Ethiopia Trip Update #5
Another day of classes with the seminarians is in the books. We had an excellent time together discussing “What Christ-centered preaching looks like?” and “Proclaiming Christ in Genesis.” The engagement with the content I was teaching was encouraging, and I look forward to our journey through other parts of scripture in the coming days.
The most interesting part of the day was our trip to MKA Ministry’s Homeless Outreach. After our opening session, we gave the students a discussion project to work on, and we left to take an extended lunch break to see the outreach that happens at The Fellowship Church here in Addis Ababa. Traffic was very thick, and getting there took us a while.
The MKA MInistry’s Homeless Outreach has multiple classes that teach the faith to those who come to be served. I was introduced to two of the classes and prayed with them. One class is for very new believers. These young men who had recently come to faith were in the church's worship space, where I will preach this coming Sunday. The next group is in the second level of instruction the ministry provides. These students are being instructed to be baptized or have been recently been baptized. There is a third tier of deeper discipleship, but they were not meeting today.
It was quite educational to hear about the work the outreach does. At this time, the numbers were down because the African Union is currently meeting in Addis Ababa, and they arrest homeless persons and put them in prison. I know that Samuel has been inside the prison in Sioux Falls as well, so I had a quick aside with him to learn what the conditions were like in an Ethiopian prison compared to “The Hill” in Sioux Falls.
I said, “On a scale of one to ten, and the prison in Sioux Falls is a 10, how would you rate the prison here?”
I honestly expected his answer to be a one or two, but he replied by saying, “Negative six.”
This is honestly beyond my comprehension and heartbreaking as they are not in that situation because they committed a violent crime but because they believe the streets needed to be “cleaned up.”
This situation will not leave my thoughts for a long time.
There was some interesting information about what the outreach does for the people who come to them. A training program for a vocational career is available. Not everyone can get into this program. Space is limited. They do not get a working wage once they complete the program and get a job. To help them get to a place where they can fully provide for themselves, the outreach helps with housing and food for a period of time and encourages them to save money to get ahead as they work up in their career.
After we served the men present that day stew on injera, we left the church and made our way to visit a young man who was working in his trade: woodworking.
After exiting our vehicle and walking through the alley, I bumped fists with a sawdust-covered 21-year-old. He had been homeless from the time he was 13. He came to faith through the outreach and worked through the program. He was crafting headboards and different types of cabinets. He was clearly proud of the work he was doing.
We returned to the vehicle and turned around on the rough alley to grab our food and return to the other church where the classes take place. We worked through some of the major people, events, and themes in the book of Genesis and how we preach Jesus from them.
Tomorrow, we will listen to the presentations the students prepared while we were on our tour of the MKA Ministry’s Homeless Outreach to start the day and then consider how we proclaim Christ from the Law and Historical Books during the second half of the morning session. In the afternoon, we will discuss how we preach Christ from the Psalter.
