eScripts update August 2007

Hello again from Liberia. Thanks so much for your prayers- wouldn’t you like to hear what happened because you prayed?

Here’s what Larry and Sandi Dick reported to their supporters after the Vacation Bible School at ICM, the church on the ELWA campus:
Hawa, the Liberian DVBS Co-coordinator, shared the following with those [the teachers] who gathered for the DVBS closing. During the week of the DVBS program for the children, she had a conversation with a young Muslim boy. The boy comes from a nearby village. He sells foodstuffs. He told her how much he enjoyed the DVBS program and especially the missionary story of Madugu, a Muslim boy who becomes a Christian. He went on to tell her that he had become a Christian and wanted to follow Jesus. Hawa was so excited about this evidence of God’s work in the life of a child as a result of the DVBS program. She challenged the trainees who attended this closing event to do another DVBS next year.
Hawa and her husband, Rev. Ansumana Kamara, the pastor of ICM, grew up in Muslim families, so they rejoice greatly over those who are saved out of Islam. Hawa also shared that her father had just the evening before told them that he has decided to become a follower of Jesus, so she was ready to dance in delight!

Lisa Kejr’s workshops with the ELWA Academy teachers seem to really capture their imagination, and they are talking more about using hands-on learning activities in their teaching next year. Pray for them to have courage to go for it! One of our teachers tried to recruit Lisa to do a workshop in another school, and Lisa said “Why don’t you do it!?” So they worked together and presented sessions on lesson planning and classroom management.

And also because you prayed….we have two more couples signed up to join us here in Liberia. Alan and Cheri Shea will come sometime in 2009 so that Alan can help with the technical side of Radio – Alan grew up here, and he’s an engineer, but he is going to spend some time getting up to speed on radio engineering. Matt and Brenda Carr were upcountry church planting missionaries to a Muslim people group in Liberia in the 80’s. They returned to the US in 1997 to care for Matt’s mom, and now their kids are grown and they feel the Lord is calling them back to Liberia. Matt will serve as the SIM Church Ministries Coordinator, and Brenda will be working with the Academy. These new appointments are KEY positions that we have needed to fill, so the Lord is hearing our prayers and moving in the hearts of his servants.

I’m sure you often wonder if we have some more personal news to share.. well we do. It’s a very long story, but I (Debbie) am going to be teaching grades 5-8 at the new American School for the first semester of this school year. I’m excited, but I know I get pretty involved when I have a new teaching challenge, so I need you to pray that I will not obsess over it. I’ll still have most of my administrative responsibilities, but the revolving door is not spinning quite so quickly in this last quarter of the year. I’m only committed for the first semester because we are planning to be in the US from January-August 2008, but I may need to continue teaching when we return to help with MK scholarships. This semester will give us an idea of what that feels like. (And there is another answer to prayer –Les and Verla Unruh from SIM-USA have agreed to cover for Rick while we are on home assignment)

So keep on praying!
For the Kingdom - Debbie