Items to be collected at Annual Conference 2011 – follow this link!

The people of the North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church have a long history with the people of Liberia.  It was in 1833 that Rev. Melville Cox, a NC Conference clergy member, landed in Africa as the first United Methodist missionary to Africa and began to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.    At Annual Conference 2011, you will have the opportunity to join with our many United Methodists family of North Carolina who have gone before us as we collect and ship desperately needed health, education, and empowering items to Liberia.   Bring your items and look for the Love for Liberia signs.    Here is a listing of items being collected.

Feedback is a Mission Letter from me, Victor Doolakeh Taryor. I am serving as Global Health Missionary in my own country of Liberia. My official assignment with the Liberia Conference is called Hospital Administrator. In this capacity, I have the oversight responsibility of conducting the day to day running of the Ganta United Methodist Hospital located in Ganta, north central Liberia. Ganta lies deep in the interior of Liberia, about some 130 miles from the nation’s political capital of Monrovia.  Read More Feedback from Liberia

From Rev. James Labala in Liberia – Ivory Coast Refugee Crisis:

My dear friends and partners:

As some of you may know by now, there is fighting going on in the Ivory Coast. Gompa District has common boundary with the Ivory Coast. Right now more than 100,000 refugees have crossed over into Liberia. Our supervising pastor in the Gborplay area reported to us during our district planning retreat that the entire area is overcrowded with refugees. The burdens are so much on our local members and the communities. We decided that all of our local churches in Gompa District take a special offering on the first Sunday in April to help provide some relief for our brothers and sisters in the Gborplay Area.

As our partners in ministry, we invite you to pray along with us as we initiate this effort to provide some support for our brothers and sisters in the name of Christ. As the body of Christ, we are called to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the strangers…

Thanks so much for your support.

Blessings,
James Z. Labala
District Superintendent
Gompa District, Liberia

You can join in partnership with our Brothers and Sisters in Liberia by making an on-line donation or through the Advance Giving Ministry.   Please don’t wait.  The need is now.  100% of your gift will go to ministry in Liberia.

You are invited to participate in Love for Liberia – Change the World Day!

The Love for Liberia focus for January – June 2011 is the Ganta United Methodist Mission Hospital/community health ministry and the mission station schools.  You are invited to participate in supporting these critical ministries through the collection of critical items needed by Ganta medical providers and patients, and school teachers and students.

Please see the Quarterly Focus for Love for Liberia.  This page will provide a full list of ministry opportunities – hands and hearts, collection, mission trip opportunity, and prayer requests.

We are collecting:

• Collect School Kits for Students- Click here for items and instructions (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Collect a health kit for patients served by Ganta Hospital and the Community Health Ministry(Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Collect a birthing kit for mothers being served by Ganta Hospital and the Community Health Ministry (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Medical Supply Kits (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Collect Story Books for Children and Age-Appropriate Bibles (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Teacher resources and Equipping Classrooms (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)
• Donate High School Physics, Chemistry, Zoology books and dictionaries for library. (Collection to be carried to MERCI Center on May 14 – Volunteers needed at MERCI.)

There is also an upcoming opportunity for joining a medical and educational mission team to Liberia.

• Join a teaching/medical mission Team

You are also invited to participate at MERCI on May 14 for the shipment day.
Your District Mission Secretary will soon have more information to your regarding collection points and volunteer opportunities. Stay-tuned to the Love for Liberia First Quarter Page for more information!

Not-so-high-tech Sterilizer

Newsletter from Mary Zigbuo — Blessings of hope and peace to you during this Advent Season.

I recently attended a service in my childhood church and among many reflective and thought provoking remarks; the pastor said “Only God can use something that looks like nothing, to do extraordinary things”.  I thought about the pastor’s remarks and pondered how very difficult it is to see beyond challenging physical realities and circumstances.   Over the years of my missionary service I witnessed projects and ministries with out-dated and crumbling infrastructure; “shacks” used as school buildings; rocks and pieces of logs serving as school desks and chairs; a very large pressure cooker over a bed of fired charcoal creatively used as a hospital sterilizer……!  But there’s an image I will never forget! During a tour of the Ganta United Methodist Hospital in Liberia, where there is very limited electricity, I witnessed a pre-mature infant in critical need of an incubator lying Read more »

Victor serves some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

Victor Taryor, United Methodist Missionary and Administrator of Ganta Missionary Hospital, Liberia, is in the North Carolina Conference for several days.  He is available for your congregation and small groups on Tuesday, December 7th and Friday, December 10th.

If you would like Victor to speak with your group, please contact Brenda Booth at brendabooth@nc.rr.com or call 910-818-1064.

Since 2006, Victor Taryor has served through the Global Health program in his home country of Liberia.  Also a registered nurse, Victor oversees the daily operation of the hospital while communicating with hospital staff to insure the hospital is providing the best possible care to each patient.  Victor describes his ministry at this podcast.

Growing up in a poor subsistence farming family, attending school was difficult and challenging for Victor. With the help of Read more »

Farmers learning from test plots - what techniques produce the highest yield

Today’s 10-Fold focus is on UMCOR’s sustainable agriculture ministry and is sponsored by Edenton Street UMC in Raleigh, NC, and Horne Memorial UMC in Clayton, NC.   Earlier in our 10-Fold coverage, we highlighted our missionary Mozart Adevu (agriculturalist leading much of the sustainable agriculture work), so if you weren’t able to read about his work then, please feel free to do so now.

Please follow the 10-Fold link to “be counted,” and then click the submit button.  Your presence will generate a $1 gift for the ministry from today’s generous sponsors.  Also, please prayerfully consider giving further to this incredibly important ministry that teaches farmers skills for sustainable farming.  Your gift will make a difference in the life of a community, teaching people to feed themselves, empowered in dignity, lifted in the Body of Christ, in a movement of love and hope.

If you have not visited all the 10-Fold projects, please return to any that you missed.  One click is another point of love lived out in the Kingdom of God.

Children at well in Liberia

Jesus says, “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.”   Access to clean drinking water, something most of us in the U.S. take for granted, is a major problem in many places in this world.  Some people walk hours each day to obtain the water necessary for survival.  Today, you can make a difference in someone’s life by helping bring a consistent source of drinkable water to their home and community.  Simply follow the 10-Fold link to Clean Water and Sanitation and click the “be counted” button followed by the “submit button.”    Today’s sponsor, Union UMC in Conway South Carolina, will donate $1 on your behalf toward this critical ministry.

UMCOR’s integrated approach to development provides access to safe drinking water through the distribution and training of household water-filtration units, the rehabilitation or construction of community wells, and appropriate sanitation facilities.  Read More

Today we continue our 10-Fold journey supporting the most vulnerable of the earth … children.

Through the Children, Poverty, and Violence Advance, Global Ministries has supported ministry in Liberia with children affected by civil war through the program “Children Empowered for Sustainability Program.”  And missionary Frido Kinkolenge is acting as our hands, feet, voice, and heart.

The last decade and half of civil war in Liberia had poured out uprooted people from their towns and villages where they were living in peace and harmony.  Among these displaced people are the most vulnerable people: women, children and mostly girls who came seeking for refuge, fearing rebel atrocities in towns and villages.  Some were captured, abused Read more »

Love for Liberia:  The war in Liberia exacted a heavy toll on all it’s people, but most especially on it’s children.   And though seven years has passed since the end of the most horrific violence, children still continue to experience the devestating affects of such recent history.

During the war, thousands of children were forced to fight.  Some as young as ten were given weapons and fed drugs.  Then in a stupor of addiction, they killed anything and everything.  It was a mindless and almost endless killing.  The violence consumed everything, especially the children themselves.  It murdered and it taught murder.  It lasted for years, but even nightmarish malice cannot last forever.  Horror reigned and flesh might be killed, but never love.

So on this day Frido N. Kinkolenge, GBGM Missionary supported by the NC Conference, lives out the story of resurrection love. Read more »