Saah Joseph was at Jefferson Baptist Church tonight and will be there tomorrow as well. He is a Senator in the West African country of Liberia. I first met Saah in 2002 in Sierra Leone right after the end of the awful 20-year civil war between Sierra Leone and Liberia over control of diamonds, often called the “Blood Diamond” war. Saah was a young refugee of the war. Four of us flew over to Sierra Leone to investigate the possibility of starting a mission work there. The four of us along with Saah and the driver of our rented car drove across Sierra Leone. It was the craziest experience of my life. The country was totally destroyed because of the war, people were living in mud huts with banana leaf roofs in terrible poverty. The roads were so bad that we had 7 flat tires and with no service stations getting them fixed was a challenge. We were there for several weeks and while we were there we started two churches. Since that time many more churches have been started along with dozens of schools and a Seminary. Saah and I became very good friends on that first trip over to Sierra Leone and it was so good to see him tonight. I have been back to Sierra Leone and Liberia about 20 times since 2002, and I am looking forward to going back again this April. Tonight Saah said that he would drive down to where I will be when I go, and we could drive around the country for old times sake. The roads are much better now so it won’t be quite like that first trip. A very funny thing happened on that first trip. The car we were in was overheating so the driver stopped by a small creek to get some water to put in. We didn’t realize it but there was an old man in the creek taking a bath. When Saah and the driver started towards where he was he dipped down under the water holding his breath. They took a while to get the containers filled with water and the old man couldn’t hold his breath any more so he burst out of the water making this weird noise as he gasped for air. It terribly scared Saah and the driver and they came scrambling back to the car yelling that they saw a demon! As we looked back and saw this naked old man standing in the creek looking more scared than we were we all got a great laugh out of it, but I am sure that the old guy in the creek had no idea what was so funny.