World Missions Update: Liberia Medical Mission

Greetings and Salutations,

I hope and pray this letter finds you all in good health and spirits. We have recently returned home from our seventh trip to Liberia in West Africa, and by His grace, we had a very successful trip. Though we continue to struggle with getting medications through customs in Liberia, each time our God intervenes and gets us through!

The Three Rivers medical and spiritual mission continues to be amazingly successful, and we once again saw a record number of patients. Most importantly, we had a 60% return rate of returning patients. It seems that the concept of primary care––as you and I know and understand it–– is catching on and growing in our area of Liberia.

Healing the sick and injured is incredibly important and rewarding work, and it can be easy to get caught up in feeling important and righteous. What could be more important than caring for sickness and suffering? What could be more important than doing “God’s work”? Well, the most important work is bringing the Word to God’s people. That is our mission, and that is our goal.

We are thankful and grateful to the members of St. Philip’s and St. Andrew’s (in Mt. Pleasant) for the love and support shown to this joint mission. We love and appreciate you all!

We would love to have some of our brothers and sisters from St. Philip’s join us on our upcoming trips. Please contact me at drrhodes1@gmail.com if you have any interest in joining us on this important and rewarding mission.

Three Rivers Outreach Medical Mission is an outgrowth of Three Rivers Outreach, which was founded by Shawn and Sonny Dupre, who began visiting Liberia in 2007 as part of a St. Andrew’s Mt. Pleasant mission team and later moved there permanently. The name is drawn both from three rivers they’ve spent so much time boating, swimming and fishing in––the Wando, Cooper, and Ashley––and the three largest rivers in Liberia: St. Paul, St. John, and the Cestos. Their mission focus has been in educating and evangelizing marginalized persons in the post-civil war country of Liberia.

Three Rivers Outreach medical clinic was first conceived in 2015, when God placed Sonny and Vinnie, who were childhood friends, together after years of separation and at a very low point in Vinnie’s life. Eight years later, after much discussion and discernment, they opened the doors (of Sonny and Shawn’s house!) to the people of Liberia to screen for and treat hypertension and diabetes.