Prayers answered as pastor finds huge gem

gravel with pickaxes and hoes day after day, never finding gems larger than a speck in the dirt.

“Diamonds are extremely hard to find on the ground, it requires patience, hard work and prayers,” Momoh said in Freetown, where his life is now taking a very different direction after finding what he believed was a gift from God.

On March 13, the pastor was working in a village named Koryadu when a cry went up from one of his men in Krio, the most widely spoken language in Sierra Leone.

“God don bless we tiday,” the worker shouted, brandishing a rock the colour of pale honey and as large as a child’s fist.

Momoh took the diamond the next day to be weighed by the kind of Lebanese dealer who once purchased the singlecarat gems he sold to buy food, supplies and to pay his workers’ wages.

At 706 carats, an amount that would later rise to 709 when it was placed on the government’s official scales, Momoh’s diamond was between the 10th and 15th largest ever found worldwide, experts said.

“Being a man of God, I decided to hand it over to local authorities,” Momoh said, a choice that caused a sensation, and he was soon invited to meet President Ernest Bai Koroma.

Momoh has emphasised that his workers would also benefit from what could be an astronomical sum of money.

Without a professional assessment of the diamond’s potential flaws and colouring, it is impossible to value the stone. — AFP