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Day’s Journal
We are up fairly early but it
takes certain members of the female gender, who will remain unnamed, a
little longer to get going than most.
So after breakfast we made a trip to see Shadrach and Jeremiah at
the Liberian Ministries’ cold water business. A year ago a refrigerated container was
shipped over along with a 40kw generator to be used to make ice which gives
a much higher return than cold water.
But it hasn’t worked for them so far which is a serious problem in
that the profits from the box could pay over half of their ministry budget
each year. We bought a similar
refrigerated container and hooked it up at Chuck Clark’s place. One of the first things we discovered was
that, while the container will hold already frozen food at 20 below, in
order to take room temperature water and freeze it within 24 hours you have
to cut the total cooling area down to 1/3 of the container’s capacity. So we purchased and sent 4 - 4x8 2 inch
thick foam insulation boards over to serve as the interior wall. So we gave Shadrach $150 to purchase the materials
necessary to build the wall’s framework and door. You’ll see in today’s pictures the
wall. So now we have given Shadrach
$175 to purchase a tank full of diesel fuel and 3,000 gallons of
water. They are to tie and load the
new compartment with bags of water, turn the unit on and let it run for 24
hours without opening the door.
We leave Shadrach and travel
a few miles down the road to the WESCOT center which is run by the Wesleyan
Church of Liberia. Isaac Wheigar is the leader of the Wesleyan effort in Liberia
and he meets us there. They
currently operate 2 programs at the center, an internet café and a basic
computer skills training program.
The internet café has a basic charge of $1 US per hour of usage
although shorter periods of time end up a little more expensive while the “slow
period” during the middle of the day costs a little less. The basic computer training class is $75
US which includes classes each day of the week (5 days) for 1 hour each for
6 weeks (I think). At one time they
operated an ice and cold water business from a building in back using 2
compressor units and 3 chest type freezers.
According to Isaac, this was their most profitable business. However, due to constant generator
problems and their inability to have them repaired properly, they have purchased
smaller and smaller units which cannot handle the computer efforts and the
freezer units. So they shut down the
most profitable part of their business several months ago. Their current generator unit, which quit
on them about 10 days ago, is a 3kw unit which would power either the café or
the training center at one time but not both, effectively cutting their
profits in half again. However,
profits are now completely gone until a replacement can be found.
We have discussed with Isaac
possibilities for providing one of our 12.5kw units to him either in a sale,
lease or partnership model. Liberian
Ministries also has one of these units that they are not currently
using. This could generate some
income for the Children’s Village and help Isaac out as well. Also, Isaac is to get us info on he profits from the two computer businesses and, when
it was running, from the water business.
That would enable us to determine the feasibility of partnering with
them for a percentage of the profits.
We’ll see what happens.
So we head back to the
compound so that we can make final preparations for the governmental
dinner. We’ve invited a total of 16
people and expect to have about 7 attend.
One of the problems that we’ve experienced is getting far enough ahead
of the curve (time wise) to properly get full cooperation. This worked good with the new STS –
Liberia board (100% participation counting one spouse substitution). But we need to be more focused in order
to make full impact within the governmental arena.
So we do a little last minute
planning and then take showers and dress for the dinner. In typical Liberian (and U.S. college
student) fashion, people begin showing up about 15 minutes after the start
time and continued to arrive up to 1 hour late. We mingled and visited until about 8pm
when we started the dinner. After
the meal we move chairs out to the porch and begin to go through a
discussion of how STS came to be, the desire to seek cooperation and to
serve others who are already doing Kingdom work in Liberia. Finally we went through the 4 primary
areas of service that is the expression of obedience to God. We talked about past and future
educational efforts, logistics, financial integrity and business
development. As you might expect,
the business portion became the primary discussion. That’s not totally unexpected because so
much of the government’s focus is on the economic needs of the Liberian
people. One of the participants
mentioned that he thought the container shipping part of our ministry wasn’t
really needed anymore. Although the
ability of people to bring goods into Liberia is certainly better, the
ability for Christian organizations to bring in ministry items is still
very expensive and difficult. More
than anything else we’ve done, the container service is the highest
visibility and, arguably, touches more people than anything else we do (of
course we did enable the 500+ people to be trained in God’s financial
principles). Transportation (mass
transit, trucking and intra-company air service) was the hot issue. The ability to open up the outlying areas
for agricultural and other purposes was really a hot topic as well. I keep feeling that this is an area we
can be instrumental in promoting.
Anyway we had a great conversation with many of the participants as
they supported our goals, questioned some of them and made recommendations
for new areas we might want to consider.
We had 6 governmental and
business leaders at the dinner and it was productive. We’ll need to do much more work in
gaining the trust of the Liberian government. One of the most important ways that we
will do this is by completing the plans that God has given us. We can support the good that the
government is doing and not criticize the problems so much (I’m learning
this lesson). We can find ways to
serve the governmental employees in the various departments. We need to do this without the
expectation that anything will be received by STS. We need to love our governmental
neighbors as ourselves.
So it was a good day and
especially a good evening. Bed time
is near. See you.
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Day’s Journal
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