Stephen and Elaine Haber are both from Brooklyn – home of Ebbets Field, the Old Dutch Church, the Lott House and the place where the USS Monitor was built to combat the Merrimac. Their journey that has taken them through Flatbush will ultimately take them to the Ivory Coast, where they are willing to invest their lives as career missionaries.

The journey to Africa started when David Mwangi, a Luther Rice Seminary student from Kenya and member of Eastside Church in Marietta, gave a testimony in church one Sunday morning in March of 2002. Mwangi, who had been the pastor of a very prominent church in Nukuru, Kenya, cited the physical, material and spiritual needs of the Kenyan people. At that moment Stephen turned to Elaine and said, “Man, would I love to go to Kenya.”

It was then announced that Eastside was entering into a partnership with the churches in the Nukuru region of Kenya and a short-term mission trip was being planned for August.

Stephen admitted, “The Holy Spirit immediately urged me to prepare to go. I prayed to God that if it was His will, to help me work out the timing and the finances; He did.

“I began to attend team meetings and preparatory sessions and became engrossed in the whole process,” Haber added. “Then the day came for our departure to Africa. When our plane landed in Nairobi I felt like I was home; somehow I knew I would be back.”

Before the ten-day trip to Kenya was over Haber was beginning to sense a call to missions.

The Eastside deacon returned to Kenya for another short-term mission trip last year; and God continued to confirm His divine call.

At a dinner honoring the Habers, Al Rhodes, Eastside’s deacon chairman, said, “Elaine is an awesome woman! She has never been to Africa, but she trusts her husband enough to go wherever God leads him.”

Although Elaine was willing to follow her husband to Africa it was not until November of last year that she sensed God was mightily at work in her own heart. At the International Mission Board Candidate Conference in Richmond she really began to sense God’s peace about Africa and began to develop a love for the people there.

As residents of Brooklyn, Stephen’s family was Catholic, Elaine’s Jewish. Stephen said, “My parents required my brother and me to attend “religious instruction” during my primary and middle school years, but we rarely attended church.”

Elaine added, “We never went to the temple or Hebrew school, but we observed the Jewish holy days mostly out of respect for my grandparents.”

During their senior year in high school Stephen and Elaine met. As a requirement for an English elective course Elaine began to read the Bible for the first time. She came to the realization that Jesus Christ was and is the Messiah.

At home Elaine had to read the Bible in secret, because her mother was so vocal in her protest against it.

Stephen and Elaine began to attend church together. When Elaine told her mother that she had been attending church and believed Jesus was the Messiah, her mother threw her out of their home.

The Habers married in 1989, were saved in 1992, joined the Brooklyn Tabernacle and were baptized together in January of 1993. In 1994 they moved to West Palm Beach, Florida and joined Berean Church. In 1999 they moved to join Eastside Church where they have been intricately involved in a myriad of ministries.

The Habers have two daughters, Elizabeth, age 7 and Alexandra, age 5. The new missionary appointees disposed of most of their possessions and are waiting the sell of their house in preparation for what Stephen believes to be a life calling.

The Habers have traded the temporal and ephemeral for the eternal. At a commissioning service April 18 Eastside Church announced that their Royal Ambassador Chapter would henceforth be called the Stephen and Elaine Haber Chapter.

On April 27 at Two Rivers Church in Nashville, Tennessee the Habers were appointed to serve as Southern Baptist missionaries in Cote d’ Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in West Africa.

The future for the Habers includes weeks of orientation in Richmond and in Abidjan, Cote d’ Ivoire, 9-12 months in Burkina Faso to study the Jula language and 10-12 months in Dakav, Senegal to study French.

In Cote d’ Ivoire the Habers will be working with a people group where less than 1% of the 1.7 million people are Christians.

It was said of David Livingston of Africa, “He sickened at heart when he heard of well-fed Christians at home engaged in hair splitting discussions over doctrinal themes when millions were dying without the gospel where he was.”

Livingstone ended each letter he wrote home to Scotland with the words, “Who will penetrate the heart of Africa with the gospel?”

After 150 years the Habers like many others have responded, “We will go!”