I was invited to Alpha by a friend. I was quite a difficult person to deal with and I had lots of excuses as to why I shouldn’t attend Alpha. I used to hang around Ghettos as a place of comfort, rejected by family due to a lifestyle as a prostitute. I dropped out of school too early, living on my own with friends on the street; smoking Marijuana; drinking alcohol; prostituting for money; being a street fighter that led to many police detentions.
With several attempts made by my friend to attend Alpha, I finally decided to give it a try to investigate what Alpha is about. Her main catch for me to attend Alpha was the domestic help given to me.
During Alpha, I came to love God when I found Christ; it was quite a challenge in this new relationship with God with my bad past. I committed myself to attending Church services; Bible studies and began praying and reading the Bible on my own. The turnaround of my life was on the day away to the Waterloo Community.
Before completing Alpha, the Alpha Adviser, knowing my lifestyle encouraged me to pick up my life by learning a trade. I enrolled in a tailoring institution with financial support from the church family.
After Alpha, I was driven by passion to meet my old friends and tell them about the love of Christ, though I was never taken seriously. I told them of the predicament of living on the street with “more pain and no gain”. Alpha turned my life around and now my life is a great testimony and is bringing my family and friends to God.
Ayo Harding, age 21, Ebenezer Methodist Church, Sierra Leone, West Africa.