Beginning in 1989, Liberia, once an economic powerhouse but now one of the world’s poorest countries, was engaged in 15 years of vicious civil war. The conflict was marked by severe abuses—summary executions, pervasive rape, and forced recruitment of children—that left hundreds of thousands killed, mutilated, displaced, or in extreme poverty.
Amid this volatile environment, ABWE established a medical ministry. Dr. Jack Sorg brought his first team of medical missionaries in 2000, treating patients while gunfire sounded in the background.
Jack and his wife, Sandra, became ABWE missionaries in 1978, serving first in Brazil, then by training and leading medical trips around the world to support local churches and missionaries.
In Liberia, Jack found that local medics had no formal medical training. They loved the Lord and sought to help their people as best they could.
“Our first trip into Liberia,” said Jack, “we had a couple shoe boxes of medicines. We headed into the interior where the locals had rented a dilapidated house for us to work out of. The area was the most desolate place I’d ever seen.”
People came with a variety of ailments. Anyone with a fever was treated for malaria, rampant in the area.
“One woman came,” Jack said, “who was the sickest person I’d ever seen. She was dealing with malaria, amoebic dysentery, pneumonia, UTI, and more. She was bent over in a chair and could barely move. I noticed on the intake form that she’d made a profession of faith. As I treated her, I asked, ‘Do you truly know the Lord as your Savior?’ She looked up at me with the most beautiful smile and said, ‘Yes!’” Jack knew that only God could lift her spirits.
Today, Jack still leads short-term clinics in Liberia and other nations. In each location, local believers and American team members screen patients to learn their medical history.
“They talk to them not only about their physical needs, but, as they are willing, about their spiritual needs. When they reach the doctors on the team, we continue these conversations,” Jack explained. They later connect patients to local churches.
Their medical clinics have helped start 40 churches across Liberia, with hundreds of professions of faith. Pastor James Togba, who has worked with them from the beginning, was instrumental in establishing the African Fundamental Baptist Mission (AFBM) that spearheads national missionary efforts in several African countries.
Building on the medical ministry, ABWE missionaries Bill and Kathy Brittain minister with AFBM through the ABWE partnership, the Liberia Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. Together, they share the gospel and plant churches through free mobile and local medical clinics, a physician assistant college, pastoral training, three Christian schools, and support for 270 orphaned and disadvantaged children. They were recently thrilled to attend the fourth graduation of the physician assistant college, which trains national students to share the gospel through medical ministry.
Through the ongoing efforts of ABWE missionaries and Liberian partners, the hope of the gospel is bringing healing to the wounds of war.
