Sunday, May 20, 2012

Ethiopia!



Part  1. Outreach Addis Ababa Team

It is so incredible how complex God is and the ways he operates, they are too vast for me to comprehend. God is constantly blowing my mind with the things I am learning here and skills I am acquiring. I don't even know where to begin, but I will do my best. So, at the moment my school has split up into two teams, one team has gone down to Kenya and Uganda and my team is staying here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In the past four weeks prior to now our whole school has been in Addis Ababa working with several ministries here. We have been involved with a ministry called Hope Enterprise, which is a feeding centre for homeless, as well as the YWAM school in Ethiopia, and multiple prayer sessions for the city of Addis Ababa. When we've prayed, we usually went on long walks through the city, going where we feel the Holy Spirit calling us to go. We've had some spectacular experiences from prayer walking and just praising God into every place we walk. We have also helped out with the Koshe Project, which is a project that started through the YWAM Herrnhut base; that helps girls who have worked in the Koshe garbage dump for a living be able to go to school and not have to work at the dump. The Koshe Project has an after school program for these girls, where they give them food, teach them Bible lessons, English lessons, and help them with their home work. In each of the ministries we have volunteered to serve in any way we can, sometimes even preaching.
At the moment, we are staying at and helping a ministry called All For Christ, which is a feeding centre and after school program for kids whom the majority are HIV positive. As well All For Christ is working towards sponsorship to help the families of these kids and further their situation for the better. So, we continue to serve at the Koshe Project, go to Hope Enterprise and we now have another ministry opportunity which has miraculously appeared, Women At Risk, which is is an organization that helps women prostitutes. They offer programs for them, that give them food, teach them bible lessons, school lessons, work skills, and try to rehabilitate them into society. Our days are packed full of preaching, teaching, photography, interviewing, playing with kids, battling traffic to and fro the ministries and intense prayer! Specifically with the All For Christ ministry, which we are currently living at, we are interviewing, making profiles of the families, helping with their website, creating an identity of the people here, and investing in the people to encourage sponsorship for the community here.
Personally, its a joy and a blessing to be involved with the people here. Spending time with the people of All For Christ in the village they live in was so moving, it is beyond words. I have never seen extreme poverty before my time here and its amazing the blessing these people, who have nothing, are to me and I believe I can speak on behalf of my team as well. There is such joy they express towards us when we visit them, they are so beautiful, offering us whatever they have, which is not a whole lot. They, for the most part, freely pour out their deepest hurts to us, express their greatest fears of survival and beliefs of God.
Living in a community of believers sharing the same sleeping quarters and eating place every day is a challenge, but a huge privilege to get to know my class mates and be surrounded by spirit filled people. I have grown so much in my walk with God since I have left in January, its amazing what can happen in your life when you give God personal time outside of everything you know.