Home > Emmanuel Research Review > Issue No. 13 > > Torli
KruaTalk to Me!
Church Planting Panel Discussion,
Boston, October 15, 2005
Supplement to Issue No. 13, January 31,
2006
Issue No. 13 main article
| Research Review index | Emmanuel Gospel
Center
[summary comments: Torli explains how he integrates church planting and human rights advocacy and shares a challenging message for the church in America to recognize the mission God has brought to their doorstep.]
Listen to Torli’s talk (MP3 file, 14 minutes)
RK: Torli is the key player in starting at least three Dan-speaking* churches. He works closely with his father. And is with Mission to the Americas and Universal Human Rights International, and so, Torli.
*[for information on the Dan language of Africa, see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=daf]
Helping refugees find true freedom in Christ
TK: Good morning. I’m Torli Krua. I’m from Liberia in West Africa. I’m living here in Boston. I’ve been living here for a long time. I get to work with refugees and people who have been displaced. I work with people who are coming to this country looking for freedom. And in Christ they can find true freedom. And I’m very happy to be here and I thank Ralph [Kee] for the opportunity. And basically, I’m trying to help refugees.
[Runs power point slide show with music and images from Liberia]
[Reads from the Bible:]“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
“When I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine for bread or a thirst for water,
But rather for hearing the words of the LORD.
“People will stagger from sea to sea
And from the north even to the east;
They will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD,
But they will not find it.”That verse, Amos 8:11-12, is a key verse for my ministry!
Prior to coming to this country, I worked for a company called Wang Computers, Wang Laboratories. They had a subsidiary in Brussels. I worked as a technical support specialist for Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Prior to coming to this country, but in my course of duty, I spent time in Liberia during the war, working for the United States Embassy at a time when the whole country was shut down. It was complete anarchy. The president had been tortured, killed. There was no place to buy food. There was no electricity, no telephone. And churches were stuck to open their door to the public. It was horrific. People were dying every day. There was no water to drink. And the only available water was contaminated [in] the rivers and streams. People would come [to the rivers] and people would kill them and throw their bodies in there. So survival was a very difficult thing.How do you communicate the gospel to people who have been completely broken and who don’t have any more hope? [How do you communicate the gospel in] a country where families have been shattered, indefinitely separated, without first trying to get to where the people are? Well, God brought me to this country to bring the good news of the gospel to the people who are coming here. A.W. Rosenthal wrote in The New York Times, that eleven countries [have] Christians enduring persecution. [They include] China, Sudan, Pakistan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt, Cuba, Laos, [and] Uzbekistan. (A.M. Rosenthal, “Persecuting the Christians”, New York Times, Editorial Page, February 14, 1997.)
There is an evidence of a worldwide trend of Christian persecution based on two political ideologies: communism and radical Islam. Now today, the largest group of refugees coming to the United States from Africa are coming from Somalia, a country which is almost 99% Islamic. And they did not choose to come here.
The difference between refugees and immigrants [is that] immigrants choose their destination. They choose where they want to go to school, which state they want to settle at. They apply, they get a visa, and they come. Refugees are people whose lives have been completely shattered, and they wander from one place to another. And if you see refugees here in the United States, they are not here because they planned to come here. It is God that brought them here.
God brought them here
A large number of people are here from countries that are completely closed to the gospel. They have gone through torture, rape, violence, depravation. Their survival is only because of God. If you see a refugee, you just ask them, “How did you make it?” They were in situations where the torture they were going through were carried out by members of their own tribe, members of their own religious group. And so they are more open to the gospel here then they were in their own country. That’s a great opportunity for the church.What we have done is, we have gotten involved in a lot of things. One of the things is advocacy, to be able to just stand by the refugees. I don’t know who is going to be able to just go hand a tract to some one who has been separated from their child for 15 years and say, “Well God loves you and I don’t care about you.” It’s going to be difficult for the person to listen to you. And so we have to try to be where other refugees are through advocacy. Like brother Ismail was saying, [it’s about] those different things; [like] trying to help people with the things that are on their minds right now so that, later on, you can at least be [heard]. Perhaps that’s the missing piece in the mission of the church? They put a big welcome sign, “Welcome here” and we are doing very little to see where the people are coming from.
We have been able to establish a church in Philadelphia from here [Boston]. My father actually is the lead person in everything that we do. And he is sort of like my tutor. I am walking behind him. Sorry he can’t be here, because he is the hospital right now. We don’t have support for [the Philadelphia church] ministry. I am now with Mission to the Americas. I am trying to raise support. Ralph [Kee] has been very instrumental. He has been trying to help to introduce me to some churches. Paul Bothwell [has been helpful] as well. But the support we have been able to raise so far is almost negligible. My father has zero support and he gets ready to go from Boston to Philadelphia by bus to share the gospel without getting enough money. Sometimes he will buy a one-way ticket and he will go South Station. And on a couple of occasions people there will say, “Where are you going?” He will say, “I’m going to Philadelphia.” “How are you getting there?” “Well, I got money to pay my way there, but I don’t know how I am going to get back.” And the security guard at South Station, many times, will pay his way to go and come back.
And now I say that, to say that the responsibility to bring the gospel to the world—or at least bringing the gospel to the people God has brought to the doorsteps of the church here in the United States—ought to be a concern of every Christian here in this country.
We also have a office in Providence and in Lynn [Massachusetts]. I have been going to Lewiston [Maine] for almost two years now. I’m working with the churches there, with people from Somalia. Sometimes we meet in the public library. With the young people, I meet with them in the library there, because it is easier for people to come to the public library. New people, people from Islamic cultures, in their country—if you start working with [others], you will be completely ostracized by your family, completely rejected. So the sign of the cross may be a sign of death for somebody. So I meet with people in the area where they are comfortable. I’m involved in that.
I’m involved in Universal Human Rights International. We have an office in Jamaica Plain [Boston, MA]. We treat it sort of like an outreach. We say we provide services for refugees. Sometimes we have people who will come, but they will not come to church. Anyway, we can pray for them. We can ask, “How are you doing? How is your child?” They always break down, because their child is out there in the refugee camp, doesn’t have clean water. And we also help to try to bring families together.
I have worked with Greater Boston Legal Services, for attorneys. I work pro bono. I’m looking for people in schools to work with. I speak at different schools, a lot of schools in different places, on human rights issues. I ask to do a workshop to sort of educate people in the church to the trend which tells you who is coming to this country, right now. Going to the workshop kind of helps the church establish a ministry to refugees in your country, in your place. There are many refugees that you may not see. I try to work with the church to identify where they are. And I try to bring the gospel to them. I have one more little slide here. The Bible says that the devil comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. This is his purpose. Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. Now, we as Christians need to be conscious of people who are broken by [?] and sin and just to bring the good news of the gospel.
The first pictures you saw, was the state of refugees. You know what makes them to flee. You know why they are coming to our country? Why didn’t you go to [them]? Well, God is bringing them here. They are unsaved. They don’t know Christ. They need to know. And he is bringing them here because you are here to introduce them to Jesus.
The church
This is a photo of the church. You can see just a few of us in African clothing over there and that is me. The video [camera], over there, was given to me by Boston College students. After I got done speaking, they said. “Your message needs to get out there, so here is a video recorder for you to record and send it to more people where you cannot be.” And I intend to put this on the internet and then people in other places will be able to have access. We are doing stories on people who are refugees. I was in Philadelphia, in a church a couple of weeks ago, and they wanted to do something to help the people who were the victims of Katrina, because they have been in similar situations. And what we have decided, because we don’t have a whole lot of money, we are going to bring out the stories of these refugees, recorded on DVD. And make it available to the families of Katrina victims to see that these people have been tortured, they have been forced out of their country, and how their faith in God has sustained them, how their God has been able to deliver them. That is enough pictures at this time, but these are some of the people that we have been working with here in Boston and around the country.I’ve been to Minnesota, Nebraska. People tell me, “We want to invite you to our place, but Boston is too far.” I tell them, “If God could get me from Liberia to Boston, I can go from Boston to anywhere.” And I‘ll find my way over there. Don’t say, “You can’t come here,” that’s the purpose for which I am here. I am prepared to go anywhere in this country to bring the gospel to people and to the Christian Americans to see the opportunities that they have. [Churches] think, “We don’t have refugees.” So we have a gospel choir of people from Zimbabwe, from Liberia, Sierra Leon, and we have a whole bunch of refugees that they didn’t know about in their town, working in hotels and other places. They were not in the community of Americans. [One church], the day after that service, they had been able to establish an international fellowship. They have Bible study every week, and they are going to be having a church.
And I thank you for your time.
Issue No. 13 main article | Research Review index | Emmanuel Gospel Center
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