Old pictures from Liberia

Along with the OR posts which have been waiting for the last few months for the scanner to decide to work, here are some pics from Liberia that I found in a drawer or box somewhere.

The first is a picture of Amanda and me at a church service in Congotown, Liberia. See the Liberian flag behind us? I became friends with the pastor of this church (Sydney Thomas) at Amsterdam 2000, and he predicted that one day I would be in Liberia. It took until January 2003, but I made it there. After the war was over in September 2003, we arrived as a couple January 2, 2004, to work with Samaritan's Purse. Our first duty was to oversee three homes for rehabilitation of female child soldiers being demobilized from the war.

The next picture is me preaching. Looks pretty serious there! This is the same church in Congotown pastored by Sydney Thomas, the Every Home for Christ contact for Liberia. I met Sydney with Joseph Menjor and Tage Swallie at Amsterdam 2000, the last Billy Graham conference for Evangelists with 10,000 from around the world in attendance.

The next picture is of our girls from one of the homes, the one that Rosie Schaack ran. They were on a field trip from the home. Yes, they look rough, but you should have seen them when they were demobilized! During the war, these girls had been captured, raped, and given an option of being an officer's wife or carrying a gun (with the good chance of dying in battle). Most of them chose the gun.