Three years ago, I met Oliver Sakor at the baggage claim at the airport in Accra, Ghana. He was waiting there as he did most days, hoping travelers would trust him to carry their luggage for a little money.
For Oliver, those tips weren’t luxuries — they were survival. Each day was uncertain. Each transaction meant the difference between eating or going hungry.
Oliver had lived in the Buduburam refugee camp. He went there at age 4, fleeing the Liberian civil war with his father. When his father died 13 years later, Oliver became another statistic: a young man alone in a sprawling camp with no safety net, no guarantee of tomorrow. Yet somehow he finished high school while working odd jobs and sleeping on friends’ floors.
Henry Peabody (left) and Oliver Sakor (right)
That afternoon at baggage claim, he came up to me with a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Sir, you dropped this.” In the chaos of travelers and luggage carts, I didn’t notice the bill had fallen out of my pocket. Oliver did.
When he came to me and told me I’d dropped the money, I was skeptical. He could have kept it without consequence. I never would have known. Instead, he chose honesty over opportunity. That kind of integrity told me a lot about the character of this young man.
As we talked, I discovered Oliver was from Liberia. His story mirrored my own in ways that shook me: a refugee, a survivor, a young man who’d learned to hope in hopeless places. You see, I had spent seven years in that same refugee camp, leaving Liberia for the same reason he did. I knew firsthand what it was like to look for food each day.
I split that hundred dollars with Oliver and invited him to help me distribute food and water at the Buduburam Camp the next day. He arrived before dawn.
Over the following weeks, something remarkable happened. A friend saw our mission work on social media and sent funds via wire transfer. To collect it, I would need to stand in line at the bank for hours with my passport — a logistical nightmare. Oliver had a local ID. The process would be simple for him, so I gave him another opportunity to prove himself. I asked him to go to the bank and withdraw the money, a substantial amount for any Liberian, and asked him to bring it back to me with the receipt. I had known him for barely two weeks. By any rational measure, giving him access to that money was reckless. He could have disappeared, and I would have had no recourse. But I felt called to trust him.
Oliver returned with every dollar and the receipt.
“That act of faithfulness unlocked something in both of us.”
That act of faithfulness unlocked something in both of us. With those funds, we helped dozens of families who had food insecurity. But more importantly, it became the foundation for a deeper conversation.
Oliver asked me how I’d survived the camp. How I’d kept hope alive. I told him the truth: Jesus Christ. “Without my faith, I honestly don’t know where I would be,” I said. I encouraged him to seek God, to grow in faith, to place his trust in Christ. We prayed together. He began attending a Bible-believing church.
Henry Peabody, third from right, stands with young men at the Buduburam Refugee Camp in October 2023. (Photo courtesy Henry Peabody)
Two years passed. When my wife and I visited Ghana again, Oliver was at the airport, offering his help. Over time, he became a blessing to everyone around him. But I could see something else in him too — a hunger for more. A desire to build something with his life. Last November, I asked him directly: “What do you want for your future?”
With quiet determination, he told me, “I want to return to school.” He was drawn to computer cybersecurity, a skill he believed could help him build a better life and eventually contribute to rebuilding his own country. He didn’t want to return to Liberia empty-handed. He wanted to return with something to offer.
As he spoke, I reflected on my story. At age 25, someone believed in me when I had nothing. Michael Helms, who was a pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Moultrie, Ga., gave me a chance when my future looked impossible. He helped me secure a study visa from Liberia to the United States. Having secured my entry and partial scholarship to a Baptist college, something that would not be possible today under new immigration rules, I started a new life and eventually graduated from Mercer University.
And now, here was Oliver asking for the same gift I’d been given.
My wife and I prayed about it. We helped him begin his college journey. Oliver needed $3,000 for his two-year program. We committed to covering the first thousand, and he enrolled at IPMC College of Technology and started classes.
But the greatest miracle came quietly, almost as an afterthought. One year ago, Oliver accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. When I asked him recently how that decision had changed him, he smiled and said it was one of the greatest joys he’d ever experienced.
“The greatest miracle came quietly, almost as an afterthought.”
Oliver’s story is simple, really. A young man in a refugee camp. A hundred-dollar bill. A choice to be honest. A willingness to trust. A decision to believe.
Some people do not believe that caring for people’s physical needs and helping them achieve their goals and dreams can translate into a spiritual transformation. But I am proof that it can. So is Oliver.
His story shows what happens when someone sees your potential before you do. When someone invests in your future, even when the odds say they shouldn’t, people are changed forever. When you invest in someone because others have invested in you, and you do it because of your love for God, the possibility of that love changing a person forever increases.
Even in the most challenging places to live, God still raises hope. God still changes lives. God still honors honesty, faithfulness and perseverance. The refugee camp didn’t destroy Oliver’s future. By God’s grace, it became the place where his hope rose and blossomed like the crocus in the desert.
Henry Peabody is a humanitarian and pastor who leads Liberian Mission Outreach.