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Tonight, as we have done in the
past, when we return from Liberia, we give you a brief report as
to what went on in and on the mission trip. On this mission
trip, we were there the last week of October, the first week
of November. I say we. Paul C. Conrad came
from the United States, was there two days before I arrived. He
came and arrived on Monday. Joanne Greer also arrived, but
she came from Kenya. She's in Kenya filling in for
our sister Kathy Walker, who's in the States doing deputation.
And so she was in Kenya already and flew from Kenya to Liberia. David Kanyo also joined us. David
Kanyo was in the States. He was actually ordained. This
is the first official duty he had after his ordination. And
David actually flew back to Kenya and then he flew from Kenya to
Liberia. He arrived on Wednesday. Joanne arrived on Monday. He
arrived on Wednesday. And then I arrived on Wednesday
evening as well. And so it took a while for all
four of us to get there and we were not able to arrive at the
same time. But there are things that Paulson
needed to do for making preparations for our time together. And so
we're thankful that he was able to go early. Now, we met with
four churches that now bear the name of the Free Presbyterian
Mission Churches in Liberia. The fourth one was added on our
last trip in Riversess. That's about a five-hour trip
from where we actually meet in each of our other times there.
We have met in the Painesville area, the Garnersville area,
as well as Ballack Creek. Those are all suburbs of the
capital of Monrovia. Riversess is about five hours
to the east. of Monrovia. We also had two
churches join us for one of those churches for the first time.
It is a mission church of the church in Garnersville. It is
on the way to River Cess, about halfway to River Cess, so it's
about two and a half hours from where we meet, and this is just
starting up. We saw pictures of that work
just outside of Buchanan, and there were somewhere between
80 and 100 people that were meeting there as the gospel was being
preached. One of our men went across to preach, Henry Munger,
and because of the dialect of the tribe that is in that area,
he actually had to preach to an interpreter. That was the
same thing that Kanyo had to do on the last trip when he was
in Rivercess. But that church now wants to
be a free Presbyterian, and there are men going across and ministering
in that church week by week, and the man who is actually doing
most of the ministering from that area was in the workshop
for the first time. And then from Lofa County, which
is a 12-hour journey to the north, it's up where Guinea is, just
right at the border. We had Moses Borbor come down
for the meetings. And this time he brought people
from his church. He's actually ordained a Korean
Presbyterian, even though he's not Korean. He is very much a
Liberian. He is the one that was good friends
with the vice president and had us go in and meet with the vice
president a year ago. So Moses came down. And one of
the things he asked that I would do later on this next year is
if I would perform the wedding for he and his new bride. We'll
see if that is able to happen. I don't know that I'm able to
make a 12-hour journey all the way up to where they are. We're
hoping that Decanio will be able to go up there in the next few
weeks, that he'll be able to take a helicopter up. And if
that works out, then it might be that something we could do
in the future is perform the wedding for this man and his
new bride. His future bride, I should say.
So those are the ones that were coming to the workshops, besides
others who have been in the past and came to the workshops. We
held the workshops this time at Henry Munger's church. That
is where the Christian school is, where they have 350 young
people coming to the Christian school. And we met there on Thursday. I arrived on Wednesday. First
thing we did was have a workshop Thursday morning. So we had a
workshop on homiletics, reviewing what we had gone over in the
past. Later, David Dicanio would do a workshop on Monday afternoon
on that same theme. All the rest of the workshops
that I did were on the theme of Romanism. And on Thursday
afternoon, we went over the four views of Romanism. Friday morning,
we went over Romanism's view of authority. We went over the
Bible, Apocrypha, Tradition, and Interpretation of Scripture.
And then we started refuting that in the afternoon. We continued
refuting it Saturday morning. And then on Saturday afternoon,
we had the meeting that took place with the ministers. And
the ministers all gathered at the place where we were staying,
and we went over the Lord's Day services, what we were going
to do the next day. We planned a baptism service, and then made
plans for Reverend Decanio to stay another two and a half months
and lecture to them, and actually go into the area of Moses Borbor,
if it's possible to lecture up there. So that was a full beginning. And then when the start of the
new week came, we were in churches. We were in three churches. Decanio
was in the church in Painesville. I was in the church in Gardnersville,
and then in the church in Ballack Creek. In Gardnersville, we had
an adult Sunday school, and then preached the morning worship
service, handed out baptismal certificates to those that were
baptized on the last trip, and then we had a communion service.
As soon as we finished that, we jumped in the car and we drove
across to Balla Creek, where we had a full service there.
And then we had another communion service. And then I was asked
to go and speak to a lady who can no longer attend the church.
Her name is Mrs. Johnson. Her eyesight has gone
bad. But the thing that keeps her
from coming to the church is the fact that she has problems
with her hips. She's 91 years old. They have
nicknamed her Young Girl. And so I went to her home. We
walked to her home. and uh... had a time of singing
for her and reading scripture and praying with her uh... i've
done that with someone else from the painsville church mister
greek uh... mister greek died just a month
before we arrived there at the uh... time for the workshops
uh... so they wanted me to go and see
her not knowing how many more weeks that she would have and
asked that i would go and read scripture and pray with her so
sunday was a full day when we got back to the The place where
we were staying, the ELWA Guesthouse, we'd been gone since about 9.30
in the morning and now it was 5 o'clock in the evening. When
we got there, there was a lady there who actually owns one of
the private pieces of property that we rent. We rent a piece
of property in Painesville for our church. And she was there
to talk to us about that. She had come to Christ, or made
profession of Christ, on our second trip. But she had slipped
back into Romanism. And so when we were there, we
began speaking to her again. And we asked her, what are you
trusting in to get to heaven? She says, well, my works. She
had adopted the mindset again completely of the Roman Catholic. So we were speaking to her about
the gospel, sharing with her that she could never do enough
where she'd have any peace of mind or heart, that she was right
with God and then taking her again to Christ. She listened
very attentively. She was very interested in what
we were saying. And near the end of that conversation, we
came to her and we said to her, you know, you're going to have
to make a choice. Either you're going to choose Romanism in the
church or you're going to take Jesus Christ. But you can't have
both. You can't put your confidence in both places. About that time,
I was called out of the room for about a half an hour. And
when I came back, she had decided for Christ again. that she wanted
Christ, she did not want the Church of Rome, that she wanted
to know the assurance and salvation that Christ gives as it's revealed
in Scripture. So she had had a time of prayer
with our brother Paul C. I think David D'Caneo was there
in that meeting as well. So we thank the Lord for that
victory. We'd ask that you remember her in your prayers. Her name
is Tiawan. She's in her late 30s, early 40s. And we're trusting
that the Lord will indeed save, not just save her, but keep her
out of the apostasy and allow her to go on with the Lord. On
Monday we actually had a day off from the lectures. In the
morning I met with a man by the name of Richard Wesley. He is
a minister, a Baptist minister, in the very area where we stayed
on our first four trips. We'd never met with this man
before, but he had He started a radio station three months
ago, a radio station that reaches all of Monrovia. He wants it
to be a preaching station where the Word of God will be preached
80% of the time. It's a completely Christian station. It's not secular in any way,
shape, or form. Well, he got on Sermon Audio
through a contact he had in the United States, and he began contacting
our ministers. Well, I was starting to get emails
from all of our ministers saying, who is this guy? He wants our
sermons. Do you think he's OK? You've been to Liberia. Tell
us. I had never heard of the man, never met with him before,
and we made contact with him before we went down, and Paul
C. met with him the first day he
was there, and then I met with him on Monday, and we actually
were on the radios with him. He did an interview, so he interviewed
myself, Joanne Greer, Reverend Decanio, as well as Paul C. Conje,
and the interview lasted about an hour, I think. He took the
sermons that we brought with us. We brought a dozen sermons,
and he was already playing them on the radio. We brought music
for him as well. He was having a hard time getting
good music, so we brought down a hundred hymns on CD that he
could put on the radio and play. On Thursday night, we had him
over for dinner. And what a testimony. Your heart would have been thrilled
just to hear how the Lord preserved that man and his wife time and
again during the troubles. When he built the church in Syncor,
he's just a few blocks from where they went into the Lutheran church
and slaughtered over 600 to 1,000 people. And when they slaughtered
those people in the church, there were 3,000 slaughtered on the
streets around the church. This was the government making
an example of a tribe because they wanted that tribe to be
in fear of the government. And so that happened just a few
blocks from where this man started his church. When he began building
his building in 2003, he said, you could hear the gunfire. They
came and told him not to build the building. And yet the Lord
spared him and protected him all that time. He talked about
time where he had to leave the country, come back into the country,
stopped by rebels. He had a terrorist who was his
driver on one of those occasions. and when they came to the roadblocks
by other rebels, the terrorist was telling him, you leave my
passenger alone, and was protecting this pastor, even though this
guy was himself part of the troubles and was unsaved. So we had a
wonderful time hearing his testimony. His wife joined us on that occasion.
They have eight children, and it was just a wonderful time
fellowshipping with his brother. We had never met him before,
and yet we felt like we had known him all of our lives after meeting
with him and talking with him. So there's a man by the name
of Richard Wesley, we commend him to your prayers. The church
that he has is called Greater Love Bible Baptist Church. I
asked him, are you part of the Bible Baptist movement? Which
is a rather large movement, especially in this area where you have a
seminary up in Scranton. He said, no, I named the church
that because I wanted the name Bible in our name of the church. He said, it was only later I
found out I took the name of a denomination in the United
States. He said, I had no knowledge of that at all. She's a real
believer. He loves the Lord. And it was
a good time of fellowship with him. That was on Monday that
we had that interview in the morning. In the afternoon, I
spent time interviewing people who wanted to be baptized. And
that took several hours. And then Tuesday, we began our
lectures again. So Tuesday morning, it was dealing
with the papacy, explaining what they hold. Then in the afternoon,
refuting it. Wednesday morning, dealing with
the Queen of Heaven. Thursday, Wednesday afternoon, dealing
with sacraments, sacramental character and the sacramentals.
And then on Thursday morning, refuting what Rome teaches on
the sacraments and then dealing with baptism and refuting what
Rome teaches on salvation Thursday evening. So it was a full time. Tuesday night, we're supposed
to have a meeting with another man. He didn't show up. So we had
to make our way to a Chinese restaurant. There are not a lot
of restaurants you want to eat in Liberia. And the Chinese have
moved into Liberia in full force. They're building their roads.
They have a large embassy there in Liberia. And because of that,
they've got all kinds of restaurants. Some of those restaurants, you're
not sure what they're serving you. So we went to one that was
quite good and ate there. I actually had lamb that night.
I don't know where they got the lamb. I'm sure it wasn't in Liberia,
but they got it from somewhere. It was very good. So every morning,
every afternoon, and every evening was packed. Friday morning was
the day we were leaving, and that morning we had our baptismal
service. We had six men, two of them older men, two of them
in their early 20s, and two that were teenagers who wanted to
be baptized. Two of those men in their early
20s had been saved a year ago, a year and a half ago, when we
went to Liberia. And now they kept on with the
Lord. They were growing in grace. They all had gone through baptism
classes with the church that they were a part of. They represented
three different churches. And so we went out on the beach
again. About 30 people preached the gospel. And these young men
and older men were able to give their testimony. The oldest man
was 60 years old, 60 years old, been saved a year. Another man,
his name was Othello. The man who was 40 years old
was Augustine, Augustine as he would call himself. And he didn't
even know who Augustine was. Had no idea of this great theologian
in the past. And he was been saved again for
about a year. Hearing his testimony was remarkable,
how the Lord saved him and spared him. And then the other four
were younger, two in their early 20s, as I said, and two as older
teenagers. So it was a tremendous service.
By the time we finished the baptismal service, there was only time
really to go in and get cleaned up, finish packing, and then
off to the airport at four. I just gave you some of a rundown
to show you that there's not a minute that we really have
to ourselves when we're there. We're dealing with people. We're
dealing with their problems. We're trying to win people to
Christ and we're trying the whole time to deal in the workshop
with Educating these ministers the workshop had anywhere from
50 to 70 every workshop Well, we were in the workshop in the
morning. Joanne Greer had some time with the young people that
is ages 4 to 12, and she had them all packed into a small
room. You saw maybe a few pictures of that last time, and they were
packed into a small room, and there she was teaching them hymns,
teaching them catechism, teaching them scripture, and giving them
a story about the Lord. And so with all of that, she
was there every morning for two and a half, three hours, whatever
it took us in the workshop, she was stuck with these young people
in a small room where they're sitting on each other's laps.
And she had 70 young people in that room and they were enjoying
her. And she was trying her best to
give the gospel to the young people. On Sunday morning, the
only Sunday that I was there in that particular church, she
had the young people get up and sing. And it would have thrilled
your heart. Here they were singing the gospel, hymns they never
knew, and they were singing it with all of their hearts. Beautiful.
Powerful. And we thank the Lord for her
willingness to come and work with them. She wants to be a
missionary. And in Liberia, she has already told us that. She's
been interviewed by the mission board. We have to find a safe
place for her to stay. On the Monday afternoon where
we did the baptismal interviews, we also went to a piece of property
along the ocean that we're trying to purchase. If we're able to
do that, then hopefully in the future there'll be a mission
house put on that property, and it'll be some kind of a compound
whereby missionaries going there can stay, as well as missionaries
who are laboring can have that as their place of residence.
We're working on that, but there's a lot that has to happen between
now and then. And so it was a busy time. It was a full time and a time
of certainly sowing the seed. They gave us gifts the last day
we were there Thursday afternoon. The garment I am wearing is the
gift they gave to me. You'll see a picture on the table
in the lobby of the baptismal service where Joanne was actually
dealing with the young people and then a picture of all the
garments that we were wearing as they gave us each one a gift
to take back to America with us. They love us. We certainly
love them. We are trying to help them as
much as we can. In some of the workshops that
I was doing, they had never heard these things before, and they
were very interested. There was a man who came to several
of the workshops who was Roman Catholic. He didn't mind telling
the people he was Roman Catholic. He didn't mind debating with
the man who was doing the lecturing. And so we had an opportunity
to show the people firsthand, asking them, is this what you
believe? Yes, that's what I believe. You believe your child, when
it was baptized, had all of its sins removed? Oh, it was removed.
You believe your child was born again? Yes, I believe it was
born again. You believe your child is now a child of God?
Yeah. And he said, the next thing is confirmation at the age of
12. I said, what if your child dies at the age of 11 and never
comes to trust Christ as Savior? What will happen to your child?
Oh, he'll go to heaven. And I said, you've been deluded.
You have been deluded. The Bible makes it abundantly
clear. The only people who have their sins forgiven are those
who have turned from sin and trusted Christ. Your child has
never done that. Your child has never done that.
If that child dies at the age of 11, that child will perish. So we're able to sow the seed
and they stand back watching this, thanking the Lord that
there are answers for what's going on in Liberia. Dave DeCanio
will be staying now for another two and a half months, and he'll
be dealing with the cults. They need to know how to answer
the cults. He'll be dealing with the charismatic movement. He'll
be dealing with the occult, which is something they do battle with,
the witchcraft of the country. They do battle with that. One
of the first times DeCanio was there, he was on his way to an
airport. Some guy jumped out on the road and cut a head of
a chicken off and dumped the blood all over the vehicle. The
driver would not go any further until the vehicle was washed,
such is the superstition. This guy had put some kind of
a hexerous spell, supposedly, on the vehicle. And the Liberians,
that's very real to them. And so, Dicanio has to dispel
some of the myths, while at the same time realize that demonism
is real, and how do you deal with it? And so, he has now his
work cut out for him, Dave Dicanio. We have left, Paul C. and I left
on Friday, and he is in Belgium will be coming back to America
tomorrow. I came yesterday evening. Joanne Greer went back to Kenya
on Saturday, and Decanio will stay there by himself now for
two and a half months and leave in the middle of January. Pray
for him. He has a full schedule. I've given him a lot to do. And
if he's able to travel, he will be traveling to this place in
Lofokani, 12 hours away. If he's able, he'll be going
to Buchanan, the place that's just starting up, and maybe even
to Riversess, besides lecturing every week to the ministers for
two and a half weeks. Pray for him. He's capable. And
we ask the Lord to protect him, while at the same time use him
mightily in the work there in Iberia. Now, I have to shut up.
I've talked way too long. I've tried to give you some idea
that your prayers were being answered. This is one of the
few times that nobody got sick. It's not because everything we
ate was palatable, but it was because the Lord spared us illness,
and we're thankful for that. And we ask that you would continue
to remember our brother Decanio and this lady by the name of
Tiawan. Tiawan, that the Lord would establish her heart in
the gospel, and that she'll go on with the Lord and publicly
confess Him. to those that are in Liberia.
Report on October 2009 Trip To Liberia
| Sermon ID | 1114091136362 |
| Duration | 20:46 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Language | English |
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