News 2005 - Dec.(AJ)

AJ’s Sierra Leone NewsLetter December 2005

After three weeks of being back in England I have finally got the opportunity to write down thoughts, feelings and events that occurred in Sierra Leone in an amazing 12 days!

It was so humbling to see the trouble to which our hosts went to feeding us. In the light of the fact that much of the population would be doing well to get food each day, the fact we were able to have 3 meals a day was amazing.

It would be no exaggeration to say that at least 90% of Sierra Leone is mud shacks and corrugated iron roofs. Part of this is due to the destruction of many buildings during the civil war, part of this also obviously due to the poverty that exists in the country, which hit me as soon as you step off the plane. Koidu was one town we visited, where we learned that the entire town has been destroyed three years ago and was being rebuilt from virtually scratch.

We went to a lot of churches during our time there. On the Sunday we were there we went round three of the churches that are involved in the C3MSL mission churches. They ranged from the upstairs of a government building to a temporary shack in a village. We also went to St. Andrews Church which was the one we had funded to build last year.

Quite simply, these were the most welcoming people I had ever met, people just wanted to wave at you, be your friend and shake your hand. Obviously there are a lot of poor people, living on less than a pound a month, there also many people who are war-wounded, children with amputated limbs, adults too.
At the school which we helped to fund in Maima, St. Andrews School, we were told that all the girls there would have undergone female circumcision in an attempt to ensure their virginity before marriage according to old African tribal religions.

Things are done as such a slower pace in Sierra Leone, which can only be a good thing for someone’s health and stress levels. The road system also summed this up, many roads that really struggled to live up to the definition of a road as something that aids travel! So therefore we spent a great deal of time in our land rover travelling to places. We made the journey from Freetown in the West to Kono in the East, and that took 8 hours!
Communities are a closer knit thing here. Many people live in their communities are devoted to them and many more people know each other. This is also shown in the religious tolerance between Muslims and Christians where they are able to talk about their faith with each other much more freely and many people have converted between the two faiths.

In the three main places we stayed – Freetown (the capital, overcrowded to 1.5 million people in a place built for half that), Mekeni and Koidu we put on a sports seminar for church leaders, youth leaders and community leaders. The idea was to encourage them to think about sports ministry and outreach as a possible means of evangelism, community building and restoration.  Football is by far the national sport in Sierra Leone and the children loved the fun and games that we put on for them.

• There is a lot of potential for regeneration and rebuilding of the country. There are people who want to work to pick their country of its feet. A group of women from one church have started to build two schools for children using mud bricks and local skills. For the country to recover there needs to be investment and work done from within.
• There are also a lot of people for whom the war has left an everlasting and possibly irrevocable damage on them.
• No amount of money that we send would improve their communities and their culture, but it would give the people of Sierra Leone an opportunity to pick themselves up and try and make a living.
• Never have I seen such a contrast in the widespread poverty that so many people suffered over there, but such a willingness to give all that they have to you as an honoured guest.

I pray that this country would touch people’s hearts and we as a Church continue to support the ministry and country as tries to rebuild our future for itself!

God bless,

AJ