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Day’s Journal
Today is our last day in
Liberia. Normally we are tired and
ready to get home. Yet at breakfast
each of us said we really didn’t feel that great desire to go home. Like perhaps we weren’t really finished
with this trip. That was an
indication to me that this trip was a special one. (It’s also an indication that our hosts
were great and we were able to rest at night.)
After breakfast Beccy and Gayla
were going to a little market place to pick up a few things for the
families. Dave ended up going as
their body guard J. Robert came over so that we could spend 4
– 5 hours of intense time going over the work that needs to be done and
some goals for next year.
In the area of Education/Training
we discussed several initiatives.
The Crown teaching is one priority as it must continue to be
implemented across the country. With
more pastors and business leaders being trained our capability to support
this work is ever improving. Jan and
others really drive this but STS provides support and encouragement. Remember that Robert is serving as our
COO but he’s also shared with Crown to coordinate their work here. We also discussed the Pastor Resource
Kits that will be coming on the next container and the goal of getting
these into the hands of the most needy pastors but
also ensuring that they will be used.
Richard Morris is working with Robert to develop the procedures for
this new ministry (Thanks to Living Water Community Church for putting this
program together). We also plan to
provide some level of assistance to the annual leadership conference that
Providence Baptist Church holds each year.
With enough notice this time we should be able to acquire and
deliver materials to supplement the training that the participants
receive. Finally, and we don’t know
what this will look like yet, the Salvation Army has discussed with us the
possibility of working with them to provide training to their instructors
in preparation for the opening of their new, very large, technical training
school in 2008. In addition to
training teachers, they will have programs for electrical, plumbing,
mechanics, carpentry and other trade areas.
Major Dixon made known a need for both short term and medium term
help. Short term help would be people
from the U.S. who were very knowledgeable in one of these fields who could
come over for a couple of weeks and provide intense instruction to their
instructors. Medium term help would
be someone from the U.S. who could come over and actually teach the
students for a semester and mentor other Liberian instructors while
there. Richard Morris is the U.S.
board member who heads up our Education/Training area so we will work
through him to plan and coordinate these type activities.
For Logistics, we will
continue to provide the ministry of coordinating shipping containers with
ministries in the U.S. and delivering them to ministries in Liberia. I was absolutely blown away be the number
of people of people we saw in Liberia on this trip who said how important
that was for their work. People on
Mercy Ships, Equip-Liberia, orphanages, SIM and others were all so very
grateful. Chuck Clark is the U.S.
board member that handles this and it takes days of effort from he and his
employees each quarter to make this happen.
If we are successful in expanding this ministry, that workload will
go up even more. We are also
planning to begin taking non STS personnel into Liberia in 2008 as a way to
server other churches and groups as well as to promote God’s work in
Liberia to others. There just is no
substitute for seeing and touching (and being touched by) the people that
God would have you serve. A final
comment under this section is that there is a great need to help the many
organizations working in Liberia through website development and
maintenance. We would like to find
someone who God would lead to take on this important (and time consuming)
opportunity. Equip-Liberia needs
several ministry volunteers and they have very specific requirements. The Salvation Army has need of teachers,
as noted above, and a website would be a great way to get the word
out. Many ministries could inform
and report through a website if they had the ability. The ultimate solution to this opportunity
would be to train Liberian Christians how to do this effectively so that it
is a service that could be offered in country rather than through a U.S.
individual or group. If you think
this is something that you have the ability to do please give us a call or
email info@servicetoservants.com.
For Financial
Integrity/Accounting, we are not ready yet to move this forward. But I am convinced that it is just as
important as ever. Dave did have the
thought that we could partner in this with the financial staff from some of
the larger denominations to make this a reality. The larger denominations typically have a
good financial control and reporting model in place and have trained staff that understand how proper accounting is
done. Perhaps we can leverage their
expertise to create this accounting service for smaller ministries. So that’s on the radar just not close
enough to shoot at right now.
Finally, Business Development
came onto the table and took over most of our time. We have 4 basic capital investments
underway right now: 1) merchandise sales, 2) ice businesses, 3) generators
and 4) trucking.
Of the merchandise sent on
the last container, only a small amount has been sold so far ($1,600). Robert has put this into the bank account
so that it can be sent back for future purchases. We worked through a few pricing concerns
that he had and now he feels confident to move the rest of the merchandise as
quickly as possible. This was an
experiment to see if we could provide some profits from the shipment and
sale of specifically needed goods in Monrovia.
The number one requirement
for getting the ice business started is a place to base the business. We looked at some places during this trip
and Robert is following up over the next few days. Since we now has
a second container at the port, we will need two locations. We’ve talked about leasing space but, for
maximum profitability, we need our own well which is hard to justify when
renting or leasing property. After
getting the container out of the port, this is Robert’s highest
priority. We also talked about
ensuring that this (and all other) business accomplishes its main purpose…
to serve as an opportunity to bring employees, vendors and customers into
relationship with Jesus Christ. We
will need to keep this as our priority or we could drift away and think
that all we are doing is business for profit’s sake. A good manager and employees will be
needed for the ice business to get started so that’s also on the priority
list. We went through the pro-forma financial
model that I had built (using Excel) so that Robert could see the profit
potential and also so that he could provide another perspective on the
assumptions that were made.
The generator sales and
service business does require a place to operate from but it doesn’t have
to be owned by us right now (a well is not a requirement) and it could be
co-located with something else since our marketing is less dependent on a
retail sales space at this point. We
will focus initially on churches funding these units for orphanages/schools
and on word-of-mouth based upon the toughness of the units. So we have some breathing room
there. What we do need by February
is a properly trained technician to service the units. So we’ll have to work on that from both
the U.S. and Liberia sides. Again, we
went through the pro-forma financial model that I had built (using Excel)
so that Robert could see the profit potential and also so that he could
provide another perspective on the assumptions that were made.
Finally we spent time talking
about the potential for the trucking business. Robert was very excited about the
potential here. I had two separate meetings
with a friend of Alvina Norman’s who brought over
3 Mack tractors and has been using them to move rubber for Firestone. He was explaining the good profit
potential but also the key role that honest and capable mechanics and
drivers play in your success. There
are good opportunities to subcontract your trucks with Firestone, Cementco and with the new garbage company. They are large companies and you are
assured of payment if you provide the service. There are also many opportunities for independent
trucking but the percent billable time decreased because you are hunting
work as well as doing it. I am also
still convinced that STS can use these trucks to open up agricultural
markets in the outlying villages where normal trucks cannot go during much
of the year. The primary initiative
from our side is to get the trucks over there. It’s pretty expensive to ship them and we’re
doing some research into the process (and cost) of getting them through the
port in Monrovia. The first truck,
sponsored by Suwannee Baptist Church, is going to ship out in December if
all goes well. Getting a spot on a RoRo (roll on roll off) ship is not easy.
After our meeting was
completed and everyone was back, we had lunch and then Robert, Peter, James
and I went down to the orphanage and school where his girls attend. We wanted to get a picture of the
children around the very nice Ford truck that was given by Mr. & Mr.
Howard Hamilton of Florida. Mrs.
Comfort, the orphanage and school director, was
very kind to have the children released from school and soon we were
surrounded by 100 children. Once
they were herded together by the truck, I took a few pictures and then we
told Comfort that we had some candy for them. Wisely they had Peter take the candy and
stand by the schoolroom door and give one piece to each child as they went
back into the classroom. You find
great minds everywhere.
Soon it’s time to pack up and
leave. We say goodbye to Cyrus,
Esther, Alvina and James, pile into the STS truck
and head for the airport. It is
always sad when leaving Liberia as the work is never done. But we are actually just moving to
another place where we can have an even bigger impact on the work in
Liberia. That’s back to the U.S.
where we can share what God is doing in Liberia with others who will,
hopefully, want to participate there as well.
The airport environment has
improved tremendously and getting into the airport, clearing immigration and
checking into our flights are so much easier than in prior years. Just another sign that things are getting
better in Liberia.
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