Liberia: A thunderous sermon spilled from the First Assembly of God church and out onto Buchanan Street. Inside, Rev Edwin A. Gbelly leaned over a velvet pulpit, bellowing from the New Testament.
In the pews, smartly dressed churchgoers fanned away the soupy heat with hymn sheets. At Rev Gbelly's exhortation, they shot their hands into the air, shouting "Amen! Amen!" Six months ago, this church was in the heart of a battlezone. Mortars rained down mercilessly on downtown Monrovia from rebel positions across the River Mesurado. Stray gunfire zipped through the near-deserted streets in a bloody siege Liberians nicknamed "World War Three".
Churchgoer Maurice Johnson was caught in the crossfire. "Sometimes the rockets passed over the roof. We stayed inside for three weeks, just praying to God," he said, Bible in hand.
Today Monrovia is at peace, more or less. A muscular intervention by US and Nigerian peacekeepers in August helped spark the flight of rogue President Charles Taylor into exile.
Now the world's largest UN peace mission is deploying in Liberia. Ireland is playing a central role.
Although just 473 of the 15,000-strong force, the Irish troops are the largest western element and have been assigned critical tasks. This week a heavily armed quick reaction force is on 24-hour standby, while a perilous demobilisation process resumes.
The Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, is due to arrive for a short visit on Wednesday. He will find a city radically changed since last summer.
Tens of thousands of terrified civilians, who crammed into schools, church halls and bombed out office blocks, have returned home. Shabby yellow taxis course along once deserted streets, past shops open for business again. Fleets of white four-wheel-drive jeeps mark the influx of western aid agencies.
Across the river, beer is flowing again at the brewery that once served as a desperate hospital. Most of all, the glassy-eyed gunmen are gone. UN troops from Ghana and Nigeria watched over checkpoints once manned by militia fighters high on drugs or alcohol. Still, an estimated 50,000 fighters are at large, their weapons hidden away.