Our new position

While we receive lots of beautiful snowy pictures from Switzerland, on our side, the tropical rain is giving way to a drier and warmer season. The children have just started their Christmas vacations and we will take a week's break from December 23rd..

But what do we do more concretely?

You know by now that we have taken on the role of directors of SIM Liberia. But it's not easy to realize what that means. To help you immerse yourself in our day-to-day work, here are the priorities we've set for the first 6-8 months of our work. We have also shared them with our team and realize that it is good to revisit them regularly so as not to be absorbed by other concerns.

Our priorities for the 6-8 months

1. Unity and cohesion of our team: Our team has gone through difficult times during which trust and unity have been greatly shaken. It is therefore intentional that we try to create times of team building, times of sharing, times of prayer and worship that bring us together for a common purpose. As a basis for this work we wanted to take up the core values of our organization, SIM. The 6 main values can be summarized with this sentence; We are God-dependent, diverse disciples of Jesus, gathered in a community of love centered on the Church.
2. Finances: Currently, the department is about 6 months behind in finances for the entire ministry. This creates many challenges! Nicolas is working with the field offices to find solutions and try to bring clarity to the finances.
3. Sources of electricity: Our campus runs partly on government electricity from LEC (a dam) and also on a generator. Government electricity is unreliable, it costs less but we have to consider it a bonus! Recently we were also able to install solar panels that support the hospital and water pumps during the day. However, having only one generator to run the entire campus is not enough. If the generator fails and LEC is not available, the campus - including the hospital! - has no power. We have old generators that need to be refurbished.
4. The hospital: governance and improving the quality of care. In January 2023, we will host the first meeting of the new hospital board. The first meeting in person! This is the result of a long process that Nicolas has been working on all year 2022. We hope that this step will be the beginning of big and beautiful changes at the hospital (we can develop this in a future newsletter).
5. To interview each of our SIM members: To see how they are doing, what are their joys, challenges, projects and how we can best support them. Our team includes 10 families, 3 couples and 3 singles.
6. The Security Department: When we started our new role, it was not uncommon for a guard to have to stay for 16 hours straight instead of 8! Making a schedule that works and is within budget requires perseverance, patience and collaboration. Nicolas invested a lot of time to help the security supervisors.
7. Clarify the relationship between SIM Liberia and ELWA: SIM is really the umbrella organization and bears the responsibility. ELWA is like a "sub-group" within SIM. Over the years and due to a combination of different factors, this relationship suffers from a lack of clarity and this creates all kinds of conflicts essentially in decision making. This clarification will be a process but we believe that if we can improve it, it will decrease some of the tensions and consequently facilitate decision making.

Melvina still works part-time for the dental clinic and is therefore mainly active in points 1, 5 and 7. Nicolas works more than full time in his role as director and spends a lot of time in meetings of all kinds, writing documents, answering emails, etc. If you can read between the lines a little, you understand that we face many challenges that require wisdom and perseverance. It is not uncommon for us to be discouraged. But we support each other and we have set up a leadership team of 6 people including the two of us. This team is a real blessing. It supports us and encourages us in a concrete and humble way.

Dear friends, THANK YOU for reading us! We wish you a Merry Christmas in Peace and Joy and a beautiful year 2023!

Melvina, Nicolas, Theotime, Simeon, Gabriel and Caleb