Reading Time: ~3mins

Raj Saha (who leads our Multicoloured Church Initiative and leads the team at Jubilee Church Teesside), reports on the situation in Ho, Ghana.

Dear friends,

We need your help and we need your prayers! I hope I have got your attention.

Michael and Mabel Akotia, who many of you know and love as friends, who lead the City of Grace Church in Ho, Ghana, and are part of our ChristCentral Newfrontiers family, have been pioneering and church planting in the Volta Region of Ghana, for quite a season now. They are an amazing family!

In the last couple of years our partners in Christ, from the leading Christian children's charity, Compassion, in collaboration with the City of Grace Church, have embarked on developing a school in the city of Ho in Ghana for over 200 hundred impoverished children. This is a significant project for us, not just the church in Ho, we’re trusting God that it will be strategic for our teams in West Africa as well.

In February, the building of a central hub and office base for Compassion workers commenced. This Compassion partnership model asks the host church to build a hub, and after that Compassion will progress the school, and staffing and running of the project from thereon.

Since February, the walls have gone up, the rooms have started to take shape, and the stairs and openings have progressed. We are now at the critical point of roofing the building. What we didn't foresee was a war in Ukraine. This has resulted in a big shortfall in terms of the completion of the project due to rises in costs and inflation.

However just the other day, Grace Church and Compassion signed their service-level agreement. Compassion has given us the commitment to see this through to completion.

Here's Michael from the City of Grace Church followed by Emily the project manager for Compassion, explaining their passion for the school:

"Hello, my name is Michael Akotia, and I lead the City of Grace Church, in Ho and the base of ChristCentral in West Africa. I have exciting news; we have been chosen by Compassion to encourage our Christian social action work. Fortunately, Compassion has come to work with us so that we can look after more children, about 200 children. It requires about £27,000 to be able to finish this and its exciting news for us that we can help the community with this number of children to be adopted, helped, educated, and live a good life. It's such good news for us that the church can get into the community to do this, and we need your help to be able to do it. Thank you."

"Hello, my name is Emily, I'm the Partnership Facilitator for Compassion, and I'm excited to be partnering with the City of Grace Church. As pastor Mike has said, we are excited as an organisation to partner with the church to minister to children, about 200 hundred children, who are in need, to help them to cure their physical needs, their education, health, and other things. And so, we are encouraging that they complete their church office so that we can have the opportunity to partner with them.”

So my Friends here is the big ask. Can you and your church contribute to the £15,000 that is left to raise the roof, and a further £10,000 to complete the building?

We have already raised £27,000 from both Ghanaian churches themselves, ChristCentral, and other churches personally giving to get us to where we are right now. We are in faith that God will bring completion to this project. But it will only happen through faith-filled generosity. So, can I ask you brothers and sisters to prayerfully consider taking this call as something we, ChristCentral commit to together? Let's build this Compassion hub and see a large school emerge and over the years see lives changed and compassion declared in Jesus' name!

Thank you so much for your support. For full details about how you can get involved visit: christcentralchurches.org/ghana