‘We have all been victimized’ by Ebola

In 2006, hundreds of students at a school in Bo, Sierra Leone, crowd around a group of visiting church members to find out more about the World Bible School Bible correspondence course. In recent months, schools have closed their doors as hundreds of West Africans contract the Ebola virus. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY RON POTTBERG)

Christians in West Africa are fighting the largest-ever outbreak of Ebola with prayer and bleach.

In Guinea, where the outbreak began in March, at least one church member has died from the virus, said Nestor Tonguino, a minister for a Church of Christ in the country’s capital, Conakry.

“In the town of Guéckédou, we lost a brave sister in Christ, who was the wife of Robert Millimouno, a brother who is zealous,” Tonguino told The Christian Chronicle. Guéckédou, a town near Guinea’s borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia, is thought to be an early epicenter of the outbreak. Another church member lost a child to the virus. 

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A minister in Guinea, Saa Tolno Philippe, has lost 12 relatives to the virus, Tonguino added.

“Directly or indirectly, we have all been victimized,” he said.

In Conakry, church members have organized prayer meetings and are spending additional time in their homes praying and fasting, Tonguino said.

Other faith groups offer bleach and cleaning products to help people disinfect their homes after an Ebola death.

“This evil has greatly affected the church — in numbers and spiritually,” Tonguino said. Paranoia and suspicion — even among Christians — is common, and many church members refuse to shake hands when they attend worship services. Many don’t attend at all. 

The outbreak stresses the need for Christians to share the Gospel while they can, said Francis Musa, another minister in Guinea. Ministers call families grieving from the loss of a loved one “and assure them of our prayers,” he said.

Preachers have an “opportunity to build our own faith and that of the brotherhood — by encouraging that God is the only protection,” he told the Chronicle. 

“Almost every Sunday, congregations preach sermons that are faith-building,” Musa said. “Prayers for this epidemic are made every Sunday — and every weekday in homes. Some of us have adopted midnight-hour prayers.