Liberia

Well after much prayer and discussion my office decided it would be best if I go and help out at another office while things get sorted out in Zimbabwe.  The process there is going quite slowly and while we are waiting for registration to happen I can be of use in another place.  My heart breaks for the people there and I hope to be back soon.

So I am now in Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa.

Liberia has just come out of a 14 year brutal civil war and is working to rebuild its self.  The office is pretty big here with about 200 staff doing all sorts of projects.  One really nice part of this office is we are right near the ocean.

I will give more updates but for more info on Liberia check out: 

www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/li.html

More later 

How much sugar do you have?

A friend of one my staff had a knock on their door last night.  It was the police investigating some horrible criminal activity.  Earlier in the day, the mother of the family had gone and purchased about 40 pounds of sugar to get them through the month.  She had purchased the sugar from a local wholesaler.  However, she had purchased the sugar at a higher price then she should have.  This was because sugar has a fixed price that is so low no shop owner can afford to sell it at that price.  So, needing sugar for her family she had to make the difficult choice to either go without or pay the higher price.

Later that night, the police arrived, asking about the sugar; accusing her of hoarding it.  You see, since sugar is so hard to find, to have that much is suspicious.  They also demanded to know how much she paid for it.  Well they went on to search the whole house even into the attic crawl space looking for more.  

Eventually they left, taking the sugar.  They sold the sugar outside her fence for a 1/5 of the price pocketing the money.

What does 84 Billion Dollars get you...

I have been around this country for a while now but I think this is the worse I have seen it. I asked my staff and many of them also agree we are in some of the worse times. The markets have always been a bit bare but this week has been especially bad (see photos below - cell phone pictures taken at one of the largest super markets here). 84 Billion might buy you a few loaves of bread (currently 25 Billion for one loaf) or a bit of meat if you could find it but for most people even this amount is out of their budget. Many people only earn around 200 Billion a month, which barely gets them to and from work. Now with many countries not allowing products in, and with the country providing the paper on which the currency is printed stopping its supply we may be in a bit of tough spot for a while. This country has one of the worst economies in the world but some of the highest prices for commodities as almost everything has to be imported. I went to buy a surge protector and found it was $200 USD - guess I will hold off on that for a while!

It is hard to say what the future holds but we ask for your prayers.

Pray for the people of this country
Pray for our registration process to be pushed through
Pray for Justice and Peace