Reflections from Dave Scavuzzo about Camphor Mission Station

We have been trained to have opinions. I mean we live among a people who love to give view points on everything from economics, global warming, church growth, conference polices, legislation, physics and even the very mind of God even when there are few facts in our minds and little experience in our history. I’m here in Camphor finally without too many opinions and simply trying to take in the wild, beautiful, other worldly people and country of Liberia. All the clichés that I heard seem to be true to the mind but utterly shattering to the heart. The people, the poverty and the way of life, breaks the heart and allows in that space a new presence of God. How can one simply form an expert assessment of those kinds of things? Just today alone were attended a welcoming ceremony where the children sang to us and the very hospitality of Christ was offered. The children of the school invited us to a prayer celebration that was lead by the students. Yesterday we hiked to a bush village were United Methodist Christians bought clean water to their village by installing a well two years. As they people figured out we were connected to those “Methodists” they bought out chairs from their thatched huts and compelled us to sit in the shade. The kids are wearing our team out with invitations to play football and play any kind of game. I wonder at the very hospitality of God. It seems at Camphor, we can’t escape from smiles, hugs, being played with and showered with words of grace and acceptance. Generous treatment of folks who most would consider strangers and behaving as though we were family seems the order of the days. I’m not sure what to think about so much of this first impression other than to know that we have been in the presence of a people who trust in a God who accepts us with delight and wild generosity. So no firm assessments yet on what to “think” but instead an impression of joyful, openhanded and unspoiled invitation to see God in a new way through a people and a culture who reflect with beauty.