Really, I'm blogging again...

...if not for other people to read, then for my own amusement as I write my thesis.
I'm going through all my field notes, writing chapters, reading pdfs and books, listening to recordings, reading Liberian newspapers....like a good PhD student should. It gets tedious at times, sometimes even a little boring. But THEN I'll come across forgotten phrases that I'd written down during a church service, newspaper articles or transcribed interviews, that are SO amusing, I am able to stop telling myself that I've made a terrible life-decision in embarking on a PhD about Liberian Pentecostals.
Because a lot of these phrases, articles, etc. I will incorporate into my thesis, but cannot do so as evidence of 'How damn amusing this stuff is', I'm going to begin recording them here, in the abandoned blog.
To begin, consider the following phrase that Winners' Chapel suggests readers of its 'Victory Bulletin' mediate on:

'If you're ugly but have money, you're beautiful.'

Or, one of my favourites that I re-discovered a few weeks ago:

'You can be the best lesbian witch but God will make you a good wife!'

Also, going through my field notes has reminded me of my periodic confusion about what exactl was being preached, when the message relied on certain words which I had trouble discerning from one another in the Liberian English. For example, the words war, world, and word all sounded exactly the same to me. So, you can understand the confusion I'd have when hearing the following sentence:

'Now sometimes you feel you have problem with the (war, world, word). But I'm here to tell you that you can overcome with the spiritual (war, world, word) and make everything prosper by the (war, word, world)'.

Now, having heard this type of message atleast one hundred times before, I get the gist of what they are saying. I'm pretty sure the order is world, war, word. Even if I couldn't determine which word was which, the sermon was usually so repetitive or vague that it didn't matter anyway. But it's difficult when trying to transcribe exact quotes.
BUT imagine my total confusion the day the pastor brought in the word wood. I didn't figure out he was talking about wood until I asked somebody after the service:

'When it was the time of (war, world, word, wood) I couldn't get by. I was taking the (war, world, word) to burn to make business. But it was hard-o. So I making business and one day I encounter the (war, world, word, wood) and I know that I don't need no more of (war, world, word) business. Thank God I can leave that (war, world, word, wood) and be prosperous with my (war, world, word, wood).'

Ten points to whoever guesses right.