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Woodmizer has provided RLM with the opportunity to purchase an additional mill for our ministry in Liberia.  The mill has been refurbished by Woodmizer and they have offered it to RLM for only $2500, a price much lower than they might have sold it for at market prices. We thank God for them and their participation in our ministry.

We have raised the money to purchase the mill.  We are working on the funds needed to ship it from California to our headquarters located in Indiana.  From there it will eventually placed in a shipping container bound for Liberia.

God is good!

Recently purchased Woodmizer

Recently purchased wood mill

Recently purchased mill

Recently purchased Woodmizer mill

We receive quarterly reports from many of our supported pastors in Liberia.  Here is the latest report from the field:

Dear sir,
Here is my report for the first quarter.
During the period under review, the Lord Sheep Deliverance Ministries carried on many activities such as Fast and prayer,tarry, adult, youth, and children Sunday school,  Bible study, and Evangelism. The ministry also attended the Soul Winning Conference of the Fellowship Baptist Ministries in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County in April and participated in the Agriculture Training conducted by Gene and Bill. We are blessed with  the seeds we received at the end of the training. We have started the garden and the plants have germinated.The garden is about two weeks old.
The ministry is still using the government building in Fendell for worship purposes.
Presently, the congregation is 88: 20 males, 28 females and 40 children.
Two persons are in Baptismal class.We have three converts.
We are praying to have fund to purchase our own land for the church, educational materials,as well as evangelism materials.
Our pastor (PST. Mark) is a founding member of the Alive / Revive Liberia Supported Pastors Association.
We are in prayer with Pastor Bill for speedy recovery from the malaria infection.
We also want to extend our thanks and appreciation to the King and Queen for our gifts.We’re grateful to the donors for the pastor’s supports.My special heart-felt thanks goes to my sponsor Gene Kintz for the agriculture training and his continue support to me and my family.
May the Almighty Father bless us all in Jesus name.

Pastor Jupiter G. Mark Jr.

We recently received reports from several of the pastors whose work is supported by RLM in Liberia.  They describe some of the work that is being done in Christ’s name.

Bro. Bestman, Greetings in the mighty name of Jesus amen. I am please to submit my monthly report: 1) March my major focus was on a one month of Church planting in the City of Buchanan Grand Bassa County with some great Church leaders becoming member of our church the CHRIST’S REDEEMED CHURCH INC. to be precised. 2) April this month carry on a successful ground breaking ceremonies in my control area, that is Teemor District #1b Grand Bassa Country in villege called Bondo Town Jallahmu. Needs more assistance because the amount send to me can’t cover all these mission trip along with family needs. God bless pastor Aaron F. Moore

Children at the Karene Eckart School ready to receive gifts from the states

Dear sir,
Here is my report for the first quarter.
During the period under review, the Lord Sheep Deliverance Ministries carried on many activities such as Fast and prayer,tarry, adult, youth, and children Sunday school,  Bible study, and Evangelism. The ministry also attended the Soul Winning Conference of the Fellowship Baptist Ministries in Buchanan, Grand Bassa County in April and participated in the Agriculture Training conducted by Gene and Bill. We are blessed with  the seeds we received at the end of the training. We have started the garden and the plants have germinated.The garden is about two weeks old.
The ministry is still using the government building in Fendell for worship purposes.
Presently, the congregation is 88: 20 males, 28 females and 40 children.
Two persons are in Baptismal class.We have three converts.
We are praying to have fund to purchase our own land for the church, educational materials,as well as evangelism materials.
Our pastor (PST. Mark) is a founding member of the Alive / Revive Liberia Supported Pastors Association.
We are in prayer with Pastor Bill for speedy recovery from the malaria infection.
We also want to extend our thanks and appreciation to the King and Queen for our gifts.We’re grateful to the donors for the pastor’s supports.My special heart-felt thanks goes to my sponsor Gene Kintz for the agriculture training and his continue support to me and my family.
May the Almighty Father bless us all in Jesus name.

Pastor Jupiter G. Mark Jr.

School supplies arrive at the Karen Eckart school

Evangelism Trip to Grand Cape Mount County on March 25, 2013

Grand Cape Mount County is one of the Muslim dominated areas in Liberia. On the 25^th of March 2013, a team of nine persons including Pastor William Martin Sebald , Eugene (a missionary that came with Pastor Bill), Rev. R. J. Ndemah Henah, Rev. G. William Kanga, Pastor Thomas, Elder Prince Nyumah( Blessed Assurance Min. ), Pastor Jimmy Payne (B.A.E.M.), Bro. William Daboakai ( B.A.E.M.) and Bro. Jonah Samula (B.A.E.M.).Our visitation was to Nagbana, where there are two mosques with no church and one of our preaching points. Upon our arrival we share the Gospel with them and had meeting with the citizens of the town. They elders on behave of the town; offer a piece for land the church and to school (Mission). They made a special appeal for a school campus for the education of their children through the church. In the beginning the reject the church and other to offer by Christians or Christian organization, but on our return with Pastor Bill, the Holy Spirit touch them and they accepted the church and give the offer as above. There were fifteen converts that welcome us that day.

REV. R.J NDEMAH Henah

Below is the article which provides a good history of Revive Liberia Missions Inc. as well as a good overview of the organization’s current projects, goals and needs.

Local Missionary’s

Outreach to Liberia

by Phil Eckart

The story of Revive Liberia started in the summer of 2003 when I was invited to Liberia, located in West Africa, by a fellow from Green County.  The oldest republic in Africa, Liberia is also the only country on the continent not colonized by Europeans.  Some years before the American Civil War, a group of wealthy Americans formed what was called the “American Colonization Society.”  Its purpose was to buy up slaves and repatriate them back to Africa, with Liberia being the place chosen to land these newly freed people.  In 1847, these folks formed a republic, modeling their new county after the United States’ basic law structure.  However, they treated the indigenous people unfairly, and over the next hundred years or so, the Americo-Liberians (as the locals call them) kept most of the land ownership, good jobs, and educational opportunities for themselves.  In 1979 resentment over this, plus rising food prices, led to a coup.  The leader who arose from the coup made many enemies himself and in 1989 his mistakes led to an all out civil war.  This terrible war lasted 14 years and claimed 250,000 lives out of a total population of 3 million.  The war finally ended when the last ruler was forced to flee to Nigeria in September of 2003.

My first trip to Liberia was in February of 2004, five months after the hostilities ceased.  The place was a wreck.  Before the war, the capital city of Monrovia (named after the American President, James Monroe) had been a vacation spot for all of West Africa, now it lay in ruins.  Large hotels and business buildings looked like bombed out vacant skeletons.  Everyone was on edge and shell-shocked.  Infrastructure, city water, sewage, garbage collection, and road and bridge repair had disappeared.  It was overwhelming.  Piles of garbage lay smoking all over the city.  Horns honked endlessly as people tried to crowd out others on what was left of the roads.  I wondered why I was there at all as it seemed hopeless.

The next day I found out why I was there.  I felt as sure as my name that God wanted me to do something to help rebuild churches that had been destroyed during the war.  Not knowing where to start, I rented a video camera man to take pictures for me.  I knew that what I was seeing could not be properly explained without pictures.  I was there with three other men but had the feeling that at least two of them would never return to the country.  We were not attached to any organization, so I was more or less on my own.

Upon my arrival home I was stressed out for two months.  The people’s needs were so overwhelming and I felt powerless to help.  I showed the video to a small group of friends at a Bible study.  A fellow that I barely knew was very impressed with what he saw.  His name was Mark Parmenter and we soon become fast friends.  He set up a 501c3 non-profit organization and helped form the structure for Revive Liberia.  Mark has visited Liberia with me several times since then as well as other volunteers.  Liberians are very industrious and have a wonderful sense of humor.  One visit there and it is hard to ever get them out of your mind.  We just got back from our latest visit in mid-November, 2012.  It was my 12th trip since first visiting the country some eight years ago and I had a team of seven to accompany me.

Our enterprise seemed to grow on its own.  People heard the story and wanted to help.  The ministry has initiated a few programs within Liberia, one of which is our Pastor Support Program.  To keep the pastors that we support from having to go out and farm all day, or from having to busy themselves in the market place, we provide them with support in the amount of $50 a month.  This is enough money to support their families so that they can focus on their church duties.  Even so, most of our pastors have one major restraint to their ministry work.  The restraint is transportation.  I have been a part of conferences where some of the pastors walked three days just to attend.  Their commitment to their work is humbling.  Our organization has been able to buy a couple of them motorbikes to help them in their work.  The quality of Chinese motorcycles has dramatically improved in the past five years or so and for only $800 we are able to buy a motorbike for a pastor.   Mobility allows them to expand into other areas of ministry.  It is especially important to evangelize to the Muslim population as Liberia is surrounded by Muslim nations.  Revive Liberia is working in Muslim areas as well as places dominated by Zoe, which is where Voodoo originated.  A council of Zoe priests gave us land outside of their village where we have since built a church.  We now have a school that operates in the church building.  Though they were non-believers, they knew that their children would receive a better education by the arrival of Christians.

For some time our pastors trained with the Samaritan’s Purse organization.  We have worked with them, with Christian Aid Ministries (a Mennonite group) and with other lesser-known Christian organizations.  Charles Taylor was the president when Liberia’s most recent conflict ended and is now being held prisoner in Holland for war crimes. One of his leading generals has become a believer and heads up an interdenominational ministerial association to which our pastors belong.  His name is Arthur Kangar (his war name was “Michael Thunder”).  He has become a dear friend and is concerned about the future of pastor training in Liberia.  When the Haiti earthquake hit, Samaritan’s Purse shut down their program in Liberia, and because most of Revive Liberia’s work is in the jungle, our pastors have no access to books or the Internet.  Training is vital to preserve the pure Gospel.

Another of our programs provides for teacher support.  We are in the midst of opening a school in a beautiful village that was once dominated by one of the most famous witchdoctors in Liberia.  He is called  “Old Man Morris”.  He has become a believer and a close personal friend.  We were able to follow up on a commitment to build a church in his village and now hundreds will be in heaven because of Morris’ decision to follow Christ.  More recently I asked him to write down his life story.  He told me he would record his life history if I gave the children a school.  The school is now open, but the teachers are there on a voluntary basis.  They need financial help in order to feed their families or else they will eventually be forced to quit.  It only takes $30 a month to support a teacher.  One look into the eyes of these children shows their intelligence.  With the truth of the Gospel and a good education, who knows what these children could become.

I have had the privilege of staying at the home of one of these folks from the African countryside.  His name is Amos Sawyer and was the former President of Liberia.  His wife, Comfort, is the chairman of our board.  During the heights of the war, Amos taught at Indiana University as a political science professor.  Eventually, however, he was called on to help stop the war.  The couple’s house was burned down and he was thrown in jail.  He now works for the Liberian government and helps monitor elections all over Africa for the U.N. and others.

We have in place another educational program to further advance the academic goals of girls in Liberia.  We call it our “Girl’s Scholarship Fund.”  Studies within Africa have shown that when young women are educated and equipped with marketable skills society directly benefits.  The correlation is undeniable; the more life skills that the female of a population learns, the higher the standard of living.  For $30 a month, we are able to help a girl with post high school learning.  This is a one-year commitment, and is used to teach nursing, accounting, and other learning skills that will benefit for a lifetime.

We at Revive Liberia believe in helping people help themselves.  Economic development is a major part of our ministry.  For example, we have invested many resources in a wood working shop.  Mark and I found a beautiful hand-made door in the middle of a village that had no road access.  We inquired as to who had built the door and the homeowner replied that he had made it himself but all of his tools had been destroyed during the war.  That started us thinking about how to use the talent that we saw in the local woodworkers.  The woodshop is now up and running and items that are made there can be seen on our website.  Knowing that we may not always have the means to support operations there we are striving for the church in Liberia to become self-sustaining.  It is a long-term goal of Revive Liberia.  The Liberians are hard working people who love a challenge.  We have been greatly encouraged by what we see coming out of our wood shop.

Recently we acquired a beautiful piece of land located right on a beach.  An elderly fellow had promised his father that the land would never be used for anything save ministry work.  It has been with the family since the late 1800’s and the man’s grandparents were amongst the freed slaves who founded the republic in the 19th century.  The property consists of approximately 8 acres, and is flat and free of buildings.  It is on the outskirts of the country’s second largest city, Buchanan, and is the nicest piece of easily accessible land that I have seen in the country.  The land is now titled in the name of Alive Liberia Missions Inc. (our sister organization in Liberia) and Revive Liberia USA.  Alive Liberia Missions Inc. was established as a non-profit corporation over there in order to ensure that we are working there with a board of directors instead of a sole individual.

Eventually, we would like to establish a youth camp, a guesthouse, perhaps a small seminary, and vocational schools on this land.  It is an opportunity that we must seize.  Changing the hearts and minds of the Liberian youth is another of our priorities. We also hope to establish vocational schools in the villages where we operate.  After a church is built and the school is up and running (the school meets in the church building) we want to further educational processes in the village.  We also hope, as funds allow, to open small clinics in the countryside.  Also, we hope to help the local people establish alternative energy sources. Palm oil trees are everywhere and the oil from these trees can easily be made into diesel fuel for generator and vehicle use.  Liberia is almost on the equator and has two seasons, the Wet Season during our summer and the Dry Season during our winter.  Even in the Wet Season some days are sunny enough to produce energy through solar panels.

We are a small non-profit organization.  All of our help is part-time and on a volunteer basis. There are many who spend much of their own time and money helping in this worthy cause.  At this time we have no overhead or administrative costs, however, as our ministry grows that may change.  As of now, 100% of donations received are given to the programs to which they are designated.  Revive Liberia is a nondenominational evangelical ministry.  Jesus’ prayer to the Father as he was about to leave this earth in John 17:21 reads, “My prayer for all of them is that they will be of one heart and mind, just as you and I are.”

Our trips to Liberia are exciting and adventurous.  Recently I was even able to see a leopard’s den deep in the forest.  The Liberians have a wonderful sense of humor and a wonderful culture that is a mixture of African and American traditions.  Words cannot express the depth of love for our fellow Christians there.  Our trips are usually around ten days to two weeks and while we are home we are constantly thinking about when we can return.  We have been able to bring some of our Liberian friends to America for a visit and this spring we hope to bring over the Alive Liberia director.  It will be his first visit to America.

Our website is http://reviveliberia.org.  Any inquiries can be answered by calling (812) 876-4348.  All donations are tax deductible.  As is true with any ministry work, we need donations of both time and money but most importantly we need prayers.  This is not easy work; the conditions are rough and we are working in Muslim and Zoe dominated areas.  Psalm 34:1, “I will praise the Lord no matter what happens.  I will constantly speak of His glories and grace.”

Here are some photos of recent baptisms in Qwxlakpojlain.  God is good!

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Baptism in Qwxlakpojlain

Alive Liberia celebrated the birth of Christ with children from several villages.  Here is report from the field along with several photos of the festivities.

Children Christmas  Party in #4 Grand Bassa County.

The Children’s Christmas program was a very successful program that we ever had in this community for   the first time in the history of the Fellowship Baptist Church.

The program was attended by  217 Children on the new year day from  Xyalakpoyeah and it surrounding areas. These children came from 3 villages.

The program was consisted  of many activities such as Bible verses by the children, paper games, songs and the Christmas message which was delivered by Tad pod (Kedrick Kangar)  from the book of Matthew 2:2-10.

We want to say many thanks to Pastor Bill Sabol and all those who contributed to children Program. This was a joyous day for the children and it was their first time attending this kind of in that community. We pray that the Almighty God will bless you and the contributors and we hope that one day some of these people will come and see some of these children in the name of Jesus Christ our lord.

Christmas Party

Sarah Distributing Food

Group Photo

MY TRIP TO LIBERIA 11/01/12 – 11/12/12

by Dan Eckart

The following is just a brief summary of some of my experiences. I don’t have time to write about all our experiences, and you probably don’t have time to read about all of them. So I’ll hit some high-lights. I am always glad to talk individually to anyone or group who might want to hear more either by phone or in person.

I traveled to Liberia with Revive Liberia, which was started by my brother Phil. The companion organization in Liberia is called Alive Liberia. They are specifically Christian organizations created to spread the Gospel, train pastors, plant churches, and provide some economic opportunities for the people to get out of poverty.

We flew to Liberia by way of Brussels with what was supposed to be a very brief stopover in Cote D’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast). But our plane and all passengers were detained for several hours for reasons that were never clear to us. Then armed soldiers there got us off the plane, herded us into a basement, and took all our passports. We were concerned about this because this was soon after the Benghazi incident in Libya. Plus, Cote D’Ivoire was also involved in the civil wars in Liberia.

We were told the plane had been grounded and the flight cancelled. The airline put us up in hotels for the night, which turned out to be quite nice by African standards. We didn’t get to our rooms until 4:00 am.

The next day, we were hoarded back on the plane and flew on to Liberia – twenty-four hours late. No explanation as to why we were detained was ever given. The people who were waiting for us at the airport in Monrovia did not know what had happened to us. It really was quite an ordeal, with a great deal of uncertainty as to what was going to happen next. But God got us where He wanted us to be.

Continue Reading »

We recently received this good news from Frog regarding a job for the woodshop:

Here are photos of wood mizer operation in Monrovia. God works on time. This is the first that we got some straight operation for the wood mizer. The challenge we face is our machine engine is aged and has developed some problems.

Thank God for Jackson, the specialist from Rev. Cludius’s Diah’s Church. Pray that God will carry us through with this job because the guys plan to bring more job should the machine serves. It was a former class mate who is a partner to this construction company who arrange this work for us.

Completed job by the wood mizer

Moltasing machine like we need in our shop.

Loaded truck with more job for wood mizer.

Example of Molding machine that we need in our shop.

Additional work for the wood mizer.

Completed work by the wood mizer.