Minneapolis-based Global Ekklesia editor in Africa to launch publication
By Our Staff Writer
The editor and publisher of Minneapolis-based Global Ekklesia Mr. James Kokulo Fasuekoi is currently visiting his native Liberia in West Africa where he plans to recruit, train reporters and news photographers for his weekly Christian magazine now in its third year of operation.
A former Associated Press stringer now a Christian journalist and evangelist, Fasuekoi arrived in Monrovia (capital of Liberia) Wednesday night from the United States where he had sought political asylum during Lieria’s war-years and lived for over 25 years.
The former AP war correspondent said he would be in Liberia for an unspecified period, thus extending his news recruiting exercise to several neighboring states such as Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Republic of Guinea which host a considerable number of Liberians including his own ethnic Lorma who appear eager to know Jesus Christ.
In the country’s war-battered capital itself, Fasuekoi said he will tour several key national historical monuments, war sites and visit prominent and lesser-known Christian worship centers, worship and conduct interviews with an array of pastors, church laymen, and members of their congregations, for onward publication in the Global Ekklesia.
Journalist Fasuekoi is also expected to seek out Pastor Joshua Milton Blahyi, the once feared war-time ULIMO-J rebel leader aka “Gen. Butt Naked” for a visit to his Blahyi’s own church, a man he described as the “Most Changed” and “remorseful Liberian warlord” ever to join the war.
In 2009, Blahyi publicly confessed before a Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the capital of leading his Butt Naked militia brigade and murdering at least some 20,000 people during the country’s first civil war. Not long after the war he genuinely repented, sought forgiveness from God, and the people whom he hurt.
These days, Pastor Blahyi helps rehabilitate most of his former youth militias (all now men and women) winning them to Christ Jesus.
As Liberia-based AP Stringer, Fasuekoi, then an editor for the first post-war independent daily, The Inquirer, spent a decade in the 90s, often embedded with armed warring factions, including Blahyi’s own “Butt Naked” group that gained notoriety for going into battle against their enemies in nudity.
While in Liberia he intends to travel upcountry and speak to many Liberians particularly Lormas, discussing the Gospel, Resurrection and the Power of the Living God, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, thereby making brief stops over at the historic Lorma town of Wozi (near Zorzor & Fissebu) where Lorma Gospel originated in the 60s or even earlier.
It may be recalled that at the magazine’s second anniversary celebration in Minneapolis, Minnesota, last October, Editor-Publisher Fasuekoi announced that his entity was searching out volunteer news reporters and press photographers worldwide to assist with newsgathering and writing. He asked Christian youths to take advantage of this rare opportunity which includes free media training for candidates.
An experienced newspaper journalist, Fasuekoi worked for most of Liberia’s leading independent dailies prior to the outbreak of the civil wars before being forced to flee his native Liberia during President Charles Taylor’s presidency.
He’s a career-journalist for more than 35 years and the author of Rape, Loot & Murder: Liberian Civil War-A Journalist Photo Diary which became a referenced point years ago during most of Liberia’s civil war criminal trials in the U.S and elsewhere that involved several notorious Liberian warlords accused of staging atrocities during the course of the war.
Fasuekoi was studying Mass Communications at the University of Liberia 1990 but forced to abandon school like many due to the outbreak of war. He presently holds an AA in Biblical Theology from Spiritual Life Bible College of Minnesota, USA, while in 2011, Pennsylvania’s Education State Board determined he holds the equivalent of a degree in Journalism & Communications after a review of his professional credentials.
He started publication and distribution of this online medium in 2021 free of charge in a sleepy western Minnesota town called Howard Lake along Highway 12, and still continues to do so today.
Editor’s Note: Banner photograph: Editor-Publisher James Fasuekoi in Chicago, Illinois, Tuesday, trying to catch his flight to Brussels, Belgium while still in transit for Monrovia, Liberia. In second photo, an Aerial view of Freetown, Sierra Leone, on a beautiful sunny Wednesday; a wait at the Lungi international Airport, during a brief stopover; a recent portrait of the editor.