Aletheia Ministry and Grace Center Bible Church

reviewing drawings with contractor, Sahr Allieu

a lot of rock that needed moving

Construction is just getting underway for the new church and discipleship training center for Aletheia Ministry and Grace Center Bible Church. Years ago, a former Youth for Christ missionary, Michael Turay, started a new ministry called Aletheia (absolute truth), with a focus on teaching scriptures accurately, and reaching out to many within his city and country (Freetown, and Sierra Leone) with the simple and truthful gospel of Christ.  In their early days, he and his young protoge' Howard identified the Regent District of Freetown as an area with very few churches. After going door to door and sharing the gospel, they started Grace Center Bible Church within this region. The Aletheia team still proclaims the gospel invarious parts of town (hospitals, buses, street corner, and home Bible studies) while Grace Center provides a church for Christians in the Regent district to learn and grow in God's Word.  After years of renting the Regent community center for church, and renting a local catholic training center for discipleship training of pastors from various Sierra Leone towns and villages; they have started building their own facility on a very challenging, rocky, hard to access hillside property.

moving heavy rocks and boulders

My middle son, Josiah, a new friend and recent architect grad, Matthew Moeckel, and I joined with the Aletheia team and Grace Center Church members to help prepare the land for construction of the first floor of this three story building. After a week of hard work, the land is ready for foundation work. The contractor and I had very productive meetings going over the drawings to assure that this fairly complicated building is started on a good footing (figuratively and literally). Please keep this ministry and church in your prayers; they proclaim a truthful gospel message in a land with a heavy Muslim population, and heretical Christian teaching.

the young helped with the smaller rocks

FYI, Aletheia was recently engaged by the government of Sierra Leone to teach the Christian military chaplains; the first time they have ever engaged a local pastor and team.

the work crew

Trip to Freetown via London & Paris

Plane reservations for myself and my middle son, Josiah, to Freetown Sierra Leone by the client's desired date of December 1st ended up taking my son and I through London and Paris with long layovers at each.  We had sometime to do mini-tours of each town. In London, we were joined by a Brazilian gal named Anna, who was taking English classes from Josiah last year, but is in London studying for a masters in architecture this year. The three of us had a very nice later afternoon and early evening.

The next day we had a similar layover in Paris, but no Brazilian English student during this visit.  As in London, Josiah and I made the most of our long layover and were able to see some of the major attractions.

We met Matthew Moeckel at the Paris airport on the morning of our departure for Freetown. Matthew is a recent architecture graduate, who joined us on this trip to see what architectural missionary work might look like. 

The thing that struck me, as we drove into downtown Freetown the day after our arrival, was the contrast between a typical street in central London, central Paris, and central Freetown.  The pictures below speak for themselves.