After many months, and with much help from structural engineer Joshua Yunker and Helps Ministries associate, Dale Slusser; the drawings for the new Grace Point Bible Church/Aletheia Ministry Center are done. Following is a nice note, and Aletheia ministry update that you might appreciate.
Dear Ed,
Words cannot express our gratitude to you all for your tireless sacrifice to serve our God through our ministry. We are ever grateful. It was with joy that our congregation received the news of the completion of the drawings. God will surely bless you. We will keep you posted, as we have been working on cutting off some of the dirt for the ground floor. I will try and send photos of that as soon as I can. We will continue to pray for you as well. thanks once again. We look forward to seeing you at the site when we get the work started. Please find bellow our ministry update to keep you abreast of what God is doing in our midst.
In Him Alone,
MINISTRY UPDATE FOR MARCH 2015
Our dear ministry partner,
Greetings to you from us, from the Land that we love, Sierra Leone. We hope that you are well and that the grace of God continues to multiply in your life.
Here are some updates on how things are in our nation right now and about what God is doing in our midst through the work He graciously committed to our trust.
HOSPITAL OUTREACH
Usually after having our devotion at the hospitals where we teach God’s word weekly, we then have a one on one talk with patients for the purpose of sharing the gospel with them individually. During this time some weeks back we shared the gospel with a twelve-year-old boy named Sinneh Kamara, and his aunt was sitting beside him. Sinneh was very sick and was a Muslim by then, but he heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and He believed and accepted Him as his saviour. Surprisingly for us, the next day the news we had was that he had passed on to be with the Lord. Before he died his aunt told us that his testimony was that he was only going to sleep if death comes his way, as we taught him. She said that it was Sinneh who was consoling her, telling her to not cry if he dies. After a moment he told his aunt that he wants to sleep and she prepared his bed and laid him down and within five minutes he died. At the funeral of the young boy Sinneh the family was encouraged from the word of God and the gospel was also preached to them. We facilitated the burial process and called for the Ebola burial team to do their job, as they are the ONLY authorized team to do burial during this Ebola outbreak.
In three of the government hospitals where we do evangelism outreach we were able to reach in the month of February only about 800 people with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and about 90% of them accepted Christ as saviour. The trend of our experience since we started reaching out to the sick people at the government hospitals is that 80% of those who were admitted at the AIDS and CANCER WARDS had died. The good news is that all of them we reached who had died believed in Christ as their Saviour. This is the Lord’s doing, and we continue to marvel at His unfailing compassion, new mercies and awesome grace.
OUTREACH IN OUR PUBLIC TRANSPORT
In February during our outreach in some of our public transport buses we reached about 1,716 people with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and about 1,574 accepted Christ as Saviour. These are people from all works of life, from different parts of the city, commuting every day around and about. Imagine for a moment what would happen if some of these guys does the same with preaching the gospel to their families, work makes, neighbours, schoolmates etc. Many more people will hear the gospel and be saved. That’s our dream as we continue to do this. A lot of these new believers have asked for our numbers, as they want to learn more from God’s word. We are so convinced that God has a plan for these new arms of ministry, and we continue to count it a privilege that God Almighty is allowing us this opportunity to not only preach the gospel, but to tell of His goodness to our generation.
EBOLA CRISIS
Of late, I have not been communicating with you about the Ebola crisis because there was no good news to report on. But I can now tell you that we are doing well with handling the virus. We have been having between zero to six cases for a while now. In fact things are gradually getting better that schools will reopen on April 14th. What you also really need to pray for us about is our political crisis. It has been getting worse with partisan politics. It is breaking our nation down, and things are falling apart, with a lot of dissatisfaction among our peoples. The system is now more terribly corrupt to our disappointment. We seriously need help.
CHURCH
Church continues to grow numerically. We continue to study the Revelation of Jesus Christ on Sundays, and the journey in the word since January 2015 has taken us to chapter 1 verse 7 so far. On Wednesdays we continue to study the book of Galatians. We are now studying chapter 5, on the fruit of the Spirit. The increase in attendance on Sundays and Wednesdays services and with so many of the members in church calling me and asking good biblical questions continues to give us the impression that people are hungry for the truth of God’s word and that they are growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. If you have wondered about what is going on with our building project I will give you some information in our next update. But please continue to pray for us, as we need it.
FAMILY
Family has been challenging for me. Not being able to get my daughter Simone to College made me feel like a failure, and its really hurting me. She has been home for two years now, only that I asked her to help me with office work to keep her busy. But she wants to further her education. Nathan and Donald are going to school now, and it’s time to pay their school fees. Georgiana is doing well with her support for me in everything I do. We are all healthy by the grace of God. My vehicle has reached its life span, with the so many bad roads that we have. We have to do a lot of repairs consistently on it and it has become a serious distraction, which is not helping me at all. We are thinking of getting rid of it. So we need God’s divine provision for a better vehicle, which we desperately need. So please be praying for us on this as well.
We continue to pray and give thanks to God for you, for your prayers and continued support to us. You have been the backbone to what we do. God has undoubtedly been using you tremendously to sustain our lives and ministry. We will ever live to be grateful to God for you. From the bottom of our hearts we say many thanks and may God continue to shower His blessing on your life.
I will write again soon.
Bye for now and In Him Alone,
Michael Turay.
