Liberian Community in U.S. celebrates Mother Tete Woods at 70
Colorful event, characterized by jokes & laugher
By James Kokulo Fasuekoi|Editor-Publisher
Even at age 70 year-old, beauty and smile aren’t about to evade Mother Esther Tete Woods anytime soon.
At any rate, this clearly became evident Saturday, March 5, 2022, as she posed next to a backdrop that displayed her portrait for a photo-shoot soon after she marched into the hall during a celebration to mark her 70th birthday.
The event, hosted by Mother Woods’ family, was held in Robinsdale, Minnesota in a colorful style.
Apart from Woods’ own church family in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, scores of friends and relatives of the celebrant living out of state also showed up for the occasion.
Known affectionately by names like “Survival”, “the Quiet Kru Woman,” given her by relatives during the war years in Liberia, Mrs. Woods, a Kru of southeastern Liberia, was born March 1952.
Like most survivors of the African war known as “Liberian civil war”, she has good reasons to celebrate and be thankful to God for surviving that brutal war and making it to America with many of her children.
Faith Chapel Evangelistic Ministry’s senior pastor, Rev. Victor Barbour, in his opening prayer, described Woods’ life as “fulfilling”, saying, one could easily tell just from “looking at her children and grandchildren.”
Known popularly as “Ma Tete”, her elder daughter, Mrs. Shirley Bettaforyen, serves as a senior pastor at Faith Chapel Evangelistic Ministry.
FCEM’s lead pastor, Evangelist John B. Saah praised Mother Woods, a devoted servant of God, who once headed Faith Chapel’s Usher team, for her endless services and financial contribution towards the works of God.
He told of how Ma Tete had often given him personal financial donations towards his Saah’s travels abroad for evangelism works whenever such trips came about.
Pastor Saah, for years has been heavily engaged with foreign evangelism missions, traveling to the four corners of the globe, including some hard-to-go places such as China and the Philippians that are considered quite unfriendly to the Gospels of Christ.
For much of the event, Ma Tete’s friends and relatives took the microphone one by one, giving personal life testimonies, with scores centering on tales of war; their survival tactics with Woods, whenever they came face to face with marauding rebel fighters during the civil war in the 90s.
In one particular incident, a lady cited how she and Woods had gone through rubbles one morning, in search of food and encountered some rebel soldiers.
“They demanded us to tell them our tribe,” she said, almost tearing-up amid nostalgia.
At this time, about eight rebel factions except IGNU’s Black Berets and Boima Fahnbulleh’s Front for Popular Democracy in Liberia (FPDL) fought for power and control of the country’s mineral wealth and each targeted particular “tribes’ ‘ for retribution.
Terrified by the rebels’ appearance, and unsure of their motive, Woods sought to apply wisdom, often evading the rebels’ question, she said.
Woods feared the outcome would be disastrous like numerous other cases they had heard of if it turns out they belonged to one of the targeted “tribes.”
But as it turned out through God’s divine grace, Woods finally confessed that she and her sister were “Kru” and the rebel soldiers set them free.
Though decades have passed, the short drama of that morning in the Liberian capital still haunts both.
When the adults had finished speaking, Woods’ own US-born grandchildren, ranking among America’s talented kids, took over the stage.
They added more excitement to the ceremony, entertaining the gathering with songs amid eating and the drinking of sweet wines.
One, a teenage girl, mimicked a popular American actress, rendering a couple of her debut hits with backing from the D.J. of the night.
The second performer, one of Woods’ grandsons, picked up the Microphone and did a special rapped song titled, “I will sing for my Mama”, which he had produced for Grandma.
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES KOKULO FASUEKOI