Blog
Stephen and Mirrlees Dolley spent 6 months in Ghana where they met a Liberian man, Jonathan Nathan, and struck up a friendship.
Having passing through customs, I went through a door and unexpectedly found myself standing on the pavement outside the airport with people and taxis milling around. In just a few paces I had passed through the entire terminal building for Liberia's International Airport. It is, in fact, a recycled military base, which is why it is rather inconveniently located 30 miles from the capital city, Monrovia. I was met by my good friend Jonathan Mellish with a great deal of hugging and African-style hand shaking. He waved to a taxi which promptly backed up, and introduced me to the proud owner/driver who was his good friend George.
The first news that greeted me concerned my visit last year when I prayed for a number of people in the community. When my friend Jallah followed up our prayers a week after I left he found that all the people received what we had asked. Two notable healings were a woman with malaria who was fully recovered the next day and a 2 year old boy called Gift who had never been able to stand up or walk. He was walking within one week! This was a huge encouragement.
Damawa was one of the first people to greet us when we arrived in Liberia. She was grinning from ear to ear having been healed during our visit last year from a horrible Herpes virus that was eating away at her mouth and ear. Since then she has been healthy and strong. This is now the third year I have visited Liberia to encourage the churches and take the healing power of Jesus into the communities. In a nation with fewer than 100 doctors, God's healing power is not an alternative to medicine, but the only hope for healing for most people.
Yet again, God did amazing things on our fourth annual trip to Liberia. This year we had a team of seven Brits from five different churches: Myself, Andy, Gordon and Nick who came last year, plus Jonathan, Mike and Daron. We were joined by nine Liberians. We are now working with four churches and in twelve communities.
'Jesus is Alive, Ebola is dead' is the confident assertion our churches in Liberia are making as they go from house to house and village to village taking food, medical supplies and disinfectant equipment which they have purchased with money that our supporters have given to help with this Ebola crisis.
Praise God for another wonderful trip to Liberia. The UK team consisted of Andy, Daron, Gordon and I and we were joined by up to 11 Liberians. Our time was divided between three principle locations; Fendell near Monrovia, Weala in the heart of the country and Ganglata in the far north near the Guinea border.
We had a very fruitful 10-day trip in February 2017 with Stephen, Andy Bell and Chris Nowak. We built on our previous visits and all agreed this was the best trip to date. As usual we took our full baggage allowance in bibles, books, materials, equipment and clothes – nearly 150kg!
Our trip to Liberia was, yet again amazing. Andy, Chris and I spent 10 days reaching out to numerous communities with healing and the Gospel of the Kingdom. We spent three full days in Lofa County, based in a small town (village really) called Ganglata. We were welcomed by the chiefs and the towns people and renewed friendship with those we had met on previous trips. We were joined by several Liberian's from four of our Monrovia churches and a good number of leaders from the churches that have been planted in Lofa since our first visit 4 years ago.
One of the highlights of our trip to Liberia in March this year was seeing the impact of Christian schooling on the children. They were so positive, eager to learn and hungry to know Jesus better – attitudes that were noticeably lacking in the government school we visited. I have been visiting Liberia for 9 years and in that time children who were 7 are now young adults of 16! It made me realise the importance of Christian education for the wider mission of the Kingdom of God.
The Lord seems to be opening a new door of ministry for us – taking us over the border into neighbouring Guinea. Our mission base in the remote village of Ganglata is quite near the border with Guinea and people from Guinea come over the border (a river) to seek medical care in the Ganglata clinic. For several years we have been praying about taking the Gospel there, but the great need in the immediate vicinity has occupied us.
We had a very fruitful 16-day trip building on our previous visits and it looks like its impact will be massive and far reaching.
The ministry this year has obviously been impacted by Covid – but by no means dominated by it. In fact the ground we had laid in previous years, and especially during our trip this January, has allowed the churches to blossom and grow despite the Covid restrictions. In January, the Lord directed us to focus entirely on church in the community as opposed to church in their church buildings. As leaders, we discussed what church could look like if we didn't have buildings. This was important because of planting churches in rural areas where there was no available public or church building in which to gather for services. So we talked about home-based family gatherings with a few neighbours. Then we sent the church members out into the communities to establish these little Christian communities with their neighbours. Little did we know how strategic these would prove to be. As we left Liberia, the world was waking up to Covid.
On 27th June we launched our Multiplying Disciples Training via Zoom. We started with the first Multiplication Training Story, 'Finding Apprentices'. This is the story of Jesus calling Simon and Andrew to follow Him and He would make them fishers of men. Our obedience to this story involves recruiting up to 110 apprentices from our churches to follow the training to become multiplying disciples.
After a two-year Covid-break we were able to visit Liberia again this February. I travelled with Chris Nowak and we were joined by my friend Andy Bell. The first week was spent visiting some of our schools and giving discipleship training in a number of towns and villages. We also visited two existing Missional Communities and started two new ones. The most remote village we visited was Neiporlor Kollie Town, were we have a school. Through the school a thriving community of discipleship groups has been established and they were eager to learn how to establish Missional Communities to help them in mission.
Every year we say 'this was the best trip so far' and it was the same for our 2024 trip. This year the UK team was Andy and Stephen, joined by a Liberian team of eight. Our aim was to establish ongoing Discovery groups in a number of different communities. We started with a two day conference with about 50 Kingdom Apprentices. Everyone said it was a life changing two days. It was like scales falling from people's eyes as we looked at what Jesus told us about how to make disciples on day 1, then on day 2 we looked at what Jesus said about many of our church practices, including preaching, worship and prayer.
Timeline
Stephen and Mirrlees Dolley spent 6 months in Ghana where they met a Liberian man, Jonathan Nathan, and struck up a friendship.
I have been looking over the Kingdom Apprentices WhatsApp chat since March 2022. What an incredible journey we have travelled over the last 18 months! On 26th March 2022 I posted a 'dream' which has shaped our journey together since.