The President of Liberia Mrs. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has thanked the United Methodist Church for its work over the years in meeting the challenges for the betterment of the people of Liberia through the Church’s ministries of education, health and social services.  

Mrs. Sirleaf said for over one hundred and seventy-five years the Methodist Church has stood by and with the Liberian nation. She said the Church has been a forerunner and a leader in education in Liberia. 

President Sirleaf was speaking on Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist in the American city of Fort Worth, Texas. The General Conference is the denomination’s highest legislative body. 

Mrs. Sirleaf said through its ministry of education, the Methodist Church owns and runs one hundred and thirty-three schools serving more than twenty-seven thousand students, a leading university with several colleges including the schools of health services and theology while at the same time administering four mission stations in rural Liberia and a major referral hospital (Ganta United Methodist Hospital) and three clinics. 

She said the Church in Liberia has helped to give democracy a meaning in life, give the citizens their dignity by addressing the issues of poverty, illiteracy and health as well as give public voice to the voiceless, care and love to the needy and abandoned, shelter to the homeless and education and hope to the young, the destitute, the under privileged and those who despair. 

President Sirleaf paid tribute to the Methodist Church for providing what she calls leadership to the Liberian Council of Churches in steering the return to family values to those old-fashioned virtues of honesty and hard work. 

But at the same time Mrs. Sirleaf said, she would be less than honest if she did not tell the gathering that Liberia needs the Church as ever before. She said this is because the task of national renewal and the task of dealing with the financial, human and technical neglects is huge and well beyond the capacity of Liberia. 

She emphasized that the moment has therefore never been more opportune for the United Methodist Church to broaden its engagement in Liberia and its collaboration with government as it plans and pursue programs to address poverty, improve education and health services and give the people dignity and hope while simultaneously advancing and giving meaning to Almighty God’s work in Liberia and throughout Africa. 

Mrs. Sirleaf appealed for support for the relocation of the United Methodist University in Liberia to its new campus thereby expanding the number of places available in West Africa for students to have access to University education. 

She said despite the enormous challenges which face the world, the good news is that the world is still a better place today. She said the universal bad news out of Africa has changed. 

Mrs. Sirleaf pointed out that slowly, but surely a growing number of African countries have started to turn around – ending conflicts, installing good governments, implementing stronger economic policies and getting back on their feet. 

She said her government has moved the country from a failed state – from what she calls that awful flicker on the television screen of a nation in chaos, death and destruction to a potential post-conflict success story. 

But to maintain this progress President Sirleaf said, the focus is and must be on the youth of Liberia. The President said, drawing from the history of Liberia’s civil war, unemployment – small or large – especially among young people, transform them into a potentially willing source of instability, violence.