Liberia (MNN) — A few years ago, a pastor in Liberia went online to search for American evangelists. He came up with thousands but narrowed that list down to ten. Evangelist Sammy Tippit says, "He wrote all ten of those, and I was one of them. He sent an e-mail to them, and I was the only one who responded to him. He said, ‘Our country is in war; we're devastated. Would you consider coming?'"
Tippit sent a team member to meet the man in Ghana. "While there, the rebels actually took over his home," said Tippit. It took a month before the pastor could
return to his home, but when he did, he invited Tippit to come for an evangelistic meeting.
This year, Tippit returned to preach. The pastor by now had searched the internet again and found an organization that would build a clinic next to their church for those who could not afford to travel to the city for medical treatment.
Tippit says, "I went to it, and he showed me the clinic, and they had great records of what was happening. He said, ‘Would you pray for us? My wife and I put all of our salary in to buy the first month's worth of medicine for this clinic.'"
Tippit found that their greatest need was for malaria treatments. That's when Tippit thought, "We could go in for the next few years, and spiritually, academically, physically, socially, medically, we could impact a country where the whole nation could be a better place to live by our being there."
In essence, "We're looking at adopting Liberia as a nation in every way we can help and bring partners into that," said Tippit. The next step is getting the word out. "I pray that there will be partners that the Lord would touch here in America that say, ‘Hey, we can provide some doctors. Hey, we can provide some construction workers. We can provide some things to go in and make a total impact" — not just socially but spiritually as well, which we're already doing."
Tippit met with Liberia's vice president who asked that Tippit return to help the nation
rebuild.
