Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention president, family make Birmingham temporary home after Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa

Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention president, family make Birmingham temporary home after Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa

Olu Menjay’s days have felt slightly different lately.

What was supposed to just be a visit to the United States this summer has instead turned into a prolonged stay in Alabama for Menjay, president of Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention, and his family due to the recent Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa (see stories, this page and page 5).

Now Menjay, along with his wife and two young children, have temporarily made Birmingham home with the assistance of Alabama Baptists as he helps his country of Liberia from thousands of miles away.

Menjay grew up in a Christian home in Liberia and said his father became a Christian through the influence of a Southern Baptist missionary. 

“At the age of 11, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and was baptized,” Menjay said of his own conversion, noting the faith influence of his Christian parents.

In the early 1990s he came to the United States where he studied at Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Ga., and later at Mercer University in Macon, Ga. It was while he was at Mercer, he said, that he felt called to serve in the church.

Seminary education

He applied to various seminaries and enrolled at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., where he spent three years in the master of divinity program.

Menjay later served about four years at Lewis Chapel Baptist Church, Fayetteville, N.C., before furthering his education at Boston University in Massachusetts.  

About 10 years ago he began serving as the chief administrative officer and principal of Ricks Institute, a K–12th grade Baptist boarding school in Monrovia, Liberia. As a result of the Liberian Civil War, which first began in 1989, the Ricks campus had been left severely damaged. “There was no running water, there was no electricity at all,” Menjay recalled. 

Despite the setbacks, he focused on revitalizing the institution — the school today has about 600 students.

In addition to his role at Ricks, Menjay serves as an assistant professor in the Roberts Department of Christianity at Mercer, a vice president of the Baptist World Alliance and president of the Liberia Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention, a position he was elected to in 2012. The convention, which is an organization consisting of more than 250 churches, is “the largest Baptist body in Liberia,” Menjay noted.

The purpose of the convention “is to strengthen our churches through theological education and to foster discipleship among our churches and also to promote quality education within the country,” he said. “It is a fellowship that brings Baptist sisters and brothers together.” 

Menjay’s family had recently arrived in the U.S. for a visit. They were hoping to return to Liberia for the start of the school year in September, but because of the escalating Ebola outbreak “everything in Liberia has been interrupted,” Menjay said. Businesses and schools, including Ricks, have temporarily closed down to help stop the spread of the deadly virus.

Mountain Brook Baptist Church, Birmingham, has provided the Menjays a place to stay in the interim. “They have been very hospitable,” Menjay said of the church’s assistance.

“I’m living in what I call … an indecisive state as it relates to returning to Liberia just now,” he explained, noting he’s not sure how long his family will be in Alabama “because the situation is unpredictable.”

While in Birmingham, Menjay has been working with a network of Baptists to send food to Liberia during the Ebola crisis. Both he and Eddie Gibson, also a native Liberian and pastor of Brewster Road Community Church, Birmingham, have been assisting with the Help Liberia Food Drive conducted through a partnership with LIBA (Liberians in Birmingham, Alabama, Inc.) and national Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) Foundation (see story, page 5). 

WMU partnership

“We have worked with Olu Menjay for more years than I can recall,” said David George, president of WMU Foundation. “Our initial partnership began with a small grant to Ricks Institute. We were very impressed with the work there … and we were thrilled when WMU expanded their partnership with Ricks to include an animal husbandry program that was an integral part of the school’s curriculum and source of food.”

George added that Southern Baptists have a longstanding commitment to Liberia. “When Olu and … Eddie Gibson came to us with the idea of collecting food to ship to Liberia, we jumped at the opportunity.”

Menjay noted he is “very, very thankful” for the ongoing assistance in this food initiative, adding that basic food for Liberians is needed during this critical time for his country. 

“We are asking Alabama Baptists … to pray for us and help us to stop hunger in Liberia,” he said.