Spending lots of money

 Most women seem to wear clothes that are made by themselves or by tailors here in Liberia. The men seem to wear used donated clothes from america. This man enjoyed the story about the logo on his Sunday shirt.

We visited another, Gathering Place program. This one was in the Bushrod stake. They actually had sewing machines for the tailoring class. It's hard to see in the picture but they are treadle operated.

Here is their coal heated iron. They have electricity at the church so they also had an electric iron. The electric iron gets hotter

These are some of the goods from the pastry class. The small yellow things are meat pies. They were good. The larger round things are cakes.

We finally got payment to the contractor and he started work on the Gbokolleh school.  This portion of the project is a 3-room classroom. The community dug the trenches. Everything is of course done by hand. Now they are backfilling so they can lay the concrete floor.

The contractors general laborers make $5 a day and the skilled laborers make $10 a day.

Transportation costs and traffic make commuting difficult so the laborers and the contractor spend Monday through Saturday on site in the school. They sleep in one of the vacant classrooms. The contractor provides the rice meals.

We were invited to attend a vocational graduation in one of the Church branches. The Vocational School is funded by a charity set up by former humanitarian missionaries that served here in Liberia about 5 years ago.  I was one of the speakers and Cheryl handed out the diplomas.

In the background you can see three sewing machines. The charity donated these sewing machines to the graduates upon graduation. The machines are about $250 and the graduates have to pay $50 of that amount.

Here are the graduates from the soap making class. The charity donated to them all the equipment they would need to make bar and liquid soap. In addition they donated the basic ingredients for them to do their first batch of soap and then hopefully the proceeds from those sales will fund the next one.

This is the first time this private charity has funded something like this. They are going to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and see if the graduates gain sustainable income. If they do they will fund more.

It is remarkable how much money the church spends in africa. They build buildings, they help members with rent, food, and medical expenses.  When members are ready to go to the temple for the first time they provide airplane transportation and lodging and food to Accra Ghana.

Food, rent and medical expenses are paid by the church's fast offering fund. I asked a local Bishop the percentage of money he spends out of the fast offering fund versus what he collects from the contributions from the local members.  He said the local members are only able to donate about 1% of that amount. The remainder is paid from the church in America.  Those who aren't members of the church are helped by the money that Cheryl and I are able to spend on humanitarian projects. We have been asked to keep our budget amount confidential but I can say that it is in the millions.

Out of 195 countries in the world Liberia is ranked the 8th poorest.  It is surprisingly difficult to spend donated money and produce lasting positive results in a country. We are trying our best.