Are You a Doctor?

That's a question I am asked often whenever I go into town. It's understandable since I work on a hospital ship. Truth be told, I've been known to feel faint at the sight of blood.

Lately I've been asked the medical question not just by Liberians but by people who are reading my blog. It occurred to me that I haven't written much about what my job is here in Liberia with Mercy Ships.

This past September I moved from the Chaplaincy (member care) department and began working with the Adult Basic Education team, teaching adult literacy. Our international team is currently made up of 3 women; from France, Lithuania, and myself from the US.

My first experience was in Benin where our team trained 18 local facilitators to teach literacy classes. I oversaw 6 classes, in a village called Hevie, that began in December and are still continuing even though the ship has left. A friend wrote about one of the classes in Hevie here.

Now in Liberia where statistics say the literacy rate is around 40%(the local people laugh at that statistic and say it is much lower) our team has been training 11 facilitators for the past 3 weeks. We are set to open up 3 classes this week. I will be overseeing and teaching for the next month and slowly handing the class over to the facilitators who will keep it going after we leave.

Here in Liberia we are focusing on equipping the churches. So, we are working closely with United Methodist Churches(UMC) and The Association of Evangelicals in Liberia(AEL). It has been a privilege to work alongside the churches in a country that desparately needs the healing work of Jesus Christ.

I would ask for prayer as we start up the classes. The location I will be working in is called Congo Town at the Victory Outreach Church. Directly across the street from the church is a large building that once was the Minstry of Health building before the war. This site was sacked and burned during the war and now has become a squatter camp for people who have no where else to go because their homes were destroyed by the rebels. I am praying for an opportunity to visit this site and invite any interested to come to the classes.

Stay tuned for more...