SLM Int. - Regions of Outreach: - Africa: - Liberia:

• 1979    Lillian Duncan set up the new Source of Light branch office in September. Joseph Smith assumed leadership of the office in December.

• 1989    A summer missionary team from Toccoa Falls College ministered in Liberia.

• 1989    Johnny Connelly and his family went to Liberia as Source of Light missionaries.

• 1995    Johnny Connelly taught in the Interior Bible Institute in Harbel, Liberia.

• 1996    Johnny Connelly was elected to be Chairman of the Board of the Evangelical Bible Training Center in Monrovia.

• 1996    The Connelly family was evacuated from Liberia because of deteriorating political conditions.

• 1999    On a return trip, Johnny Connelly distributed lessons to 375 pastors in Liberia.

• 2001    Sampson Hinneh was named as director, replacing Johnny Connelly.

Liberia is a developing West African country about the size of Tennessee with a population of just over 3 million people. It is struggling to recover from seven years of destructive civil war (1989-97). In spite of the installment of a democratically elected government in August 1997, very little progress has been made for a stable government or a stable economic development.

In 1926, the U.S. rubber company, Firestone, established the largest rubber plantation in the world in Liberia. The country became somewhat dependent on the United States. Twenty-five years later iron ore supplanted rubber as the number one foreign export. Due to the years of unrest, businessmen have taken their knowledge and capital with them as they fled the country. Now over eighty per cent of the people are below the poverty line.

The average life expectancy is 51 years, and the official language is English.

Geographically speaking Liberia packs a wide variety of scenery in a small package.  Along the coast we find flat or gently rolling, often-swampy land leading into the interior. This interior dense tropical jungle opens up to the plains and low mountains of the northeast. The Sapo National Park, a main attraction, is one of these dense tropical rain forest inhabited by chimpanzees, elephants, pygmy hippos, leopard and other rare animals and birds.