Hope Gbarnga Christian School in Liberia
PASTOR SONNY BROWN - HOPE GBARNGA, LIBERI
A Hello, I’m Pastor Sonny from Liberia. I’m from Gbarnga. We started the work of the school here in 2015 because of the need of the children we saw. The children were like on the street where they don’t have support and even those who are in the church, they cannot go to school because their parents cannot afford to pay school fees. So, we decided to help them, in order for them to go to school. So, we opened the school and we have them go into this school. We have to also provide books for them, exercise books and some other material that will help them in the learning process. But there are a lot of challenges in doing this because you know, there are a lack of finances and other challenges like materials for the school, so we have to go extra miles, even from our own family resources, to help the kids, to make them attend school. We’re also happy to have our guests here today, who also see the reality on the ground. They see the kids and how they are learning and we hope to do more.
We just began a construction. If you can look at the building here, that is one of the buildings that we have just begun to build for the learning because the space is small for them. Now, even the teacher’s salary, we don’t pay salary to teachers because it’s too huge. So, we just give them what we call a token – to wash their clothes. Yea, so it’s a voluntary work they are doing. So, we thank God for the vision, because these are our future leaders, we need to train them and bring them up, so that they can learn the Bible, they know Jesus as their Lord and personal Saviour. Through this, today we have many kids who are now coming to the church, because we took them from the streets and we gave them free education and they are learning. Even their parents were encouraged and they are also part of the church now, as we are talking. We have orphans, who cannot afford. They don’t have parents. Ebola killed their parents and some of them, their parents were lost in the war and so as a result, they are vulnerable. So, we put them, we incorporate them in a school, and we give them learning facilities. So that is part of the vision we have so that they cannot be left behind.
ABRAHAM - PRINCIPAL OF HIM CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
My name Abraham. I am the principal of Hope International Elementary & Junior High School. We are located here at the Plum Valley in Gbarnga, and Gbarnga is found in Bong County. Our dream for this school is that we want to take it to the entire Liberia. The dream for this ministry is to capture Central Liberia and capturing central Liberia, it is easier for us to go to the southeast, it is easier for us to go to the north and to the south. That was the reason why our overseer, Rev Sonny Brown, had this dream. He said that we should capture here. The meaning of Hope is we that we are bringing hope. Our theme is we are bringing hope to the hopeless. We want to go as far as the school system. We want to go as far as to the other hundreds, the villages in Liberia.
We want to capture Liberia in the next 10 years, it’s our hope, it’s our dream, it’s our desire and we want to go. We are not only limiting it to the gospel, we want to go as far as to the school system because we know that if we preach the Word, and you get the people, teach them the lesson, teach them the Word. If they start from the academic level, you will be able to get these people. So, that is our prayer. In the next 10 years, we want to capture the entire Liberia and go as far as the other part of the country. But Liberia, Liberia is ours. It’s our hope to bring hope to the hopeless. Thank you very much.
