PALMYRA, Va. — When Effort Baptist Church in Palmyra, Va., sent its first team to Liberia in 2003, they found themselves in the midst of “pretty dark, pretty frightening circumstances,” says June Clifford, the church’s pastor.
They were there to start a camp for youth and former child combatants. By that time Liberia was in the rocky process of emerging from a civil war that had begun 14 years earlier in 1989. Children were often abducted or recruited, armed with AK-47s, and sent out to dangerous fighting.
Liberian runners recognized following a 5K whose winners received scholarships.
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Monrovia, the capital, was then the only place that had been disarmed and, consequently, the safest place to be in the country.
The UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights had just delivered an emergency report in Monrovia, stating that “1 out of every 10 Liberian children have suffered all kind of atrocities, sexual violence, disruption of schooling, and forced displacement.”
When Effort’s team landed in 2003, Clifford says it was the third most dangerous place in the world to visit.
“Now it’s safer. It’s just in the top 10 places that people shouldn’t visit,” she said.
Looking for ways to help children reenter society after years as soldiers, Effort sponsored a 5k race, which was held in Liberia in January. As a result, 30 students were able to win trade school scholarships to study vocations like cosmetology, sewing, and masonry.
Effort’s story, however, really begins several years before their initial trip, with a letter to the editor written by a former pastor which appeared in the Religious Herald. The letter attracted the attention of Emile Sam-Peale, a Liberian student at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, because his church in Liberia had the same name.
Sam-Peale wrote a letter to the Palmyra church noting the coincidence, and a meeting was arranged. He brought a group of Liberian refugees for worship and — in true Baptist fashion — lunch. Out of that celebration a relationship was born that has lasted over a decade and taken more than 50 church members to the war-ravaged West African nation, some of them on a yearly basis.
The continuing partnership between the Efforts — which they call “The Way” — is the result of what Clifford calls “God coincidences,” and she says there have been many.
“They [the Liberians] still say God used us to show them there was hope,” she notes.
June Clifford, pastor of Effort Baptist Church, with Liberians who competed in a 5K race to win trade school scholarships.
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In the beginning the Palmyra church recognized a need they could meet and responded by sending supplies for orphans. They have since progressed to the point of sending entire containers.
Clifford’s enthusiasm and love for Liberia are contagious.
“Once you have the vision, and you articulate it, other people join you,” she said.
This year the Virginia Baptist Mission Board wired $5,000 to Liberia to keep programs there operating.
In 2011 Clifford’s church was able to raise $10,000 for trade school scholarships, $3,000 of which was contributed by the Mission Board.
Looking for ways to help children reenter society after years as soldiers, Effort sponsored a 5k race, which was held in Liberia in January. As a result, 30 students were able to win trade school scholarships to study vocations like cosmetology, sewing, and masonry.
Clifford says church members came together to help make it happen. “I knew nothing about races.” But a young man in the church who has since become a youth minister had run races throughout his young life and was able to organize the event, she says.
Inspired by the race, people in the United States participated in half marathons, seeking sponsorships to fund more trade scholarships.
“One church member, who just started running in the last year, did her first half marathon and raised $1,500,” said Clifford, who has run a half marathon herself — and, with the help of her church, raised $3,000 in the process.
“God just shows you something and you believe it. I shared the vision and everybody wrapped their minds and hearts around it.”
In another unexpected event, a church member and military veteran got a call from a woman in Iraq with whom he had previously served. The U.S. military had received a shipment of sunglasses, shirts, soccer balls and mosquito nets to distribute to Iraqis, but because the shipment hadn’t been sent through the proper channels, she had been instructed to toss them out.
Remembering a prior conversation about Liberia she had with the church member she offered to send the supplies there. The church was able to secure a container.
Clifford laughed when talking about the joy of passing out these supplies, which would have been thrown away.
“We gave sunglasses to the guards, mosquito nets to the orphanages. Soccer balls and t-shirts with Iraq stamped on them were all over Liberia.”
The Palmyra church makes Liberia a central focus “This is our mission. It’s a country that a little old church like us has adopted.”
And it’s a churchwide effort. “We are passionate about Liberia. People here just find their place in the mission.”
An offering collected during the church’s Vacation Bible School goes to Liberia, as does a hunger offering collected during Lent. Lenten boxes distributed Feb. 19 will be filled with donations for Liberia to be collected at Easter.
In addition, the church sponsors yard sales and church members sew pillowcase dresses for orphans — last year more than 200 of them and so far this year, 80. A men’s Sunday school class raised money for zinc roofs for four churches in Liberia.
Meanwhile, Effort’s teams have started heading to more remote areas of the country, which are more dangerous. Clifford says the church feels it’s important because the young people there have so little.
The task is hard, Clifford says. But Effort is still on a mission, partnering with Liberia’s Effort Baptist Church to shine the light of hope and spread the gospel, in a place that almost a decade later can still be “dark and frightening.”
Erin Spickard, based in Nathalie, Va., is a contributing writer for the Religious Herald.