This month, along with the Love Ethiopia festival, we have been working with a ministry called Win Souls for God. We have been helping them with their outreach to street kids at night. Win Souls rescues boys and men (and some women) from the streets and gives them a place to live, an education, and disciples them. It is an awesome organization and we are so excited to have found them and be a part of them for the month.
Night ministry is interesting. We go out in groups of 7 or 8 people usually. Kristin and I have been partnered with 4 or 5 guys from the rest center that once lived on the streets or were without a home. All of the guys have hard pasts, but incredible faith in God and amazing stories about how God redeemed and restored their lives. We have loved getting to know each one of them and completely fallen in love with all of them.
Our first night of outreach, we piled into a taxi with headlights that barely worked and ventured toward the stadium. Kristin and I were skeptical that we would even make it to the stadium as the taxi turned down a street with no electricity and you could barely see 2 feet in front of the taxi. My head lamp could have better lit the road… We made it though and though we did not find the street kids that we were looking for that night, we talked to other men on the street and got to know the guys that we would spend the rest of the month working with. And they are awesome.
We have been able to return to the same areas a few times and see the same faces of the people that have lived on the streets- some of them for their whole lives. One of the little girls holds our hands the entire time that we see visit with her. Her smile is incredible and all I want to do is hug her. We have bonded with our group over interesting circumstances and learned a lot about Ethiopia through this night ministry. We have made friends that we never expected to make and also made friends that will last a lifetime. We have relied on Jesus to guide us and protect us and it has been an awesome experience.
I have fallen in love with the kids on the streets here, night and day. They break my heart but they are almost always so happy. They always say hello. They will tell you every word they know in English. They smile at you as soon as you look at them. They don't go to school. A lot of them work 16+ hours a day. One child that we met, Abraham, works in a taxi all day everyday. He is 10. One of the guys that helps with night ministry worked 16 hour days in a textile factory when he was 6. He has grown into an incredible man of God already at 18, but it's awful that he had to endure such a testimony as a child…. They all have stories that are hard. They have stories of drug addiction, slavery, child labor…. And they have stories of how Jesus is their savior. How they know that Jesus has not forgotten them. And for some of them, how Jesus has rescued them from the streets. The ones that have been rescued are so passionate about using their story to help others and doing everything they can to help others break that life of being on the streets.
Please pray for these street kids, their families, the adults living on the streets, and Win Souls for God ministries. Win Souls is doing so many great things for the men and boys on the streets in Addis Ababa. (There are organizations that focus on the women on the streets as well but the number of men and boys on the streets is higher than women.) We are so thankful to be spending our time doing ministry with Win Souls and we really hope that future teams will be able to work with them as well. I love everyone at the rest center and leaving these amazing men and boys will be so hard. God will keep us connected though. 🙂
