Beautiful kids!

My Church in Liberia

Liberia!

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I just want everyone to know how much I love and appreciate you all!! I wish I had time to write a personal letter to each one of you who are thinking and praying for me but please know I think about you all often. I send you all Valentine’s Day hugs through the email and a BIG SMILE I hope you can picture on my face! You all mean so much to me and I thank you daily for your support and encouragement to me to be living in Africa, desiring to love those I meet, share all the medical knowledge I have with those I am supervising, sharing the Love, Joy, Peace, and Hope of the Lord with the people God brings into my life, desiring to disciple, build up the body of Christ, pray against the eveil I see here, and ask the Lord to open the Flood gates of Heaven on Liberia.

Sorry for the lack of emails over the last month. Please know that my lack of correspondence reflects nothing of how much I think and pray for my friends, family, and prayer warriors back in America!

It is Pineapple season in Liberia and Mango season is almost here. I have been eating a pineapple a day!! You can get three huge pineapple for $1.00 USD. We are now in Dry season and the Dust is intense. Red, thick dust covers all the trees along the road covering the dense green forests. Dry season is so much different than rainy season. I think I told you about the rainstorms I experienced when I first got here. They would be so severe that we would have to stop our car and just sit through the storm because the rain was so heavy you couldn’t see through the window and the car would shake from the thunder so much that you were in danger to be pushed over. During dry season you can’t see rain! People said that a few years ago during the war and before the war there were no handpumps or hand wells and the water was so scarce that you were not even aloud to take baths. Every drop of water was used to cook or to drink. Living in this dusty time I can not even imagine that! I am pretty much dirty all the time. The temperature has been dropping though. At night I even had to put on a fleece to stay warm some nights!

Oh how much I have to share and to talk about. I will use this email to sum up my many adventures and then if you want more details I will fill them in on my blog!

Christmas time in Liberia was beautiful and it was my first green, hot, beach, sand, and sun Christmas and one I will never forget. I spent the few days around the holiday surfing and swimming in the ocean every day. I find the ocean to be a place that is so peaceful and where I can just walk and talk to God so freely. I am continually in awe with His creation, His power!

I had the opportunity to talk at a Christian Youth Conference in Kakata, Liberia over the Christmas and New Year holiday!! It was a great time of challenging the youth to live their lives focused on Jesus Christ and setting an example in Speech, Life, Love, Faith, and in Purity. There are so many struggles that the youth face in Liberia and to have an opportunity to talk with them, encourage them, share real life stories with them, worship, and read scripture with them, I was so encouraged and built up in the body of Christ. 45 students gave their life to the Lord and rededicated their lives to God!

New Years I celebrated while camping on the beach with the Waines Family. We were swimming in the ocean at midnight with thick phosphorescence all around us! If you have never swam in warm ocean water filled with phosphorescence before the only way I can describe it is large sparkles of glitter all around your body, looking like you are bathing in the stars. It is truly amazing!

The beginning of January I was busy making final visits to the 10 clinics Equip has. I love visiting the staff and spending time with them. We performed some 3 day workshops for the staff to teach and review topics such as Maternal/Child Health, Emergency Care, Growth Monitoring for children under 5, Universal Precautions, and Malaria guidelines and protocols for treatment. I love having the opportunity to teach at these workshops. The clinic staff members are so hungry for knowledge and love to learn. We did a lot of group work and had them do a lot of presentation for the group concerning the different areas of discussion.

The second two weeks of January I became the Chairperson of the Nimba County Health Fair Committee!!!! Wow! I was given this title when I was absent at the County Health Team Meeting in early January and the CHO (County Health Officer) Dr. Jebbeh-Howe decided to put me in charge of the first ever health fair in Nimba County! Teaches me to miss a meeting! I spent many days preparing for the Fair, holding meetings, getting people excited, learning how events are held in Liberia, and praying for the blessings of the Lord in every step. It was a great time because I had the opportunity to really get to know the Important people in Liberia in regards to health care. They all ask me if I will come live in Nimba and join them on the County Health Team, helping better the medical system in Nimba.

We had a celebration of one of the new clinic buildings we opened in Nimba! It was so fun!!! This clinic is serving so many people in Ivory Coast as well as Liberia so it was a neat celebration seeing the two people groups celebrating together. This clinic is 5 hours away from the nearest hospital on a terrible road. Some people will walk up to three days to get to the clinic, sleeping in the bush, so the grand opening of this building was a HUGE celebration.

We also celebrated Equip 10 year anniversary serving the people of Liberia. It was a great night sharing the joys, struggles, and visions of Equip! To hear about the struggles Equip went through desiring to care for the people of Liberia during the war, offering them public health teaching, vaccinations, and encouraging Spiritual growth for each individual in the communities is so inspiring to me!

February has been busy already. I helped run another medical workshop for the members of the clinic. I love using my love for medicine and my passion for caring for the sick to teach the people of Liberia different health care topics. I am also heading up the clinic monthly supervision that we are starting completing a checklist in each facility monthly to make sure that the progress we have made goes forward and not regresses.

This week there has been a large Christian Crusade happening in Ganta with a Christian church from Monrovia! It has been so fun to praise the Lord with around 4 to 5 thousand people underneath the stars all night long!

Today I saw the power of the Lord in a mighty way! We were driving from Gblarlay, which is about 5 hours away from where I live in Ganta on an awful road. We were carrying a 9-year-old girl who was suffering from Sleenomegly (enlarged Spleen), which was so large it was protruding from her abdomen when she laid down. She was in severe pain and urinating blood. I knew that we had to get her evaluated so I thank God that we were in Gblarlay and were able to transfer her to the hospital. But on the way to the hospital to bring the small girl we turned the corner on the dirt road and were the first bystanders to A HUGE car accident on a dirt bridge. The van had been driving fast on the dirt road and the tire had popped right over the bridge. They flipped over landing on the hood with the nose of the van hanging over a bridge. 11 people inside, one was a mother with a small baby. I saw them climbing out of the shattered windows, barely able to get out under the crushed hood, the car just hanging there. No one killed, the mother and a baby inside were OK, one man suffering from head trauma who was underneath all the goods that were in the car, and one man's wrist that looked broken. I grabbed all 11 of them pulled them into a circle and just started praying, thanking God for His safety and His provision in their lives and for His mercy. I grabbed some cardboard and splinted the wrist of the man and we just started praying over the swelling!! By the time we finally flipped the car over, having to drag it back so we didn't flip it over and it landed in the river below, and took the man to the hospital with another one of the other men in the car, the doctor took off the splint and I know that the power of God made his wrist straight! The swelling had gone down, the bone looked straight, and we just wrapped it and thanked God for His healing, nothing was broken, he was moving his wrist and all his fingers. WOW! What a day! Thank God for life!

6 kids off the street just accepted the Lord into their Lives!!! Praise God!! 25 kids came running and dancing up to me off the street wanting me to give them money for them to buy a new soccer ball. I recognized one of the young girls and she had come to the children's Bible study we have at 4 pm on Sunday afternoons and so I asked the other children why they were not at Bible study with her. I started talking to them about football and I just started talking to them about what the Bible says about how physical training is of some value but Godliness is what we should be training for. Then I asked them if anyone wanted to know about God, how they could have a personal friendship with God, and know if they died they would be going to heaven! It was a precious time. These 25 rowdy kids sat on the grass and listened to me and another Liberian women share about the greatness of our God!! It was another moment in Liberia that I will never forget!

Births are all over the place and the babies are so so so cute!! The women here are so tough, walking home hours after their delivery to the next town. I have been doing a lot in the communities and clinics in regards to education and encouragement.

An update on some of my good friends in Liberia.

Peterson is struggling. He is the young boy suffering from lymphoma. He is living with his family in the bush at a country medicine doctor’s home. I am bringing the family dressing materials, medicines if he needs them, soap, and lots and lots of prayer. I feel so much for this family. They love their boy so much! Thank you all who have helped me be able to bless their family. Every time I go he is smiling at me and asks me, “What’s Up?” He is such a blessing in my life and I thank God that I have the chance to know him.

One of my good friends at the leprosy clinic died a few weeks ago. His name was Sunday Bia. Many of the children that I spend time with and know well are connected closely to the leprosy clinic so many of my friends were grieving the loss of their father, brother, husband, and friend. It was so hard for me. I will miss him dearly. He always had so much Joy on his face.

Elijah is now selling eggs and Kerosene to make money for him and his family. He is doing well and growing in his Faith. Two weeks ago in his community the Poro Society, or Devil Bush was forcing young boys into the bush to be initiated into the society so he was fearful of his life, telling me he was ready to die to stand up for his faith instead of joining the devil bush society. The “devil” was arrested and now the forceful activity has been stopped.

Merci is a new malnourished child in the compound that I just Love. Pray for her and for her strength. She was abandoned by her mother as well so pray that she may be healed of abandonment and she may see how much God loves her through my love!

All my Liberian friends and family always say hi and they also thank you for your support and prayers!

Loving up Liberia
To the Glory of God,
Sarah Joy Carlson

First Baby I Delivered

Bush Meat

African Children