Hand in Hand Global Mission Support Blog Digest

Bette McCrandall first went to Liberia in 1973 and later began service as an ELCA missionary in 1984. She was employed as the secretary to the bishop of the Lutheran Church in Liberia and later served as supervisor of schools of the church. She was responsible for up to 46 schools. Bette was in Liberia during the civil war in 1990. At one point, 600 people, who had taken refuge in St Peter’s Lutheran Church in Monrovia, were killed by the armed forces. During this difficult time, Bette endured the same hardships as the Liberian people and supported them through it. Bette retired from mission service in 2011.

To support any of the ELCA’s nearly 250 missionaries, go to www.elca.org/missionarysponsorship.

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Brian and Christine Palmer are ELCA missionaries in Liberia. To support the Palmers, or another of the ELCA’s nearly 250 missionaries, go to www.elca.org/missionarysponsorship.

Liberia it is said to be a predominantly Christian nation. Yet the longer we live here the more we are discovering how blended Christianity is with the traditional African religion. The cords of the ancestors are tightly roped around the lives of most Liberians. Is Christ the true Savior for Liberians or do the traditional witch doctors have additional messages?

There are those who practice “Juju,” a form of witchcraft that is similar to voodoo. It’s pretty predominant. A person is targeted and cursed by magic from the witch doctor to make the victim very sick or miscarry, even die.

The children at around the age of puberty go off to traditional schools for a period of time. This is where they learn basic skills of how to live in the bush. The boys learn to build huts, make palm-thatched roofs and hunt; girls learn to cook over a charcoal fire, weave baskets, and make fishing nets. And along with that learning comes the West African Juju as well as herbal knowledge — plants used for healing the body. It’s all very secretive; no one is allowed to tell others what they learned in the bush school. When they come back to their villages, the girls have deep, permanent scars etched in their skins along their waists, backs, and necks making designs like diamonds and linear motifs, like tattoos except, instead of ink, they use scarring to make designs. The bush school is the place where female circumcision happens. It’s where they get initiated into the culture and learn the ancestors’ ways.

Child sacrifices (and adults ones, too) are still amongst us here, the organs used to appease the devil. We are told sacrifices increase particularly during election years from those in high government positions (like this year). Children just disappear. We had two children taken on Christmas Day while people were watching a football (soccer) game right here in Totota, where we live. Men near the man taking the children followed him into the bush and saved the children before there was any harm done to them.

I know the Christian church still has its transforming work to do in the lives of the Liberian people, even though there’s been a long history of effort done here in the name of Jesus over the last hundred years or so.

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Brian and Christine Palmer are ELCA missionaries in Liberia. To support the Palmers, or another of the ELCA’s nearly 250 missionaries, go to www.elca.org/missionarysponsorship.

A typical house in Liberia.

Living in a developing country has its challenges. Yet working with people who have similar goals can be not only refreshing but downright encouraging.

We’ve befriended a Peace Corps volunteer who has served in the southeastern section of Liberia at about the same time we came (we’ve been here almost a year) and has relocated to Totota. She loves my espresso and Scottish shortbread fingers I get at the Lebanese grocery store. And what she gives me in return is her altruistic enthusiasm for what she’s doing, her willingness to live simply. She sets a great example for me.

Then there are my two elder mentors Edna and Alvina. Edna teaches in the first nursing graduate program that’s getting off the ground in Monrovia. If she’s not teaching, she’s back at her Zorzor house, way out in the bush. She volunteers her time there as a nurse for the bush hospital and has been a missionary for over six years.

Alvina and her husband raised their children in Liberia while they and a team of translators translated parts of the Bible and educational materials into the various tribal languages. Her husband passed away over seven years ago. She and I have had talks about living here as a woman and as a single woman at that. She misses her husband and confided to me that on his deathbed he encouraged her to continue their work, knowing she wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. God is providing her with the funds to go on. And she is happy doing what she’s doing.

And then there are Dione and Jenny. Dione is a senior at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and Jenny just graduated from Luther. On their own they put together this Liberian itinerary, “sold” it to the ELCA short-term missionary board, and even though they’re paying for the trip themselves, are under the umbrella of the ELCA Global Missions. They are spending their summer helping out at the regional hospital working in the pharmacy just because they want to help out. Very impressive.

The list of people in “The Network” goes on and on. Even though living here has its daily challenges, it is very much balanced by this network of people the Lord graciously is using to offset the hardships. Their lives give me hope, strength, and a future in Liberia. I’m thankful.

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The Spring 2010 issue of the Hand in Hand newsletter is off press and online.   Request copies of the one-page newsletter to distribute in your congregation, at synod assemblies, and for other events (globalmissionsupport@elca.org, 800-638-3522, ext. 2657).  Two of the articles are available in reproducible formats to share in Sunday bulletins and newsletters; find them at www.elca.org/handinhand.  

In this issue

• ELCA missionary Patricia Bentsen offers a devotion on Matthew 25:36 that lifts up the Tsiafahy prison ministry in Madagascar (available as a bulletin insert).
• Questions such as “How is ELCA Global Mission funded?” and “When will the new Global Mission Annual be available?” are answered in “101 long-term missionaries and other answers” (available as a bulletin insert).
• In her director’s column, the Rev. Twila Schock highlights ELCA missionary the Rev. John Lunn and his medical ministries in Liberia and Southern India.

Coming up 

The Summer 2010 issue of the Hand in Hand newsletter is scheduled to be “in hand” on April 24.

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A retired professor of nursing, volunteer missionary Edna Johnson came to Liberia nearly four years ago to support the nursing program of Curran Hospital. This hospital, a ministry of the Lutheran Church in Liberia, was destroyed during Liberia’s bloody civil war and is currently under reconstruction. Living in a remote region with no running water for three of these years and only hours hours of electricity a day, I asked, “How have you managed out here?”  Edna calmly replies, “In many times of my life I have known adventure.  At times, I have had fun. But out here, with the people of Liberia, I have found deep, deep joy.”
–Twila Schock

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