Training Update

For all of you who lifted up my training in prayer this past week, I sincerely want to say thank you!

The literacy program has two training sessions scheduled each year. One in March, and a "refresher" session in June. The training in March was more on how to teach adult literacy, make lesson plans, etc etc. I oversaw that training but didn't really do any instructing. Through the last few months, it became more and more obvious that the facilitators were doing well at teaching the literacy aspect, but were not doing well on their Bible presentations... caused by both laziness and for some, not really being Biblically grounded. So I decided that this training would strictly focus on how to improve our Bible presentations.

So Monday through Friday each facilitator had to prepare a Bible presentation for the group, which would be critiqued by their peers. Along with presenting, we read and discussed the entire Gospel of John during the week, as well as worked our way through the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan.

If you have not read this book, I encourage you to do so. Basically, it talks about how we have an inaccurate view of God and who He is, and His relentless love for us. So many of us are "lukewarm" in our faith and in our love for God and those around us... I am too guilty of not giving 100% of everything to God... and honestly, if it's not 100%, God doesn't want it! It really challenges us to give fully to God and live as he truly commands us. It's written primarily for the North American Christian, so I had to change some things as we went through, but all in all the Gospel message and God's commands are the same for everyone, everywhere. It was a week full of great discussion about key issues: forgiveness, loving our enemies, tithing, loving God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, and loving everyone we encounter as they were Christ himself.

On Friday before we concluded, I spoke for a while on making sure we didn't leave the training and say, "well, that was fun!" and go back to our normal routines. I had each of the 28 teachers and teacher assistants write down at least one thing they were going to change, in which I could ask them about in a month. Here were some of the responses I received:

• "One thing I will change in my life after this training about "Crazy Love" is that I will love God with my heart and not only my mouth."- Esther

• "After I leave from here, what I am going to change in my life is that I am going to go back to the man who I am not on speaking terms with. I am going to change my heart about loving my enemies."-Jackson

• "I promise before the presence of my Lord Jesus Christ, that as of now after the workshop my life will change and I will be willing with all of my heart to give my tithes and offerings, and also to help those who are in need. I will also be able to forgive all those who wrong me, with the help of the Holy Spirit."-Justine

• "I, Sarah, will change from being a lukewarm Christian and say to God that I fully love you, by picking up my best life by following Christ with all my heart, soul and strength. I want to be able to preach/teach the Word of God to my participants so that they may have changes in Christ to follow him."-Sarah

• "After we discussed the book "Crazy Love" I realized that I have been so selfish to God. I have not been giving enough of my income to God. But now I will pray that that will change within this first week. May the Spirit of God help me to do that."-Samuel

• "Many times I forget that love has no limit. I only used to look after my relatives and family members. Sometimes my own neighbors would ask me to do a favor for them, but I pretend I don't hear them. Through this teaching, I found myself learning what the Bible says. For now, I will begin to love my neighbors and share with them. This will make them to come to the true light which is Jesus Christ."-Joe

• "As of today, I have accepted Christ in my life as personal Saviour."-Alex

• "I was a lukewarm Christian. I was only going to church and didn't know what it really meant. As from now, I have accepted Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and I give everything that I have, including myself."

PRAISE GOD!

THANK YOU for praying us through this training! Please continue to pray with me for these precious people, that this would only be the beginning of fully living for Christ!

Long time!

"Long time!" as they say in Liberia- I knew I needed to write, but had no idea it had been roughly a month since I had. Lots has been going on and lots to share!

Teams...

Firstly, about a month ago we had a team from Canada here with us for 2-3 weeks. They were an absolute joy and encouragement to me and our team here. Essentially there were four teams in one- a construction team that did a tremendous job at fixing up our houses in Monrovia, a nurse who assisted in our health programming and training, a pastor who encouraged the pastors in training here in Liberia, and a group of four spunky women who were willing to serve at the drop of a hat! I love all teams that come through, but this was the first team that has come since 2008 that I was not "in charge" of. I think because of that, I was able to relax and enjoy them even more!

Ahhh Comfort...

About a week after the team left, a major changed happened in our house.... we had a hot water heater installed!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously you have NO idea how exciting of an event this is for me! Cold showers have always been my major "beef" about living here. I can deal with everything else, but I cannot get used to taking cold showers. But, thanks to Buzz and Sam, I no longer have to!! It is indeed heavenly. So, THANK YOU BUZZ!

Re-group...

Exciting things are happening as an organization also. On one hand, we are going through a major transition b/c our largest project, funded by US-AID has come to an end, which means a major downsize in staff. But on the brighter side, we have been able to come together and refocus where we want to go as an organization in Liberia. Instead of being spread all over Liberia in various projects and counties, we have decided to decrease our footprint but deepen our impact, specifically in Lofa and Gbarpolu Counties. God continues to bless our work here, and I am SO excited to see what He is going to do in the next year, looking forward to some new projects and even a festival with our CEO of SP! I know God's timing is best, and as hard as it is to lose so much staff, He also knew that we needed to re-focus our work and our vision here in Liberia.

Where are we going???

Speaking of vision... my Literacy program continues to go rather well. I am planning a training for this week for all of my 28 staff. As our CEO says, it doesn't matter if 370 women are learning to read and write... are they learning about Jesus? That is going to be my main focus this week with my staff. I am blown away by our opportunity to talk to 370 women, three times a week for 9 months about Christ. But I don't think we are utilizing that time as we should. I pray that I am able to envision, inspire and encourage them this week to see even more transformation among these women! Please pray for this if you think of it.

Running...

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you may have remembered a post I did about attempting to run upcountry. I had pretty much decided from then not to even attempt it and to save my dignity. Well, I have been on this running program for the last few months, and don't want to stop for ten days while I am here up in Foya. So, I decided to give it another try. But with a different strategy.... now, I walk ten minutes until I'm out of town before I start actually running! It has made a huge difference- these are the comments I've heard this past week:

-"THANK YOU!" More often than not, when you are exercising, the people passing by will thank you for your effort!

- "OH???? What happened!?" Thinking something happened down the road and I was running for help... I must have been booking it! ;)

-"Pumwee, Pumwee! Hello!!!" White woman, white woman, hello!

-"Fine girl, I LOVE YOU! You hear me?" By passing motorbike drivers

-"Where are you going??" "Just taking exercise" "Ohhhhhhhhhh."

And at one point I had an "old papay" (older man) who was walking to his farm, carrying his machete, run with me for a few hundred feet. He introduced himself as Emanuel Johnson, and said he used to do long distance jogging, so he wanted to join me (in his flip flops). I felt "in shape" when he had to stop from breathing so hard :)

Relationships

I am falling more and more in love with the Liberians I work with each and every day. They teach me so much about God and about life here in Liberia, and how I can best help and improve the lives of Liberians. It is an absolute joy to be back up in Foya- I had only been away for a month, but it felt like forever! I couldn't stop smiling when everyone greeted me with big hugs on Thursday when I arrived!

Like I said before, God is doing some AMAZING things through SP in Liberia. We are blessed to be in a country where worshipping God is not illegal... in fact we had an Imam last week tell his community that they had to go to church! An Isl*amic leader, telling his community to go to church b/c of what God was doing through an SP project! I pray that the doors remain open for more transformation in this country.

Sorry for the long post- I'll try to do better at updating more often!