Local missionary plans to help women, orphans in Liberia

It is a place where children get more excited about receiving underwear than receiving a soccer ball.

A boy finds a piece of trash paper on the ground and keeps it for something on which to write.

On missionary trips to Liberia, a country on Africa’s west coast, Julie Alexander has seen it all.

She has been to schools with dirt floors where students do not have desks and sit on tires. Homes have no electricity or running water.

“The poverty is shocking,” she said.

She described Liberia as “a country of great beauty and great tragedy.” She said years of civil war has left many people in the country with physical and spiritual needs.

“There is an open door for spreading the gospel,” she said.

The 52-year-old Phenix City woman, a former auditor at TSYS, has been on trips to the country lasting a couple of weeks. This time, she is ready to go for at least two years.

In fact, Alexander plans to be there “as long as my health and the Lord allows.”

She is currently raising money to make her “Operation Liberia” possible, needing pledges that guarantee her about $4,000 a month to cover expenses and support her ministry. She feels she is getting closer to what she needs and will be able to leave here by November.

Alexander has two grown children. A fifth grandchild is on the way. S it will be tough to leave.

“I can’t disobey God,” she said. “This is what He has called me to do.”

Grace Baptist Church in Columbus is her sending church but she travels to churches around the country seeking funds. She also sells African baskets, often on Saturday at Broadway Market Days.

She is associated with the nonprofit Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples.

Alexander said she went through a tough childhood and an even tougher marriage, which ended in divorce.

Alexander explained she was a Christian in her head but not in her heart until she was saved in 1992.

“I knew of Christ but I did not understand salvation or what it meant to have a personal relationship with him,” she said.

It was then she made the vow she is keeping.

“After I raise my children I am going to give my life to you,” she told God.

She became a full-time missionary in 2012.

She recently finished nine months at the Baptist Bible Translators Institute in Bowie, Texas, getting advanced missionary training.

While in Liberia, she will be working with Pastor Guane Gbendah of the Temple Baptist Church in Johnsonville where she will go into rural areas to help provide evangelical, discipleship and educational opportunities for women.

“I never thought being an accountant could help me in the missionary field but there are a lot of new businesses in Liberia and if I can train some women through finance workshops, they might be able to get a job as a bookkeeper,” she said.

Much of her work in Liberia will be done at orphanages. She said many of the children are not orphans but are children who have been abandoned by mothers who feel like they have no choice.

“These are desperate women without hope,” she said. “I have a real heart for these women.”

Given proper training they might be able to keep their children.

“There are about 350,000 abandoned children in Liberia, who are unprotected and unloved.” she said.

Alexander feels through education, as well as building spiritual growth, “bringing the Father to the fatherless,” she said, she will help bring a better future for the women and their children.

She will be doing some Bible translating. “That is something I never thought I would be doing,” she said.

Anyone seeking to help Alexander can check with Grace Baptist Church or Baptist Missions to Forgotten Peoples at www.bmfp.org.

Alexander said leaving her family is tough but she is eager to go.

“God has work for me to do,” she said. “Serving others is what God wants us to do.”

This story was originally published May 26, 2017 at 11:46 AM with the headline "Local missionary plans to help women, orphans in Liberia."