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!

As a part of the Love for Liberia missional emphasis, a volunteer- in- mission work team from across the NC Annual Conference will be going to Liberia this summer, with the estimated dates of July 24 – August 5.  Dates might change a day or two depending on availability of transportation.   Passports are required.  The work will be multi-varied and will allow participants to have a range of experiences helping the people at Ganta Station in Nimba County, Liberia.  Participants will have the opportunity to help Liberian teachers conduct a summer day camp enrichment program for both the junior and senior high divisions.  This camp will concentrate on math, English, general science, biology, chemistry, and physics.  We hope to offer teacher training as well.

Another aspect of the team’s work will be medical.  The Ganta Read more »

When Jesus spoke of the children, he must have had Liberia in mind.  Everywhere, in every village, in every town, on every road, there are children.  Most, at least at first, will eye you warily, looking like a frightened cat, an intense stare, muscles tensed, ready to take flight from this unknown threat that we represent, white folks with note books in hand and cameras by our side.  Of course, had I the misfortune of being born into a place where over the last twenty years there has been at least as much warfare as peace, I suspect I might look a bit cat-like as well.  For here, even during the times of peace, marauding bands of rebels, or the over-zealous thugs known as government forces, never remained too far from one’s periphery, always seeming to inject themselves with shakedowns and roadblocks and violent outbursts that would bring another moment of anguish or an additional point of death.  In such an environment, I imagine that skittishness is a desirable trait if one wishes to extend one’s life into the next minute.  But sometimes, if one is indeed fortunate, even a frightened cat will find its way to gently nuzzle your leg, and then you will know, you have been well-adopted indeed. Read more »

Mozart training trainers at Farmers Field School - building an infrastructure of sustainable agriculture in Liberia.

The Role of UMCOR’s Sustainable Agriculture and Development Program in promoting the “miracle tree.”  - Moringa in Sierra Leone – Flowing from Work in Liberia – January 2011 — Mozart Adevu

Dear Friends,

Happy and Prosperous New Year!

I bring you New Year greetings from my family, friends and communities in Africa, especially those you have impacted over the last years. We thank you for your support and giving over the last years. I hope my stories inspire you and give you great testimonies of how your support has helped changed lives in Africa.

“Imagine a tree in your backyard that will meet all your nutritional needs, take care of you medicinally, and purify your water for you. This tree actually exists. For centuries, the natives of northern India and many parts of Africa have known of the many benefits of Moringa oleifera.  Its uses are as unique as the names it is Read more »

The Missions Team of the NC Conference of the UMC asks congregations to focus attention on one country where needs are great and where a concerted effort can make a difference. The Love for Liberia campaign is a two-year effort to respond to the needs of the people of Liberia—working with the Liberia Annual Conference. The Team encourages each local church to see the needs and to respond as best the church can. Working together—child to child, church to church, Annual Conference to Annual Conference—we can make a difference over the next two years.

Each quarter during 2011-12, the Missions Team will highlight the work of Liberian United Methodists who are the hands and feet of Jesus in a country that has been ravaged by war and which as a result has had struggles in re-building its society. The efforts of our Annual Conference will be channeled to help children and Read more »

Frido teaching in Feed My Lambs ministry.

And the Prophet Isaiah 40:31 adds “…but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (NIV)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in the soon coming King Jesus, even as we gather here in this medium that has become a ground of meeting of our partnership in this ministry to the less fortunate children and youth in Liberia; bringing you greetings from Betty my wife, Josiane my daughter, my staff and all the children and youths, we are saddened with a war in Darfur, in the eastern DRC where boys and girls are victims of atrocities; saddened of religious conflict which may tear apart Nigeria; saddened of people in the Sudan who have gone days – maybe weeks — without a meal…

These are images we must Read more »

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 »