Christmas...

On Christmas Day we spent the day swimming in the sea first thing and then with various American missionary friends and their families. It was lasagne for lunch and we shared the small Christmas pudding we had brought with us. They insisted on calling it figgy pudding and sang along but I don’t think it was very popular (maybe it’s an acquired taste!) We then Skyped and phoned our families which was lovely.

The weather has been uncharacteristic, it is meant to be the dry season but we had a huge tropical storm on Christmas Day evening, which brought the temperature down wonderfully (to 26°C!) The humidity is the real issue and we are getting used to it now. We know that on occasions we just have to rest in the late afternoon but mostly we are acclimatising. We seem to drink gallons. Our kidneys are writing a letter of complaint…

Just as an aside… We came across this large wall the other day painted pristine white and written in large red paint was the sentence “Only dogs peepee on this wall!” We had to giggle at that!

We went to Waterside the other day, which is a huge open air market with stalls and little shops selling everything from plastic buckets, live chickens, lapas (Liberian wrap skirts), to second hand toys, clothes and shoes. All markets are like a large jumble sale as all clothes toys and shoes are second hand. So when you hand in your old clothes etc. you know they really do get to countries like Liberia. It is rare and very expensive to find any new items here. We bought an odd collection of large saucepans and ladles for cooking Liberian “soup” (chicken stews really!), plastic containers for storing food away from ants, an ironing board (ironing is a hot but essential job to kill the mango fly larva which if not killed might burrow into your skin) and a water melon (Yum!)

Jenny has had many conversations with people in the education system and is beginning to form a picture of the needs which are considerable. She is impatient to get on but the school holiday goes on until 16th January! (That would make a few British children rather envious!) There is such a need for Education here. There are no free schools, some are very expensive and many children are not in school at all, as their parents cannot afford to send them, or in many cases they have no parents.

We have been befriended by two local Liberian girls. They live about 10minutes dirt road drive from here but they regularly visit us and seem to have adopted us as their second parents, even giving us local Bassa names. We went to visit their family and their father who has had a serious stroke and can no longer work has twice walked all the way to visit us. They had 12 children (not sure how many are their own or are adopted extended family members) but 5 died in the war!


Princess and Elizabeth and some of their family.

We had a great morning yesterday with the one of the leaders the ECUL church, Jeremiah and his wife, Annie. There is a good relationship between SIM and the Church but it needs developing. In recent times there has not been the mission personnel to take this forward. What we need now are the right people to come out and work with this young and growing church. We would like to see training in teaching, leadership, outreach and vocational opportunities to lead to sustainable development. The leaders of the church have meetings in early January and we hope and pray that they will appoint a person to be responsible for education in schools so that Jenny will have someone to work with.

For a real treat and to spend a little of our Christmas gift we went to a local hotel for the day earlier in the week. They have a lovely pool and beautiful garden area for relaxing and a wonderful beach with shaded loungers and we sat around chatting, reading and swimming all day. It was a wonderful luxurious break.

May God richly bless you in the New Year

Written in the cement of our front doorstep is “To God be the Glory”, always a good sentiment I think!

PS We have added some new photos to our photo gallery on the top right of this page...

Sunday

The Church that has been planted by SIM over the years is called the Evangelical Church Union of Liberia (ECUL). On Sunday, to round off their week of Annual Conference we went to their final worship service. The choirs were phenomenal and everyone sang, prayed and danced over a four hour service. The preaching was powerful, four men were ordained and Will was invited to say a few words as the new Director of SIM. We were given a very warm welcome.


We came home for a lunch of peanut butter and pineapple and a swim in the sea!

When we have sorted out our internet connection and have a bit more bandwidth we will post some video of some of the singing.

Later... We have sorted out our internet connection... so here is some video of some of the singing at the conference.

Settling in...

We went out trying to find furniture yesterday and although we were not successful it gave us some ideas to use a local carpenter, who we have asked to come next week. The furniture in the stores is extremely expensive and we believe that by asking a local carpenter to make something for us we will give to a local trade.


We also visited the local market with Annie, our Liberian friend who worked with us in the review earlier in the year. She helped to explain all the unrecognisable vegetables such as sweet potato leaves, water plant, palm nuts and a whole variety of beans etc. There was a selection of fresh fish and also a number of smoked fish which I think we will try very soon. Everyone seemed very friendly and a little crowd of curious children followed us around saying "hello" at regular intervals.
We had supper with the Director of Samaritan’s Purse and his family. They are from Canada and have 2 lovely adopted boys from Haiti. We really look forward to working alongside them in the future.

We Are Here!

We are sitting on our veranda in our new home in Liberia. It’s 29°C and we are enjoying a cooling sea breeze. We are watching a pair of multi-coloured lizards flirting with each other on the branches of the pine tree in front of us. We arrived in Liberia on the 23rd November at 5.00 in the morning having visited Casablanca and Freetown airports on the way. The second evening meal on the plane was served at 1.00am in the morning and was probably extra to our needs… We sat beside the team from The Times newspaper who were coming out here with Hugh Bonneville, an actor from Downton Abbey fame. They are here to prepare a piece for their Christmas charity appeal.


We have met a lot of people in the short time we have been here and remembering names and putting them to faces is already proving a challenge. We went to a traditional Thanksgiving supper with some of our new American friends, also with SIM. No Turkey but great chicken and of course pumpkin pie.

Our home is lovely; it has great potential but has been empty for a little while and is need of a little tlc. Work is calling and meetings are waiting but we need to sort a few essentials in the house first, like buying a fridge and a bed etc. We ate our porridge this morning to the sound of rousing African choruses wafting over from the next door compound, a sound so familiar from our time in Swaziland. It’s great to have a sense of being in a place where we believe God wants us to be.

Thinking of all our friends and relatives in the UK … has it stopped snowing yet?

Excitement twinged with nerves...

We have got to that stage where people are saying to us, “Are you still here?” We do apologise for still being here and yes we are here until the 23rd November when we fly to Liberia. The other comment we hear a lot is “You must be really excited!” Well, yes we are, but the excitement is tinged with nervousness... Have we packed the right things? Have we got the right documents? Will our old and decrepit bodies adapt to the heat and humidity? Is it possible to sweat in a ladylike way? (Jenny’s problem!) Can we do the job? (both of our problems!) But we always come back to the fact that this is God’s work we are embarking on, and all things are possible in His strength.


It has been really good to spend time with our family over the past few weeks, putting the world to rights, chilling over a good meal and saying our farewells. Six months ago we did not realise how difficult it would be to say goodbye to close friends, and we hope to stay closely in touch with you all

If you want to know a bit more about the background of Liberia, Jenny has just finished reading an excellent book called “The House at Sugar Beach” by Helene Cooper. It gives a fascinating insight into the lives of Liberians and some of the recent history. Well worth a read…

Finally… Anybody know how to get six suitcases and two adults down to Heathrow for 2 pm on 23rd November? Any suggestions/offers of help welcome.

We Have a Date

We are now back in the UK and are officially nomads. If you find us wandering the streets, please take us home for a hot meal and a bath! Actually, we are being very well looked after by Jenny's Mum and friends from church and will be visiting around the UK to say our various goodbyes.

We have booked our tickets and we hope to be flying to Monrovia, Liberia on the 23rd November. It feels great to know that we are finally on our way after so  much preparation. We just want to say a big thank you to all those who are supporting us.

Moving on

Several months ago, when we decided to go to Liberia, moving out of our house seemed a small task! How wrong could we be!! After 20 years of living in one place and collected endless clutter (let me tell you, teachers are extremely talented at collecting useful clutter!) we have finally moved out. The attic is now groaning with the boxes of stuff we are storing for the future and we have bought a 20 foot container which is on a friends local farm and is now jam packed full of our furniture.  We spent the last week living on a mattress on the floor and a couple of picnic chairs in the main room while we finished painting and cleaning. Our tenants moved in on 8th October and we are now officially nomads. We are staying between relatives, mostly Jenny's mum and good friends from our church, who have a holiday cottage that they let out.

At present we are in the States. We have spent the last 4 days at Charlotte, N. Carolina at SIM International Headquarters. We have had a fantastic time meeting up with some wonderful folk who have worked in Liberia for many years. They told us many of their stories of  how they built the radio station and started the hospital to how they survived the war and their evacuations.

Lunch at SIM USA Headquarters in Charlotte with some of those who have served with SIM in Liberia in the past.

We have listened to some extremely good advice and our brains are now stuffed to capacity with information and we are eager to get to Liberia now and begin our own work.

Before we go though we are saying our goodbyes to family and friends which is a fun but also painful time. We are here at the moment in New York spending time with Matt and Jo and our beautiful granddaughter, Beatrice, and will be home again on 18th October.

Powerpoint presentation on what we are hoping to do in Liberia.

This is a slightly edited version of the presentation we have been using to show to supporters and those interested in what we are hoping to do in Liberia. Hope it gives you a bit more of an idea of what we are going to do. Will and Jenny Elphick's Liberia Presentation

Progress so far...

We have half the financial support we need to get us out to Liberia and we are very thankful to those who have agreed to support us. We need to raise an additional £1200/month. Do you feel able to be a partner in our work and commit to a monthly donation?

Here are the details…

We need to raise money for our flights, rent, support services from SIM, pensions, food and living costs, medical insurance and yes, evacuation insurance too - hoping the last one is not needed…! We’ve always wanted to ride in a hellicopter but a trip over Niagara falls may be more fun than an emergency evacuation out of Liberia.

Although the rent from our house,and the generosity of our church will go some way to our target figure of £2300/month, we still have a lot to raise. It may be helpful to break it down and see what sort of possible combination of donations are needed.

If… 

2 people give £100 a month

9 people give £50 a month

20 people give £10 a month

25 people give £5 a month

And with 25% received in Gift Aid from refunded taxes, we are off to Liberia! If you want a ‘Standing Order Form’ this is the address to go to www.sim.co.uk/sof or donate online at www.sim.co.uk/donate.

No matter how small or large your donation is, we would be delighted for you to join our team of supporters. You will become an important, indeed essential part of the team as we do this work in Liberia. We will keep you informed of our successes and failures; hopefully not too many of the latter, and we can assure you that you will be truly valued.

Someone said to us recently, if God wants you to go to Liberia, he isn’t going to send you without the finance to do the job and we know in our head this is true. We just need to trust Him “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” Phil 4:19

We are really excited about our future but there are moments of nerves and the hardest part of our preparation is the fund-raising. It doesn’t come naturally to ask for money and we have to remind ourselves that is it all part of God’s plan. He wants people to be involved in His work in Liberia through prayer and financial giving.

Presentation on "What we are going to be doing in Liberia"

We are doing a presentation on what we are going to be doing in Liberia at Stonham Baptist Church, Little Stonham (on the A140) on 7th June at 7.45. We would love to see anyone who is able to come along. We will put the presentation on our blog afterwards...

Wet Saturday Afternoon

As Will has mentioned we are busy sorting the house out ready to rent it out and as is often the way when you start painting one wall the next looks like it needs a good lick of paint too. So after a few visits to the DIY store we have begun the task. Will is better with the roller and I with a paint brush but in all honesty I don't think anyone would employ us!

I realise that we are in a process of transition and as the time goes by it is interesting to experience a growing sense of removal from our daily work-lives. Parts of my responsibility are already being handed on to others and there are moments when I feel quite detached as meetings are held at my school to discuss the appointment of the next headteacher. Meetings to which I am not to play a part. I am however praying for a great replacement as is Will for his role at SIM.

I am conscious that many of the young people with whom we will come in contact in Liberia have been through very difficult times. They have experienced 14 years of civil war and for many this will have been the majority of their life. Many were used as child soldiers and saw things happen in their lives that no-one should ever have to see! The murder of family members or the abduction of siblings. This must have lead to many young lives being traumatised. In a small effort to try to understand and be prepared, I have signed up for a set of seminars on Resilience which deal with how emotions effect learning and personality and how to deal with young people who have been traumatised.

Here is a video from YouTube that gives an insight into the lives of girl soldiers from Liberia. It breaks your heart!

Taking time for sentiment...

One of the things I was not looking forward to doing before we go out to Liberia was clearing out our house after having lived in it for twenty years. But in some ways it’s very therapeutic, all those old paint tins you have been keeping just in case you need to do a “touch up” job but for some reason have never used, bits of carpet stored in the loft from when you first moved in and for some unexplained reason have kept thinking that they may be useful, clothes that don’t fit or are some throwback to the ‘70s.

Jenny and I have decided it’s time to be brutal, so we have piles to go to the dump and piles to go to the charity shop and smaller piles that have too much sentimental value that we have to keep them. “The Boy’s World “ book from my Granny published in 1960, with amazing stories about Climbing Mount Everest and the Mystery Lives of Salmon and Eels or a songbook I put together when I went out to work in Sierra Leone in 1974 with a prayer in the back of it that I wrote when I first became a Christian. Fond memories of people and places in the midst of taking the opportunity to get rid of the rubbish…

Decision Made...

Hallelujah! We’ve made the decision! Since we were asked to consider the possibility of Will and I going to Liberia in West Africa and for Will to lead the work of SIM as Director SIM Liberia my brain has hardly stopped thinking about the pros and cons.

Initial reactions were….where? Where is Liberia, and after a session with our newly acquired world atlas, I had some information to go on. A trip to the internet came next and I feel that I have now scratched the surface of the country and have a little knowledge about her history. The country has been through some rather sad years but is now beginning to look much rosier. Will and I have spent many hours discussing Liberia, and many prayers later and in response to God’s leading we have made the decision! WE ARE GOING!!

Back in February we both went to Liberia to help with the SIM review process. Joshua Bogunjoko, the Deputy International Director for SIM, invited us to join the team and spend 10 days in the country interviewing Liberians to discover what the locals wished SIM to be doing for their country.

Following 14 years of civil war we were humbled to meet such dedicated people who had a clear vision of where their country should be going and how they should be going there! We loved their independent spirit, and the fact that although the average Liberian lives on $1 a day no-one ever suggested that they were a poor country, in fact one pastor described his country as a poor rich country!!

The potential is huge and in many ways the country feels that it is at a crossroads, and there is a real will to make life work for the best. Women who had been struggling to fend for their families during the war while their men were away fighting have learnt the benefits of being entrepreneurial and wish to continue learning. Schools that have been burnt out or destroyed need rebuilding, children who have missed their schooling need an education. New teachers need training, Churches need rebuilding and pastors equipped to shepherd their congregation. It is clear there is a will for all of this and more, however there will be problems along the way, lack of resources, and skills and knowledge hover on the horizon. However to the huge credit of the people, is the work undertaken to bring reconciliation to the warring factions. The war was mostly the result of war lords and their supporters fighting for power. It was sad that many children became involved in this war and the work of reconciliation and forgiveness is hard, but essential, in the future development of the country. In all the communities we visited there were people from both sides of the war beginning the process of living and working together. We were really impressed with this work but realise our visit was short and we have a simplified understanding which we hope will develop into a better understanding in the future years we will be living there.

So, I hear you ask, what were the pros and cons? Well, since returning from Swaziland in Southern Africa, all those years ago, after living there for 8 years, our hearts have always had a little of Africa in them and we always said that one day we hoped to return! Will as you may know was born in Nigeria and has a little more African blood flowing through his veins than I do. We do have a real desire to serve, and listening to God as He has prompted us over the last few months has made it quite clear that this is where He wants us to serve. Using our human intellect (which is not all that great we admit!!) we realise that we may have some of the skills that Liberia could use, Will in leadership and management in a variety of placements, and I in my education background. But God hasn’t left us to make the decision on our own and any number of times he has used the bible or a word from a friend or a message on Sunday morning to confirm in our hearts that we are doing the right thing for Him.

So what about the cons!! Well…. There are a few!! Leaving our families for one! My Mum, lives in Mendlesham, Suffolk, and is not so young, although thank God at present well and very active! She has a lovely, relatively new, husband Frank. He keeps us all amused and is an excellent husband and adopted dad for us. Will’s mum and stepfather are getting older too and live in Hampshire. Praise God our parents have been very supportive (but as we plan to move in with my mum and Frank in the Autumn this may change!!? Ha! Ha!) We have one son, Matthew, and beautiful daughter in-law, Jo, in New York and they have a gorgeous daughter, our granddaughter (rather obviously …sorry) Beatrice, who is now nearly 1 year old. We have a second son, Jonathan, who lives in London and who we see a little more often. Both Matt and Jonny have been positive about our new adventure however we are conscious that we will miss them both and don’t want to get out of touch or miss Beatrice growing up. Of course we have some terrific friends who are always there for us and we hope they feel that we have been and will be there for them too! It has not been at all easy to think that we will miss them all so much! We have said that to help with staying touch with all our friends and family we will return home for 2 months every year in the middle of the rainy season when apparently work slows down anyway. So we will be home around June and July or July August, it’s not definite yet.

The climate has been another con. It is consistently very hot and very humid. For 5 months of the year, April to September, it rains fairly hard and fairly constantly, apparently we will get used to sweating profusely but this does give me some concern as with my fair skin and gingerish hair. I don’t think God made me for hotter climates, however I’m trusting that I will acclimatise! I’ll keep you informed!

On balance though we are delighted, excited, nervous, wondering, hopeful, terrified, certain, all in equal parts and I hope that you can join with us in prayer as we engage with this transition time of preparing for life in Liberia.