The projects listed below are well suited for churches, and many have been sponsored by church groups in the past:
- Taking part in the Into Africa prayer ministry.
- Supporting missionaries who are a part of the Into Africa Project.
- Raising funds for the printing and distribution of Bibles and literature.
- Raising funds for bicycles and motor cycles in support of the VCP program.
- Adopting a VCP training center or VCP country (four training centers). A single church in Kansas has adopted four training centers and a coordinator in Liberia (click here for link).
- Adopting the kick-off leaders' banquet or three year leadership program in a country.
- Supporting widows and orphans through the compassion ministries of the Into Africa Project.
Click here to view motorcycles and bicycles donated to the Into Africa Project by a church in the United States.
The article below describes how a small church in rural Kansas responded to God's call to become involved in the Lord's work in Liberia...
A Small Kansas Church Brings Hope in Liberia
In June 2008, a team from a small Kansas church of just over 400 people traveled to Liberia, West Africa, on a short-term mission. Before arriving, the team received an e-mail message from their host, encouraging them to “… remember to serve in the name of Christ so that people can experience a new walk, a new outlook and a renewed hope.” Take a virtual journey to Africa with this incredible team below, bringing hope…and receiving it.
The rural people of Africa are often called the “forgotten people.” Recently, a mission team from Kansas traveled to Liberia, West Africa, to the obscure village of Mambo to tell the believers gathered there, “You are not forgotten.” The message reverberated from this westernmost region of Liberia all the way to the remote eastern county of Sinoe.
Short-Term Mission Team from Kansas
with Varney on His New Motorcycle
In order to gain a sense of history in the unfolding of this story, travel back in time to 1992. The Liberian civil war was raging, and thousands of Liberians had fled their homeland to neighboring countries. At the Budaburam Liberian refugee camp in nearby Ghana, one refugee named Henry Peabody, desperate for help, picked up a telephone book and made a persistent call to the pastor of a church in southern Kansas. The connection made in this phone call between Peabody and Pastor Wade Graber resulted in many relationships being established through the years and a course being charted from Kansas across the ocean to West Africa.
Come along and watch as numerous evangelistic outreaches are held in Liberia, coupled with sweet times of strengthening the Church. See connections made with Liberian believers such as Abraham Pantoe, a friend of Peabody’s, who endured the brutality of civil war to graduate from the seminary in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. Watch as Abraham begins a Gospel ministry in Sinoe, an area steeped in traditional ritualistic religion that is overtly hostile to the Gospel.
Turn the calendar forward to December 2006, and sit in on an OMS seminar that focuses on OMS’ Every Community for Christ (ECC) village church-planting project. Meet the ECC country coordinator, Pastor Sam Greene, a big-hearted and authoritative man, and his associate pastor, Richard Roberts. Meet fellow Liberian pastors Bai Anderson and Varney Freeman, a former Muslim. At this seminar, the hearts of these Liberian church leaders are knit together with those of Pastor Graber and the OMS leaders with the common purpose of village church planting.
Pastor Greene and the four trainers (Anderson, Freeman, Pantoe and Roberts), are now planting dozens of churches in Liberia. From the remote, hostile county of Sinoe in the east to the heavily Muslim Cape Mount County in the west…this is village church planting at its truest. It is to this place that the team from Kansas traveled on their recent summer mission.
Pastor Graber Helped Baptize 21 New Liberian Believers
Walk with us to the banks of the Mambo River, deep in the dense semi-jungle area of western Liberia, and watch as 21 believers enter the baptismal waters. Three of these are village church planters eager to spread the Gospel; all will face hardship of some kind for publicly claiming the name of Christ.
Varney Freeman now pastors a church in Mambo. When asked of his needs for ministry, he replied, “If you could give me less, so that I could give my church planters more, that is all I ask.” Nine of his church planters sat before him that day at the church service with believers from each of their villages. As these nine stood during the service to receive prayers of blessing, we truly felt as if we were standing on holy ground. The message from Pastor Graber to the believers gathered that day was simply, “You are not forgotten.”
Travel now to the eastern county of Sinoe (a journey the mission team did not make), and see Abraham Pantoe traveling by foot three weeks each month to spread the Gospel. Recruiting pastors and persons of peace has been difficult work in Sinoe County, “almost another country,” according to Liberians. “Heartmen” (ritual killers) are at work in this area; indeed, just weeks before the team arrived in Liberia, the pastor of a church in Abraham’s village was the victim of a brutal ritual killing, and the church was temporarily closed. But you can still witness the depth of joy in Abraham’s heart as he quietly speaks of God’s faithfulness.
Medical Volunteers
from the Kansas Team Treated Dozens
of Liberian Patients During the Six-Day Clinic
Now come along with us to a motorcycle shop on a busy street in downtown Monrovia as we meet with Varney and Abraham one last time before our departure from Liberia. Each has received Bibles, as well as provisions for physical needs, for their church planters and churches. But for these two men, who travel deep into jungle areas and across remote distances for their ministries, today brings the gift of a new motorbike for each—a gift that brings grateful, joyful smiles to their faces. These motorbikes (see photo above) will cut weeks of work into days and days of work into hours.
So, these are some of the men, clear in their vision and call, of whose work it was said recently, “It seems to us that God is going ahead of us and that we are going to have to run to keep up with Him.” We can never forget these men and women of God in a far-off land who have so pointedly stepped into our hearts and lives. As Samuel promised to the people of Israel who pled for his prayers so long ago, we also commit to pray faithfully for these in Africa: “As for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:23). No, these believers are not forgotten, nor, indeed, can they ever be.
By Liz McNown, short-term missionary and member of the Eldorado, Kansas, church team.
Reprinted with permission from OMS Outreach magazine, One Mission Society.
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