Noble Road Church has begun work on a mission for rural Africa, the result of a call felt by Isaac Monah, one of our elders.

Isaac left Liberia as a refugee from civil war in 1990, and came to the United States in 2002. In the summer of 2007 he went home — to Grand Gedeh County, in eastern Liberia — for the first time in 17 years, and was moved to action by the children who had no opportunity to get an education and craft a future for themselves.

Here is a short version of Isaac’s story: There was no local school for him. After leaving home three times to be educated in different parts of Liberia, he was in the sixth grade at age 18. At 12, he voluntarily dropped out of school in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, and returned to Grand Gedeh because he believed his presence was putting too much of an economic strain on his uncle’s family. (His uncle later died in the war.)