Seaberrys’ curtain call becomes next act of missions story

“Africa Encore” is morphing into Act IV of “The Seaberrys in Africa.” And it’s going to be an expensive production.

The first four “acts,” from 1983 to 1999, took Anne and Steve Seaberry to Liberia, Zaire/Congo, Senegal, The Gambia and Gabon as Southern Baptist missionaries before his heart condition abruptly forced medical retirement.

In the following years, he worked for Texas Baptists in mission engagement while she went back to school for her master’s degree and wound up being a teacher in Aledo and an elementary school principal in Keller.

But their anticipated quiet retirement in 2016 turned into anything but last year when one of Anne Seaberry’s Facebook friends reposted a story about Dakar Academy in Senegal looking for a chaplain. Dakar Academy is where three of the Seaberrys’ grandchildren are enrolled and where two of their children graduated.

Steve, 71, interviewed and was offered the position soon afterward. So they sold their dream house, set up a Facebook group named “African Encore … Dakar Academy,” and headed back across the Atlantic to the Muslim country and the opportunity to take a curtain call on their African missionary days.

The new ministry included dealing with COVID-19 and some political unrest, including curfews.

“We didn’t enjoy those rough spots, but we knew how to live through it,” Steve Seaberry acknowledged.

Accustomed to challenges

They knew how to do it, because their resume includes two forced evacuations from Zaire as rioting soldiers looted their neighborhood, plus a home invasion in Gabon where a pistol-waving gang debated the pros and cons of killing them.

Their prayers were pretty basic that night.

“We just kept saying ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus’ over and over,” Steve recalled.

Their earlier Acts of Africa concentrated on church planting, but for the farewell tour, Steve pastored the school community while Anne played mom and nana to her grandchildren at every opportunity and sat around a lot.

“No one was asking me to do anything, not even substitute” teach, she recalled. “God and I had a lot of long discussions about that.”

Superintendent Robb Warfield changed the nature of Anne’s heavenly conversations when he shared his dream of opening a third campus an hour south of Dakar, as well as an extension in Liberia—and asked her to help make it happen.

Senegal is putting a port in this area, the United Nations is sending all of their families to live there, and many businesses are moving out to this area because of the congestion and traffic nightmares of Dakar.

“We could not have predicted when we hired Steve that we would be launching a new campus under Anne’s leadership,” Warfield explained. “God provided. Just as we began to discuss the possibility of opening a school in an underserved area, Anne came to us saying she needed more to do”

“He had the vision, and I had 17 years of Africa and 15 years of experience in education,” she said. “It seemed like a God thing.”

All she needed to do was find land, recruit students and train staff, figure out infrastructure—and raise $500,000 in time to open for business for the 2022-23 school year. She immediately started gauging interest and promptly had interest from Senegalese and other African families in enrolling 45 children.

So, she had another talk with God.

“When I complained about needing a ministry, I didn’t mean I wanted to go from 0 to 200 mph,” she said.

Unexpected opportunity

When the first prospective site, an eight-acre unimproved plot, came with a $1 million price tag, she wondered if she had misunderstood the call. But three days later, Dakar Academy received an unexpected and unsolicited offer from Worldwide Evangelism for Christ. The organization no longer could maintain its school and was looking for a buyer.

The facility was precisely in the area Dakar Academy wanted to situate, 200 yards off the interstate highway. It consisted of classrooms, dorms, dining hall, auditorium, housing for teachers, offices, gym, soccer field and a very small electric transformer.

It is, as Anne understated, “rustic,” with no air conditioning, very spotty internet, an inadequate water supply and unpainted buildings.

But the price is right—free for the first three years, enough time to build enrollment so the tuition from non-missionary kids can pay the note.

The central campus requires a 70 percent/30 percent ratio of missionary kids to business families, but the second campus in Dakar and the new school have no such limits.

The $500,000 is needed to bring the facilities up to the expected standard Senegalese businessmen would expect and for a quality American education. That means running optic cable from the highway and securing a larger transformer, a new deep well and a water storage tower—not to mention air conditioners.

“I’m just a little ole Southern Baptist girl. All I know about raising money is talking about Lottie Moon,” she admitted. “But we’re going to do it.”

“We’ve seen God move in powerful ways so many times in the past but never like he is moving now”

Still, the decision to take on the challenge wasn’t easy. The Seaberrys prayed long and hard together and with their children. The kids didn’t have to pray for long. They saw it as a perfect fit for their parents’ missionary hearts and Anne’s specialized talents.

John, their youngest, a paramedic/firefighter in Waxahachie, sealed the deal when he asked: “Are you kidding me? Why would you not do this? Why wouldn’t you want to leave something tangible in a country all of us love so much and help birth a place where children can learn about Jesus?”

For more information, see https://texasbaptists.givingfuel.com/txb-missionary-steve-seaberry.