once we got into Monrovia
was backed up. It was almost 9pm and
the streets were full of people and cars.
The other 3 guys still had a while to ride once they dropped me off.
The good news is that I don’t have
to leave here tomorrow until noon. So
I may sleep till 6:00 or so (probably not).
God has certainly blessed us
today. Robert and Pastor Reeves were
great channels for His blessings to the pastors of Firestone.
There’s a lot more that I’d
like to write but it’s 10:30pm here and I haven’t slept more than 5 hours
or so for the last 3 nights.
See you later.
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