Positive Change in Liberia Through WHI

Volunteers help World Hope International (WHI) extend its work around the world, making critical development work possible through their efforts. WHI volunteers Larry and Cindy Marshall originally volunteered through the Hope Corps program in Mozambique and their experience there motivated them to return to Africa for a second time two years ago. The Marshalls recently returned to the United States and sent the following account of their experience to their friends and supporters telling about their time working and serving in Liberia.

Dear friends,

First of all I want to thank you so much for your prayers and support. You will never know how much it has meant to us to know people were lifting us up before the Father. These past two years have been the most difficult years of our lives. I’m sure that without the prayers and support of yourselves and others like you it would have been much worse. Even though it has been very difficult, The Lord has been so good to us and provided for our needs and the needs of the ministry here. He has led us to some fantastic people that are now co-workers with us and will be taking positions of leadership within the organization.

Cindy and I came to Liberia close to two years ago. Our job has been to identify needs, begin projects and train people to continue those projects for World Hope International. We had to begin first of all by finding a place to live and equipping the house with all we needed to live. Because there is no electric or running water we had to dig a hand dug well and purchased a small generator that enabled us to have electricity two hours per day. After finding a vehicle we began by going out to villages to ask the people what their needs were to not only assist them in getting their lives restarted after the war, but also what would attract others to come back to the rural areas. In this process we identified five issues that continued to be brought up. These needs that came up in village after village, brought about because of the war were: lack of hand farming tools, no seeds to plant, no animals were left, no clean safe drinking water, and lack of school facilities. This is what the basis was for beginning the projects. JoAnne Lyon and WHI staff were very supportive in not only encouraging us in our work, but finding all of the needed funding and support to get all of the projects started and to continue them.

The Lord has been guiding and directing in so many ways. Since we arrived with the help of the Lord Cindy was able to revitalize the Hope for Children program. The program has grown from around 75 children receiving support each month to 164. Once again with the Lord’s help we have been able to complete construction of four primary schools and three more are currently under construction. We have given 1,600 families sets of hand farming tools. There has been 42,230 pounds of rice seed given out in a seed multiplication project along with 1,000 pounds of peanuts and 1,800 lbs of tubers. We also began an animal multiplication project where 80 families have received a total of 240 sheep and 80 other families received a total of 400 chickens. A new drill rig was imported from Bangkok and we started drilling wells in November of 2006. We have successfully completed 42 wells. It is difficult many times to find water as we run into solid granite. The machine we have will dig through the rock, but there were 18 other holes that did not produce water.

Some months ago Cindy and I asked WHI to see if they could find someone to replace us here in Liberia. On September 12th Allan and Cecelia Anderson arrived in Liberia. They are from Australia and will be here for at least one year in further transition to native leadership for World Hope International Liberia. Cindy and I have overlapped with them for three weeks to allow for a time of transition. Cindy will be leaving for the States on October 7th and I will be heading for Mozambique for about 3 weeks to train another well drilling team there. I recently returned from Zambia from training a well drilling team there as well. We are not sure yet what the Lord has in store for us in the States, but we are trusting that He will once again lead us just where we are to be. Even though we will no longer be working for World Hope International, I have been asked to try to make time if needed to travel to assist in other countries for short periods with WHI.

Once again thank you so much for your prayers and support. Please continue to think of the needs of World Hope International in Liberia. Your prayers and support for the program and projects here are greatly needed.

Following the Risen Son,

Larry & Cindy Marshall

If you would like to learn more about volunteer opportunities like the through World Hope International, please visit our Hope Corps webpage