There surely cannot be anywhere on the planet that fewer people would visit right now than West Africa.
Ravaged by the deadly Ebola virus, the region is ground zero in the deadliest outbreak of the disease in history.
Last Sunday, Nicole Liles of Ruskin touched down in the region — for security reasons, she can’t reveal which country in West Africa she will be working in — for a two-year mission in the area most people are desperately trying to leave.
Close to 4,000 people have died from Ebola in West Africa since the outbreak began earlier this year. There are now more than 8,000 confirmed, suspected and probable cases of Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone — all in West Africa — according to World Health Organization figures released last week.
The virus is spread through contact with bodily fluids and only by someone who is showing symptoms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
All of which doesn’t deter Nicole one bit. She’s on a mission to help save lives and souls.
“I’ll be doing research on remote villages to find out if there are any Christians there and establishing some groundwork and getting information about them to hopefully start a future ministry among those people,” Liles said.
She will also be working connecting American churches who may want to send mission teams to the area, “helping them establish relationships with the local people so they can hopefully develop their own self-sustaining relationships,” she said.
Nicole will be joining a team of missionaries who are already embedded in the region under the auspices of the International Mission Board, the mission group for the Southern Baptist Church. The nation’s largest evangelical denomination, claiming more than 40,000 churches with nearly 16 million members, the Southern Baptist Church sponsors missions throughout the globe, hoping to spread the word of the Bible.
This is Liles’ second trip to Africa. Last summer, she went with an FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) group to Burkina Faso for two weeks. “We were there to study agricultural development and relief work,” she said.
That experience plus several others during college at the University of Florida reinforced her desire to return to Africa.
“A lot led up to my wanting to serve at least a few years somewhere,” she said.
A watershed moment came, she said, when she listened to a televised sermon by a pastor while attending UF, where she studied agricultural education and communication.
Liles said, “The pastor asked ‘Will what you are doing right now matter before God when you are standing before him at the end of your life?’ That was a really defining moment for me. It really made me think about what I was doing and what direction my life was headed in. Were all the things I was doing to benefit me — or was it to benefit others and God?”
She graduated from UF in May. Seeing a “huge need in food production around the world,” her goal was to take her degree and use it to help others in some form of relief work.
Both Liles’ parents have been supportive of her trip.
“They are sad that I am leaving but they are supportive of me. They always have been,” she said.
While concern about Ebola is rampant in West Africa, “Fortunately, where I am going is pretty stable, and they have a good medical infrastructure to handle things if it gets too bad,” Liles said. “I feel very confident and safe going over there. I know I am in good hands.”
Fast forward two years, and when she returns, Liles simply hopes that her faith will have planted some seeds in Africa.
“I hope in my time with the people there and through the relationships I build that they will be able to see Jesus through me and they will have peace through Him and come to know Him because the area I am going to is largely Muslim and dominated by tribal religions.”
Despite the Ebola headlines and talk of banning flights from certain West African countries to the United States, Liles has never had any doubts about going in the other direction. “I have been in the application process for about a year now, and I found out where I would be going in March,” she said, “so I am just at the point where I want to go.”