Report from Liberia

Monday, Nov 18.

Greetings from Ganta, Liberia.

It was a very, very good day! We had a total of 22 leaders come to begin the 5 days of training this morning. There were three (3) who failed to show and of all things, they were from local churches. Of the 22, there are a total of 17 different churches represented. I believe that all but maybe one or two attended the training that I facilitated last February.

I began this morning by briefing them on the Four year development process that Luke Kuepfer and I used this past summer with a group of leaders in Uganda and that they would begin today. They asked a lot of great questions and quickly saw that by following the same process that Jesus taught his disciples, they could develop the leaders they needed to grow their church and make a kingdom impact here in Liberia. Every person agreed to commit to all four years. I will reconfirm that commitment on Friday at the conclusion of the training.

I then took them through the Lead Like Jesus Encounter using the one page, front and back handout that we developed. There was lots of great discussion and they asked lots of very good questions. This confirms to me that that merely going through an Encounter is not sufficient to learn and apply the principles of leading like Jesus. Learning to lead like Jesus is truly a transformational journey and doesn't happen in one event or workshop.

They particularly liked the application questions that we built into the lesson at various points to help them apply what they learn to their own situation, and they loved doing the Bible story drama's that we had them act out today. It really impressed me as I was asking each of them at the end of the Head section (where we learn about mission and vision) to tell me what they've learned, one of the men said that he learned that he and his wife need to develop a vision statement for their family and how they are blindly walking through life and that he is going to change that. Wow! I was blown away. He gets the importance of vision and now has applied that to his family.

This morning started out with a slight drizzle and was fairly cool. However, by noon the sun came out from behind the clouds and it really got hot. I'm not sure but I would guess it reached 90 degrees here this afternoon. By about 4 pm is was pretty warm in our classroom. I think it is going to be very hot here all week. Better than snow I guess?

Tomorrow, we will finish up the remaining sections of the Encounter and then in the afternoon start training them in how to facilitate/teach it for themselves. Should be another great day!

More to follow tomorrow from Ganta, Liberia.

Blessings!

Fred



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