“The Americans bring casseroles,” says Prince Thomas, president of the Sierra Leone Association, “and we bring jolof rice, bean cake, couscous and spicy meat.” Sierra Leone, a West African country bounded by Guinea, Liberia and the Atlantic Ocean, declared its independence from Great Britain in 1961; Freetown, its capital and the country’s largest city, was founded in 1787 as a refuge for freed slaves.

In 1989, Thomas moved to Jefferson City (about 135 miles west of St. Louis) to study at Lincoln University. When he looked for a church similar to his Anglican church at home, he found Grace Episcopal Church. The Rev. Harvel Sanders, rector, says he is moved by the ministry of the Sierra Leoneans.

“Prince asked some of his friends in town where they might be welcome to come to church together. Several people suggested Grace, perhaps because we have been an integrated congregation since the mid-1950s,” says Sanders, who has served the parish for 34 years. “Prince is now head usher, another is a chalice administrator, their children are acolytes. Sierra Leoneans serve on the vestry.

We have mainstreamed about 17 families and individuals into congregational life, and they have been a blessing to us. “These are faithful church people who wanted to go to church together as a group. And they came to share in the ministry of this church as opposed to being ministered to,” says Sanders.

In 1991, when a devastating civil war broke out in Sierra Leone, Grace Parishioners prayed for peace. When the war seemed to wane in 1999, the Sierra Leoneans wanted to offer thanks to supporters at Grace. At that first thanksgiving service on an October afternoon that drew about 120 people -- mostly Sierra Leoneoans -- they raised about $1,000 in the relief-offering.

“We used the money to help people back home,” says Thomas, “especially the orphans.” Help was needed more than ever after December 1999, when war escalated, but U.N. peacekeepers and Nigerian forces beat back the rebels in 2001.

The 11-year-old, 40-member Sierra Leone Association continues to give thanks.
Last year, the thanksgiving offering totaled about $2,500.The money principally provides scholarships.

Africans support education

Alice Bernard-Jones, another Grace parishioner, says education is not a given in Sierra Leone. “There’s no free schooling. Poor, middle class and rich -- all must pay,” she says. With need as the lone criterion, Jefferson City’s Sierra Leone Association currently supports six students, four in high school, one at Sierra Leone University and one in medical school.

At the association’s sixth service in October, Tony Marsh, an émigré and Methodist minister now living in Minnesota, preached. As usual, Sierra Leoneans wore native attire. The colorful fabrics of the skirts (“lappas”) and tops (“tembles,” “bubus” and “N’dockets”) complement the women’s ritually tied headwraps (“emkecha,” “dialgati” and “yoleles”); the “stolls” indicate marital status by the way they’re draped. “Necklaces” of gold thread can decorate the men’s formal robes (“egbada”).

The émigrés, whether Christian or Muslim, gather at Grace, and they sing the Anglican songs they learned at school in Sierra Leone. “There are purely Muslim schools now,” explains Thomas, “but before, all schools had Bible study, and everyone learned these songs.”

Five years ago, Jeanne Tucker Gordon, a Methodist, met several immigrants from Sierra Leone who worked at the nursing home where her mother resided.  “They welcomed me to their service at Grace,” she says. “The texture, the patterns, the colors of the clothes are fabulous, but it’s the music that gives me goose bumps.”

The service continues to provide a way for African immigrants to say grace. “We are fortunate to be here at Grace in Jefferson City, Mo., but we should not forget where we came from,” says Thomas.