Check out what Chad Gibbs of Chad Gibbs Dotcom, wrote about our full time Liberian missionary Milles Coggins.
Liberia huh? What are you doing way over there?
.
I started coming over here in 2006 with my dad. Dad met a pastor from Liberia through another family at his church. Dad had been getting more involved in missions helping out around the gulf after the hurricanes and even in Romania. The pastor was building a church in Monrovia and dad offered his help if he wanted it. So, since I used to help wire houses growing up, my dad invited me to come along. We made two more trips after that one and after the second time, I knew God was calling me to come over for a longer period of time and work for Him. After that, I knew the life I was living, even though I’ve been a believer since I was 10, was more for me than Him. I was comfortable and bearing little spiritual fruit. God quickly took all my excuses away and left me with a simple choice to go or stay. In the few times I’d been to Liberia, I knew the same God that saved me was moving across this country, and I wanted to be a part of it and serve. I wasn’t running away from the US or working in the ministry back home, I was running to a different kind of ministry when God met me where I was. So for the last three years I have been working with a water ministry called Water of Life. Our office is in Greenville, SC, but we run this operation as a local NGO (non-government organization). We partner with other Christian organizations to install hand pumps for safe drinking water. We try to put the church in front so that the hand pump can be a tool to spread the Gospel through the local body of believers.
.
Your from the south, where we like to fry things. What is the food like in Liberia? Any particular dish you’ve fallen in love with?
They pretty much fry everything here too. The main staple is rice, but almost everything else you put on the rice is fried. We eat a good bit of fried chicken mixed up in different soups to accompany the rice. One good thing about it is just about everything that goes in the soup is grown around here. Different kinds of greens, cabbage, beans, vegetables. My favorite soup is fried beans. The beans look like field peas to me from back home, but you boil them, mash ‘em, fry them with oil, seasoning, liberian pepper and tomato paste. The other is called jallof rice. I don’t know if it is natively liberian but it’s almost like jambalaya or the orange rice you get at a mexican restaurant with beans, chicken and sausage mixed up in it. Everything you eat has spicy peppers in it, which is good for me. I like it. And Lebanese food.
.
What are some differences you’ve noticed between the church in Liberia and the church in the US?
.
Most churches here have a lot of pentacostal baptist roots like a lot of african-american churches back home as for as Sunday service goes. A lot of waving, clapping, singing and emotional preaching. Most churches have mics and speakers turned up to 11. You get jaded just like back home at all the different denominations too. Every single one is here just like in the states. Even, catholic, ba’hai, jehovah’s witness, mormons. Mormons have planted a handful of churches just in the last year, but you take most of it with a grain of salt now. A few churches are strong, God-fearing, ministering churches, but they’re are a lot that sell bill of goods to a naive american church for the sake of funding. So many times a pastor here is more of a job than a ministry calling, and a lot of those "ministers” love titles like "apostle”, "reverend”, "bishop”, and "prophet”. A lot of prosperity gospel is coming in too. Usually via a "title above” comes over and solicits the poor to pay for blessings, healing, and what ever else for there money. It’s tricky too because in a relatively poor society, the root of all evil is definitely the love of money. In those ways, it’s not too different from some church back home. What is different is the underlying struggles Liberians have with witchcraft and real spiritual warfare. It is so far removed from us in the states because we have no reason to think witchcraft is serious. It died out there 200 years ago. Here it is still going on because so many people give it credit. You have to look at it from the perspective that the devil is going to attack with an army at your weakest point. In the States we may struggle with sins in a more intellectual way. Greed is advanced on a corporate level and kept hidden. Adultery is taboo, but goes on all the time. Nobody even remotely thinks the consequences of those actions are because sin leads to death. If people get caught, they are put in jailed or divorced and move on without repentance and suffer more. Here the cause of almost every serious effect in someone’s life is witchcraft. If you’re blessed, it’s God. If you’re cursed, somebody witched you. It’s not because you are reaping what you so, it’s somebody else fault. That’s a huge obstacle you have to break down when you witness to and/or disciple people here. The people allow it, so the devil takes advantage.
.
Your wife, Serwaah, is from Liberia. Is dating in Liberia similar to dating back home? Applebee’s and a Romantic Comedy?
.
Not really at all. There’s definitely a lot more activities to choose from back home when you’re courting your lady friend than what we have here. It made it a little bit easier on my part because I’m a bit of a home body, but we mainly went out to eat, hung out and spent time together after church on Sundays. The thing that really got me confused about this woman was that when I first met her, she was a certified electrician, in light of that our relationship was a romantic comedy set on the stage of cultural opposites, and lebanese take out. Her sisters/cousins named me "Dweh” which in their dialect (Grebo) mean elephant, so either i did something wrong or did something right. Time will tell i reckon.
.
What’s the internet/cable situation like where you live? Do you keep up with what’s going on back home?
My dad got a job with a contractor out of Birmingham that built the new US embassy over here over the last 2 1/2 years so we took advantage of his satellite TV. We saw all but 4 Auburn games in the 2009 and 2010 football between Slingbox and ESPN. At our place we have satellite internet so I can keep in touch pretty easily everyday. Day to day current events I get about a couple of weeks to a month behind. When AU won the national championship it was about 5 am here. I was at my dad’s, so I drove home, woke up my oblivious 8 year old Liberian stepdaughter and made her roll the shade tree in the back yard with me.
If I were going to visit Liberia, what are a couple things that I would have to see or do?
.
See the city and see the bush. From a missions perspective, you’d need to see how to meet the people where they are, and that’s hard because it is so different from what we are used to in middle class America. You’d mostly see people in poverty by our standards, but economically it’s getting better every year. What I would want you to see is how people process values, beliefs and their faith in this culture. In that way you don’t pity Liberia, you gain compassion, and in compassion there is a willingness to help. There is no love in pity, you just kinda observe and pass on by. You’ll see a major need for discipleship where Christianity is popular, a mile wide but only a foot deep. See how people survive on a daily basis, and then be encouraged in how some can be content in what we would call a state of need.
You would have to try at least four different dishes of rice, Liberian style. You would have to drink an ice cold glass bottle coca-cola. You would have to ride on a rotten dirt road for no less than 300km. You would have to go to Sunday worship service. And, finally, you would need to sweat through a premier league (either Man U or Chelsea) match is a ramshackle video club.
.
Tell me something about Liberia I did not know.
Liberia is the oldest republic in west africa, maybe all of africa. It was never colonized although kept closest relations to the US after a large number of freed slaves were transported here. The set up almost everything in government and administration right after the US. Liberia also has the richest deposits of iron ore, arguably, in the world. There’s enough on the northern border with Guinea to dramatically affect the worldwide demand if it was mined fast enough. Harvey Firestone cut a deal with Liberia to lease about a million acres of land to develop and harvest latex from rubber trees back in the 1920′s to even out the global competition with Michelin, who was developing rubber in South America. Firestone is still running strong but only using about half the original acreage. Liberia elected the first woman president in Africa’s history back in 2005 (Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf). Liberia went through a civil war after a violent change of power in 1989 and finally settled in 2003.
.
Is there anything my readers can do to help you guys out?
.
Get involved in missions. "The body of Christ has many parts” is said so often but what it means to me is there are millions of Christian, and if we wake up in the morning as a sinner saved by grace through faith in Christ, and actually seek God’s will, then he has a calling for us to serve Him. He doesn’t need us to fulfill His will because He is God, the God. But the amazing thing about having a relationship with our Creator is that He wants us to be a part of what He is doing. He wants us to trust & obey, to seek and find, so that He may be glorified and we understand why He should be praised. For some that is moving 2000 miles away and sweating our sanity off. Others it’s supporting the missionaries far off, and being a faithful witness to a co-worker or encouragement to a friend in need. It sounds corny but it is that simple. We can’t tell God we want to be missionaries on our terms. Many Christians thinks it’s too mundane just to give money to foreign and domestic ministries. God blesses some with money so because God created them to glorify Him by giving freely. God blesses some with strength and humility so they can work for Him. God blesses some with awesome gifts of word-smithery to write books and delicious satire to encourage other Christians. If people want to get involved with water ministry like what we do, there is plenty of opportunities and amazing results. To meet a simple, basic and crucial need such as having access to clean water, then using that as a tool to show and share the love of Christ is a huge open door all over the world. We have an operation here, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, and India. Talk to other Christians at church, work or neighbors and sponsor a well or get a team together to come over and work for a week or so. Or send money to support those who are on the ground working for God. Born again Christians have no excuse, we must get involved in the Kingdom’s work.
.