BIOGRAPHY OF PASTOR EDWARD ALINYOH

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Pastor Edward Alinyoh has been preaching since 1984 to date and it all started in the early 70’s when he was in the Catholic Church. Pastor Eddie as we all call him became a server at the altar helping the priest and later joined the church choir where his father was the organist. His music ministry started there but, after a while he left the Catholic Church in the mid 70’s and joined the Methodist church.

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It was during this time that God started using Pastor Eddie mightily in the children’s ministry, youth ministry in preaching and teaching. In 1975 as a teenager, he helped with children Sunday school programs in church where the children did everything in the service and he was asked to preach. This was how his preaching ministry started. In 1980 he was invited by the then circuit minister (the pastor-in-charge) to become a preacher on-note and the later a preacher on trial for a whole year. It was during this period he started preaching in all the churches in that circuit for different occasions/events/anniversaries like choir Sundays, youth fellowship celebrations, men’s and women’s ministries to name a few.

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In 1991 after completing Bible School, graduated with a diploma as an ordained Minister of the Gospel, he was asked to join the teaching staff of the Bible school – Freetown Bible Training Center where he taught Praise and Worship and, also helped in the training of students in the Preaching Lab. Pastor Eddie also helped in the organization of bible school and church seminars, mass and mini crusades in Sierra Leone including the crusade held by well-known evangelist, Reinhard Bonnke.

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After two years of teaching in the Bible School, Pastor Eddie was asked to go to Banjul, The Gambia to help with the establishment of a Bible school (Banjul Bible Training Center) which turned out to be very successful in a country that is 90% Muslim. Pastor Eddie decided to go into full time ministry and I worked with The Abundant Life Faith Center Ministries. In 1995 He organized a pastor’s seminar for pastor from all over Sierra Leone. It was so successful that the sponsors of the seminar - a Norwegian Christian Institution for international students called ‘Education Thrust International’ – decided to give him and his wife scholarships to study church administration and Ministry. At the end of this program, he graduated with a diploma in church administration and Ministry. He stayed in Norway for a couple for seven years (due to the terrible civil war that was going in Sierra Leone) and during this period started a church called Klippen International Fellowship. The word Klippen in Norwegian means ‘The Rock’. This fellowship came about when Pastor Eddie and his wife found out that a lot of people had difficulty understanding the Norwegian language so they conducted their services in English which attracted a lot of foreigners. Prior to starting their own ministry, his family attended the American North Sea Baptist Church in Stavanger, Norway where he helped with preaching, teaching Sunday school and was also became a member of the choir. He also served as a deacon in this church for two years. During this period, Pastor Eddie was able to able to make funds available through the European Baptist Convention, to help his people back home in Sierra Leone during the during the civil war.

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As founder and Senior Pastor of Seek Ye First the Kingdom (SYFK) International Fellowship, Pastor Eddie was able to organize Sierra Leoneans in Georgia to come together and pray for their country’s first election after the civil war with the theme “Operation Leh We Pray for Salone” (Operation let us pray for Sierra Leone). It was so successful that after a peaceful election he again organized a thanksgiving service with the theme “Operation Leh We Tell God Tenki” (Operation let us thanks to God). Pastor Eddie has been able to successfully organize fund raising ceremonies during the 2nd and 3rd anniversary celebrations of Seek Ye First the Kingdom Int. Fellowship. He has been instrumental in organizing the church also to raise funds for other purposes including the proposed purchasing of a church building that will become permanent for our congregation. He is still preaching and teaching the Word of God effectively, making tremendous impact in the lives of people in our congregation that is growing rapidly and presently looking for a place of worship that we can call home. His effective teaching and preaching also extends to the internet where he has established and broadcast on Blog Talk Radio that he linked with the church web site – www.myseekyefirst.org (which he also established) and is also found on his Face Book page. Pastor Eddie also helps in the area music in the church as he is the only musician that we presently have. He has taken upon himself to teach other to play the keyboard. It is because his tremendous and untiring effort, that he has been able to reach out to our community and they in turn reach out to him for help in planning and organizing programs and events. He has recorded several CDs and cassette tapes from his sermons. He also does a weekly broadcast on the internet called “Putting God First” and he is always looking for many ways to extend expand the ministry to touch the lives of people in this world.