Emmanuel Momoh is a 39-year-old Evangelical preacherwho lives in Kono District in Sierra Leone. He acquired his first mining license in 2012 when the income he got from the Deeper Life Church couldn’t sustain his growing family.
He built a small business with only 18 employees. Everyday they dug and sifted through gravel with hoes and pickaxes. Despite being a diamond-rich district in Sierra Leone, they never found diamonds that were larger than crumbs.
For five years, he prayed to God to help him turn his fortunes around and help save his family from poverty.
Soon enough his prayers would be answered.
One day one of his workers began shouting, “God don bless we tiday!” over and over. The pastor went to check what the commotion was about and was shocked at his worker’s discovery; they dug up a diamond as big as a child’s fist!
“We washed the diamond properly and put down our tools. Every one of us was in a jubilant mood,” The Momoh said.
“I couldn’t sleep that night, we were all praying for what God has done for us,” he added.
Momoh’s diamond weighed at 709 carats and has been recorded somewhere between the 10th and 15th largest ever found in history!
A single carat of the diamond could fetch around $88,000 to $144,000. A 25-carat portion of the diamond is likely to sell for $2.2 million to $3.6 million.
Momoh’s huge diamond is estimated to be worth at least $62,000,000!
Many of Momoh’s friends told him to smuggle the diamond out of the country, so it can be sold to black market traders. It could potentially sell for a huge sum.
However, the pastor was an honest and decent man. It never crossed his mind to do anything illegal with the diamond.
“Being a man of God, I decided to hand it over to local authorities,” Momoh said. This choice became an international sensation, and soon the pastor was invited to Freetown to meet President Ernest Bai Koroma.
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