"Small Light Today . . . Big Light Tomorrow"

Take two Mercy Ship’s Land Rovers – making sure they are sturdy and road worthy – make that African road worthy. Add two seasoned drivers, one Australian, the other South African. Then add 16 other internationals: nurses from the States – Texas, New Hampshire and Idaho, a dental worker from Pennsylvania, a couple of Canadian nurses, a nurse from Great Britain and another from Ireland and Sweden, a physician anaesthesia provider and a nurse from South Africa, a Norwegian deck crew hand, and a few others for very good measure. Mix them all up between the two Land Rovers and embark at 0800 on a rainy African Saturday morning for a day long expedition to the Coffee Mountain Hydro Power Plant.

Imagine with me! The streets of the city of Monrovia are already bustling with crowded foot traffic, and beeping taxis and jam-packed vans and everyone thinks the right-of-way to the road is his alone. And that right includes the portion of the road with the least potholes, whether that is on the right or the left hand side of the road. As the journey begins, the streets are wide and lined with market booths and shops. I have no idea the passage of time or distance traveled, as I am intent upon watching this entrancing scene. However, after a season, I note the streets have become narrower as we have distanced ourselves from the city center, and they are no longer paved, or some semblance of it, but have become two lane packed red dirt roads with an abundance of craters, filled to road surface level with the rain that continues to fall. The buildings of the city have become replaced with grasslands that have been cleared from the dense tropical vegetation, and are dotted here and there with a handful of thatched-roofed or corrugated-metal-roofed homes that constitute a town or village. The rain is reduced to a scattered sprinkle. Along the road’s edge we see women walking with loads of Saturday’s market goods: baskets of vegetables or fruits or 50 kilo sacks of rice, upon their heads, babies tied tightly in colorful swatches of fabric up against the small of their backs. Toddlers and young children see us and wave enthusiastically. Occasionally, a goat or pig desires the roadway, and our driver “races” the little critter, making the little porker a little leaner.

The scene gradually changes again, as the villages become more sparse, the road narrows to a single lane, then becomes just two tracks through the mud. We jostle and bounce over and through the craters in the road that in some cases are literal ponds coming up to the top of the level of our tires. We make a few quarter “doughnuts” in the mud. I am amazed at the capabilities of these Land Rovers. No wonder, since I have been a child myself, and heard the stories related by those who have worked in Africa, these are the trusted vehicle. Beyond the edge of the road, the grasslands have become very tall, and occasionally one sees the bright color of a headdress bouncing above the height of the grasses. A foot path is worn through the grass to the next village.

We come to our destination after more than an hour and half. We have traveled today to see the Coffee Mountain Hydro Power Plant, but more accurately it might be said we have come to see what remains of it. Those of us who live in the west have no idea the devastation that civil war can bring upon a country. The hydro power plant is one of the casualties in Liberia. We are met today by two guides who were once workers at the power plant. One of them even wears a shirt emblazoned on the front with the words, “We Electrify Liberia” Liberian Electric Company. The back of the shirt bears the slogan, “Small Light Today . . . Big Light Tomorrow,” and an indication that this is provided by USAid (the United States Agency for International Development.)

Sadly, what we see is a shell of a once thriving provider of power for Liberia. The huge concrete structure that housed the four water powered turbines is little more than a skeleton with the casings where the turbines once were. During the civil war, the turbines were stopped, (which faction stopped them, I don’t know,) the intake tunnels closed, and the water that once flowed through as downstream discharge powering the turbines instead formed a huge lake above the retaining wall/dam. The pressure of the retained water exceeded the retaining capacity of the dam, began to flow over the dam, then breached it and today there is little evidence that it ever existed, as the river has once again taken its wild tumbling course. (That part of the expedition will become another story perhaps) All the metal that was once the turbines has been foraged and scavenged, and called to other purposes by the indigenous peoples. Rusted out scraps are all that remain. The humungous intake tunnel we walked into is clogged with tons of dirt and has become the habitat of bats. And the people of portions of Liberia now have an inconsistent electrical power from other sources, with outages occurring at any sporadic time. Our guides told us they are hopeful for a time when the power plant will be restored, but it will cost anywhere between $200 to $500 million US to do so.

I couldn’t help but note the spiritual lessons in this adventure. Jesus is the living water, a constant flowing source that can well up from within us, “The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life." John 4:14 The Message

“Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way, just as the Scripture says. (He said this in regard to the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were about to receive.)” John 7:38-39 The Message

“In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” John 1:4 The Message As long as the water is flowing through us, we will have the power, but if the conduit is stopped up we will lose that power that lights up our lives, and we won’t be the light to the world that He wants us to be. "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” Matthew 5: 14-16 The Message

And we are in a war, with the enemy sabotaging our every move, attempting to throw dirt into our intake tunnel to clog the flow of the Living Water. We must use the weapons we’ve been given in our arsenal to defeat his purposes. Ephesians 6:10-18

I know what I want to be, not just home in the US but here in Africa, through the Spirit with my connection with the Father, “Small light today . . . big light tomorrow!” May it be so Lord Jesus!