Unstoppable (27 page)

In 2005 this Harvard-educated Christian known as “Ma Ellen” became this shattered nation’s first woman president after having been imprisoned twice by a predecessor. At that time she was also the only woman serving as president on the African continent. Her election was hailed as a major move forward for a nation that had been plunging backward at a stunning rate. Former US first lady Laura Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice attended her inauguration.

The new president had a tough job. She might have hoped to curb corruption and create jobs to put back to work the 85 percent of the population that was unemployed, but first she had to turn on the lights. After years of war, even the capital of Monrovia had no electricity, running water, or functional sewage system.

The daughter of the first native Liberian to be elected to the national legislature, President Sirleaf was well schooled in her country’s cutthroat political system. She had accepted her scholarship to Harvard Kennedy School of Government in part to escape imprisonment for criticizing her country’s corrupt leadership. When she returned home, she was imprisoned on two occasions for her continuing opposition. At other times she had to flee the country for as long as five years, working as an international banker during her exile.

The end of the bloody reign of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor began when thousands of Liberian women dressed in white, led by Sirleaf and the courageous activist Leymah Gbowee, gathered in a field in Monrovia and demanded peace. They stayed for months, through the torrid summer and rainy seasons, holding press conferences and bringing international attention to the human rights abuses of Taylor’s regime. At one point the women protestors convened outside a hotel where Taylor’s warlords were meeting and prevented them from leaving. Taylor finally fled the country. He was arrested and tried as a war criminal by the United Nations. In 2005 Sirleaf was elected to restore peace and sanity to her country.

When I met her three years later, Liberia was still struggling to recover from the decades of neglect and violence. For the first time in all those years, the Liberian people were no longer being victimized and persecuted by their government. The United Nations was helping to ensure the peace with a force of more than fifteen thousand troops.

During our twenty-five-minute talk in her office, I found President Sirleaf to be an impressive blend of strength and caring. There is a reason that she is also known both as “the Mother of Liberia” and “the Iron Lady.” I was very nervous to meet her because I’d never before had a face-to-face meeting with the leader of a nation.

President Sirleaf welcomed me just days before her seventieth birthday, and her grandmotherly presence and the warmth in her kind eyes put me at ease right away. She also shared that she was among the 60 percent of Liberians who are Christians. She grew up a Methodist, and her early education was in Methodist schools. We spoke of faith, and I could see that much of her inner strength is rooted in her religious beliefs.

If I were ever to serve as any nation’s president, I’d like to be like her. She is a woman of God who believes in a philosophy I’d characterize as
“Ask not what God can do for your country, but rather ask God what this nation can do for Him.” What greater thing can a nation do than serve as an example of people trusting in God and handing Him their broken pieces to reassemble and repair. I believe this nation can serve as an example of the miracles God can do if its people abide in Him and His promises.

Since I was in President Sirleaf’s country to speak to several groups, she asked that I encourage these Liberians to educate their children and also to return to growing their own food crops, especially rice, because the civil war had disrupted farming so much that the vast majority of rice consumed in the nation was imported. She impressed me with her powerful sense of mission to serve her 3.5 million people and to rebuild her ravaged country. Since she has taken office, Liberia has welcomed assistance from other countries and opened its doors to $16 billion in foreign business investments. On a personal level she seems very caring and attentive to others. In our case, before receiving us and welcoming us, she loaned us two SUVs so we could travel the rugged roads.

I don’t have to make a case for President Sirleaf as an inspiring example of servant leadership at a high level. She’s received one of the highest honors in the world for the seeds she’s sown. Just a few years after we met, she and Leymah Gbowee were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their peace-building and human rights work. Four days after receiving that prestigious award, President Sirleaf won reelection for another six-year term so she can sow even more good seeds.

Sirleaf, who was also named the United Methodist of the Year in 2011, is recognized around the world as a benevolent, democratic leader—even as her predecessor, Charles Taylor, is being tried for horrible crimes against his people. Both of these people were in positions of leadership. Both were
granted great authority because of those positions. Yet they wielded that power in vastly different ways.

One of the first Christian evangelists, the apostle Paul, discussed these two different types of leadership in the Bible, and the passage (Galatians 5:13–15) is particularly pertinent to a country created and run by former slaves and their descendants. He said, “For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another!” Paul was telling us that we should use our freedom and our power not to satisfy our own selfish needs and desires—or to fill our own pockets as Taylor did—but to love and serve one another as President Sirleaf is doing.

You don’t have to be the president of a nation to serve others. You don’t even need arms and legs. All you need is to put your faith, your talents, your education, your knowledge, and your skills out there to benefit others in ways big and small. Even the tiniest acts of kindness can have a ripple effect. Even people who think they have no power to impact the world around them can make a huge difference by joining forces and working together to become the change they desire.

President Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and their army of women activists changed a nation by putting their faith into action to serve their people. They have helped to restore peace, and they are leading their country’s difficult restoration after decades of strife. Just recently, Sirleaf put more than twenty-five thousand young people to work cleaning up their communities
before the holidays and paid them so that they would have money for Christmas. Her administration has been busy building new health-care clinics and restoring water service to seven hundred thousand residents. Her major accomplishments so far also include the opening of more than two hundred twenty schools—a wonderful example of planting seeds that will grow and bear fruit for generations to come.

I was a witness to another sort of seed planted by the peaceful revolution led by Liberian Christians. This one is very close to my heart. My mission to Liberia included an evangelical revival meeting at a soccer stadium. We had expected maybe three hundred to four hundred people to attend, but to our joy an estimated
eight to ten thousand
came. People were literally sitting on rooftops and climbing trees to get a view into the packed stadium. Strangely enough, I had to give the same talk three times that day, because we only had one relatively small speaker box on the stage. So I had to aim it at one section of the stadium, giving abbreviated versions of my talk, and then redirect it at another section and give it again. I did that so everyone could hear my words of encouragement, hope, and faith!

That brings me to the third inspirational source I found in Liberia: the people themselves. Despite the death, destruction, cruelty, and incredible hardships they endured, millions of Christians in this nation have stayed in the faith. Even with many still suffering, I saw countless expressions of joy during our visit—from schoolchildren singing and playing, to stadiums filled with people praising God. Our friends in Liberia told us that Christians and Muslim leaders put aside their differences to help bring an end to the civil war through an interreligious council, and I am hopeful they can continue to work together for the greater good of their nation and its children.

I think I surprised my audience that day when I announced to them that I do not need arms or legs. After the murmurs over that remark quieted,
I told them that what I really need is Jesus Christ. The point I wanted to make to these people who have endured so much oppression and cruelty is that, with God in our hearts, we are complete even when we would appear to lack many other things. I also assured them that while their lives on this earth have been extremely difficult, if they have faith and accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, they will be guaranteed happiness in eternity. I also noted that even those who have everything on earth—including arms and legs—will take nothing to their graves but their souls.

I told them that they must have salvation in order to have hope. “Hope can only be found in God,” I said. “I may not have arms and legs, but I fly on the wings of the Holy Spirit.”

Then, I reminded my Liberian friends that God is still in control of their situations; therefore they must not give up but keep the hope alive. I told them that if God can use a man with no arms or legs to be His hands and feet, then He will also use war-torn Liberia for His purposes as well.

I reminded them that while we may not always receive the miracles we pray for, that does not stop us from serving as a miracle for someone else. Shortly after I said that, my words became a reality in front of thousands of people. As I neared the end of my speech, a Liberian woman came toward me with a fierce determination, working her way through the tightly packed crowd of people standing side by side.

Several times, security guards stopped her, but she quietly assured them that she intended no harm. As she drew nearer, I saw why they let her go. She was carrying an infant, just three weeks old. The child had no arms but did have tiny fingers emerging from her shoulders. I had the mother bring her child to me so I could kiss her on the forehead and pray for her.

My thoughts were only of showing love for this child, so I was startled when many people in the audience gasped and cried out when I kissed the
baby. In the moment I thought it was simply because they were shocked to see a child with disabilities so similar to mine. Later, I was told that the Liberians were stunned to see a limbless child who’d been allowed to remain alive. In many villages children born with physical disabilities are killed. Some are even buried alive.

It was my turn to be horrified when my hosts informed me that children with disabilities in rural Africa were considered a curse. Normally, the child would be killed or abandoned to die, and the mother would be ostracized for fear that the curse on her would spread to her community. In the case of this child, the mother told us that she had fled with the child before anyone could take her away.

After I kissed the armless Liberian child, many in the audience realized that if God had a plan for a man with no arms and legs to be an evangelist, then this child and all others must also be children of God. One man in the audience told our security people that he was recording my speech in the Bassa language to share with a people who live in a remote, hard-to-reach area. He particularly wanted to tell them that I had said children with disabilities and deformities are also children of God, not a curse, “but an opportunity.”

I can’t absolutely confirm this, but I was told later that since my appearance and interaction with that child in Liberia, there have been no reports of disabled or disfigured children being killed or abandoned. I certainly hope that is true. I would feel blessed beyond belief if God used me to plant that seed, one that could save many, many lives and prevent great suffering.

Too much of our world is about seeking comfort instead of providing it. We can easily get so caught up in pursuing our own happiness that we miss
out on one of God’s primary teachings: true happiness comes in serving Him and His children. Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Jesus was the ultimate servant leader and sower of good seeds, of course. God sent His Son to serve us with the ultimate sacrifice of dying for our sins. He presented Himself humbly, even washing the feet of His disciples to teach us that serving others is the best way to put faith into action. “For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves?” Jesus asks in the Bible. “Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves.”

When we have God’s love, joy, faith, and humility, we understand that no one human being is more valuable than another. I recently met someone who truly lives as a servant leader when I attended an unusual open-air church and ministry in downtown Dallas. Pastor Leon Birdd began his ministry with an incident that sounds like one of the parables told by Jesus. He was working as a carpenter and driving a truckload of furniture in a rural area outside Dallas in 1995 when he saw a middle-aged man walking along a service road.

At first Leon had no inclination to pick up the stranger, whom he thought might be drunk. But after he’d driven by him, he felt the Holy Spirit speak into his heart. He found himself turning his truck around and driving back to offer the man a ride. When this good Samaritan pulled alongside the man, Leon noted that he seemed to be having trouble walking.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m not drunk,” the man insisted gruffly.

“Well, you’re having a hard time. I’ll give you a ride,” Leon said.

As it turned out, the man, Robert Shumake, was telling the truth. He had difficulty walking because he had undergone several brain surgeries,
which affected his mobility but not his determined efforts to help others in need.