Greetings brethren: This is Justin Monts writing for this blog. Today we preached at Priscilla Street and Tengbeh Town in Freetown. We began early in the day, starting at the Priscilla Street church of Christ, and brought lessons on our respective themes. John Smith preached on All Spiritual Blessings In Christ as part of his New Testament Christian series. Steve Niemeier preached on Making The Word Of God Of No Effect as part of his series on the New Testament Church. I preached on the Sponsoring Church Arrangement as part of my series on Institutionalism And Additions To The Organization Of The Church. The meeting was well attended and the interest and excitement in learning has continued to be very impressive and encouraging. The weather is so hot and it takes a lot out of us as we preach. We receive and answer questions at the end of each study so we always maintain alertness, being ready to help. Every day there is a huge stack of questions written down and we never have enough time to get to all of them. And, these questions generally all pertain to the topics we have discussed. One of the greatest challenges Sierra Leoneans have is developing the confidence to believe that they can do the work God has given them to do. This is why they have traditionally relied heavily on the arrangement of the World Bible School organization promoted by Institutional churches of Christ. They reason that their churches must cooperate with this system for they are too poor and too uneducated to know what is right or to do what is right for themselves. We have stressed that they are very intelligent and talented and can faithfully follow the pattern of Scripture. After presenting our lessons and everyone was dismissed for the evening, we sat down to talk at length with Christian Asgill and Theophilus Cartouche, two men who labor with the Freetown church of Christ. I am very impressed with these two men and my heart goes out to their struggles. Christian had been a Director in the World Bible School but upon learning the truth about how churches are to cooperate together, he abandoned his position and took a sizeable financial hit. Theophilus made a similar sacrifice, leaving a different church-sponsored organization. Their chief aim now has been to be right with God and to teach others about the error of Institutionalism in churches of Christ. Because of this, they have been persecuted and have faced much opposition. They have even disparagingly been called "popes." All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (2 Tim. 3:12). These men will certainly need our prayers. Theophilus may have an opportunity to eventually go and preach for a church out in Makeni, helping to establish them in the truth and bring them fully out of Institutionalism and denominiational practices. It is our hope and prayer that that can happen soon. We finished off the day by bringing lessons on False Standards Of Authority to the church at Tengbeh Town. Steve talked about the false standards of religious leaders and traditions. I spoke about the false standards of emotions and feelings, and the false standard of believing that the majority is always right. John spoke on the false standard of blindly following our parents in religion and also the false standard of relying just on our conscience for justification. The material was well received and it was good to be with the brethren there. Tomorrow we will have another eventful day. Thank you so much for your love, interest and prayers directed toward this work.