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.
Our Liberian partners had asked that we would focus on leadership training this year, so a typical day went something like this:
Our main focus was to teach and demonstrate Growth Groups as the most effective means of evangelism and discipling. A Growth Group is two or three people who meet regularly (usually once or twice a week) to be discipled by Jesus. Only one of the members needs to be a Christian, the others may be anyone who is curious about Jesus. When the Growth Group meets, they start by reading aloud a short passage of scripture. Each person then repeats the passage in their own words to make sure everyone understands what they have read. Then each person shares in discussing these four questions:
1. What does this passage tell us about people?
2. What does this passage tell us about Jesus or God?
3. What does Jesus want to say to me personally?
4. Who does Jesus want me to share this message with?
Wherever we demonstrated Growth Groups people responded enthusiastically. We did so in churches, schools, clinics, police-posts, people’s homes, to town-chiefs, under trees, in palaver huts and on a large farm with all the workers and supervisors.
On our outreach, we mostly took people who had never done it before, so we were coaching and demonstrating how to share the gospel, heal the sick and demonstrate Growth Groups. Andy and Chris were both brilliant at the Growth Group training and in coaching people in healing and outreach. Chris saw a whole string of convincing healings with people laughing and dancing for joy. Andy was very bold and went in search of the most seriously sick – particularly the paralysed. Although we did not see any paralysed people fully healed, we saw several cases of significant improvement. Two paralysed people with no sensation in their legs had their feeling restored. When we started to pray for Momodu he had no sensation in his legs, could not hold his body upright and could not talk. When we left him he was holding himself upright, could feel and move his legs, and was able to answer our questions! We pray for his continued and complete healing.
It was wonderful to hear Rose, a teenage girl who had never seen a healing miracle before, testify how she had witnessed an elderly man’s leg grow an inch as I held his feet in my hands. He had broken his leg as a young man and it left him with a short leg. For many decades he had suffered with a limp and we left him rejoicing in getting his balance back again.
Not everyone was healed when we prayed, and it grieved us to leave blind and sick people still with their sickness. But we know from previous trips that many of those will receive healing over time.
We visited more than a dozen communities, sleeping in five different homes as we travelled from place to place and were always made very welcome.
The spiritual change in the area around Ganglata in Lofa county which we have been visiting for the last few years is really remarkable. In three years the Gospel has transformed the area from one of darkness, fear, oppression, evil spirits and curses to one of joyful freedom in Jesus, faith and hope in God and a desire to walk with Jesus and share the Good News.
The border with Guinea is only half an hour’s walk from our base in Ganglata. The people there are hungry for the Gospel. We pray that Growth Groups will be tested and proved to be really effective in raising Disciples of Jesus in Ganglata and the surrounding villages, and that they will raise up many evangelists who can take the Gospel into Guinea.
