It's like walking into the past. 

This is what a fellow volunteer said to me as we were working side by side at a feeding center called HOPE Enterprise in the middle of Addis Ababa. The words seemed to fade and fell from my ears, but as the day went on, I kept thinking of how much truth is in that sentence. 
Being in Ethiopia is amazing and such a blessing from God, but sometimes it is hard to see such a great degree of poverty and the wretched circumstances that some people live in. 

Yet God is good. All the time. Every morning I wake up I do my best to remind myself of this and to ask Him to help me share that goodness and His love with everyone that I see and meet throughout the day. My team and I have been in Ethiopia for almost three weeks and time feels like it is flying by. We have breakfast at 730 every morning, then worship and devotions, and then from about 9 to 530 or so we spend doing ministry throughout Addis Ababa. At 6 we have dinner together as a team and then have a team meeting at 8, and then we all generally head to bed soon after. I am getting enough sleep and eating well enough here, there shouldn't be any worries about that. A lot of our team has gotten sick over the past weeks, but all are on the up and up and are feeling much better. I have not gotten sick yet, and I pray that I am able to say that at the end of outreach. Continued prayers for health and safety would be appreciated.  

There are many opportunities for ministry here in Addis, such as prayer walking and street ministry, where we go to different areas of the city in groups of three or four and pray and do our best to follow God's leading. We have met a lot of really awesome people and have been able to encourage and be encouraged. Another ministry we are involved in is called HOPE Enterprise, which I mentioned above, where we go for a couple hours to help serve enjera (which is the classic Ethiopian food) to about 700 homeless people that come through every day. We have had a lot of chances to get involved which a lot of the churches and youth groups here, which has been awesome. There are different ministries that we are continuing to contact and are hopefully going to be able to work with throughout the rest of the stay in Addis. 

An update on my team and what is going down for the remaining nine weeks that I am in Africa: well, to put it simply, I am heading to Kenya and Uganda! Our team of 14 students and 3 leaders are splitting up for about 5 weeks. One leader will stay in Addis with 6 of the students and continue with the ministries here and keep on discovering what God has for us here, and the other two leaders are taking the rest of the students to Uganda! I am part of that team and am incredibly excited for that! We will be travelling down to Kenya and then making our way to Uganda to spend two weeks Kampala, the capital city, and then one week in Gulu, a city in the northern part of Uganda. It will take a week of travel there and then also another week back, which will be interesting and exhausting and awesome and educational all at once. My team will be leaving on May 4, which is this Friday, and I am so excited!  A little bit scared, but mainly just stoked to be able to travel more and keep on chasing after God's heart for the people in these nations! 

After our travels, our team will hopefully and God willing reunite all as one big team again in a city in the south of Ethiopia called Jinka, where we will stay for about 3 weeks. After that we will only have about a week left for outreach and will make our way back up to Addis Ababa to fly back to Germany. These are our plans and they are not fully concrete, but God willing he will make them happen. I am so looking forward to the upcoming adventures still to be had in Addis, then in Kenya and Uganda and then also in Jinka! 

So although being here in Africa feels like I am living in the past at times because of the lack of many things that the "Western world" has attained, I know that I am walking into the future with every new day that I am blessed with. And this future is full of hope because I know that God will be walking with me. So I keep walking and my goal is to continue walking for the rest of my life into the future that God has planned for me. 

Prayers to live every day to the fullest so that my future can continue to be the best it can be would be great, and just to keep lifting up my team and I so that we are continually encouraged and able to keep sharing the Word of God. My prayers go out to all of you back home; again, rest assured that you are missed. I know that I will be home before I know it and will find myself missing Africa, yet I do look forward to being home once again. 
I will do my best to update you as much as possible, but what with travelling and uncertainty of access to internet I am unsure of how often that will be. May God continue to bless each of you in your daily walks with Him. 

Love always, 
Fina

Greetings from Africa! :) 

So here I am. Sitting in an internet cafe in the middle of Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. How crazy that I am here in Africa. Everything here is going so well, for God is good!

My journey began on April 7, taking a van from the Castle in Herrnhut to Lobau, a train from Lobau to Dresden, another train from Dresden to Frankfurt, then flying out of Frankfurt, Germany all the way to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We arrived here Sunday morning, all very tired. My first African experience wasn't such a good one.. I went outside of the airport to get some fresh air and as I was going back inside, a man in a military uniform stopped me. He began to get frustrated and then decided to kick me out of the airport; I was not allowed to go back inside. I told him my bags and my friends were just inside, but he began to yell at me and would not let me inside. One of my outreach leaders, Corey, came over at the perfect time and tried to help me out, but the man was obviously angry, so Corey went outside with me. We went over to the visitors entrance and were graciously allowed back in after going through security once again. Thanks be to God for Corey for helping me out and for allowing us back into the airport. I learned my lesson to always stick with the group and just wait patiently for fresh air. It was not the best start to my time in Ethiopia, but God is good and he is gracious and everything else has been going really well! 

The weather has been great! It has rained a few times, and it has not been nearly as hot as I expected, which is nice. The food is also quite good and the place we are staying is also much nicer than I was prepared for. My team and I are quite blessed with all that we have here! 

During the last few days we have been spending time doing prayer walks, homeless ministry, working with YWAM Ethiopia and also working with a project that our YWAM Herrnhut base started. Our team is getting along well. One of us is quite sick, but hopefully he is on the mend. And one of our leaders is still on his way; he is just working out some finances. One girl on our team went home, back to Hong Kong, on Saturday instead of joining us in Ethiopia, because her father is very sick and she felt it was best to be with her family at this time. We are keeping these three in our prayers and are just continuing to do our best to follow God's leading in all that we do. Our mission here is simply to love God and love people. Prayers for a constant increase in that love and for deeper hearts for the people of Ethiopia would be amazing. 

Know that I am keeping you all in my prayers and I hope all is well back home. I miss home, but being here is so good for me; it truly is a dream come true. Sometimes it is difficult being here for there are tough things to see and to be surrounded by, but I know that God is good and I am doing my best to share his goodness and his love with those around me. It is hard to express what exactly I am feeling whilst being in the midst of Africa, but when I can put to words what I am feeling in my heart and soul I will hopefully be able to let you know. I will have very little access to the internet during outreach, which is for the best, but I will try to update you here as much as possible. 

Take care and God bless. I will hopefully be in touch sometime within the next three months! :)

Love always, 
Fina

Hello all :) 

I just realized that I have not blogged in a few weeks, and so much has happened since then. Last week and the week before we had David Gava speaking to us about the Holy Spirit and evangelism. With the help of the Spirit, those two weeks were vital in strengthening the unity within our team and for turning our group into a team that, when we are connected with God, will be able to represent our Lord and Saviour in the best way as we journey across African soil. I learned a lot from David Gava, but I think that the thing that stood out to me most came not from his words in lecture, but rather from his actions. He is a man whom is extremely sensitive to the Spirit and His leading, and I saw that first hand as he taught our class for two weeks. His example of this led me to a deeper desire to want that in my own life. To walk in obedience at all times, to live with a fear of the Lord inside of me that guides me through everything: this is what I want for my life. Every speaker has been telling me that this does not happen overnight, it is a journey. So therefore I am happy to say it is a journey that I have started and already I am seeing more and more the goodness and faithfulness of God.

David also taught us that we need to be ready in all seasons and at all times to speak about the message of the kingdom and to spread the love of God. As an exercise to prepare us all for outreach, each of us on my DTS had to prepare a ten-minute sermon on the kingdom of God, using Matthew 13 as our main reference. It was incredible to see that each of us spoke on different aspects of the kingdom and how it all applies to our lives. I encourage you all to read into Matthew 13 and look at the parables that Jesus told that describe the kingdom of God, for this is what our mission is: to spread the kingdom. We are serving the King, and we must be able to know and understand what exactly that means and how to go about doing that.

During our last week of lecture, our speaker Dan Baumann, has been teaching me and our whole team so much. He is incredibly funny and had so many awesome stories. His goal for this week was for all of us to fall more in love with Jesus by the end of the week. Through his stories I have laughed so much and learned more about what it means to walk in a relationship with God. God loves us so much, he is good, and he is always for us, and I see evidence of that in Dan’s life as well as my own. It is exciting and such a wonderful feeling to begin to really experience and enjoy the love of God.

By the end of today, lecture phase will be over and our team will be leaving for Ethiopia tomorrow. How crazy that I have been here for twelve weeks already! Having Dan as our speaker was the perfect way to end lecture phase and such a significant teaching to have fresh in our minds as we head into outreach phase. I am looking forward to what God has in store for our team! We will be taking the train to Frankfurt, then flying directly from there to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia. We will stay in Addis for a week or so and then head down to a city in the south of Ethiopia called Jinka, where we will work for about a month. From there, some of us, depending on God’s leading, will most likely be heading into northern Kenya and Uganda, and possibly South Sudan. The rest will probably stay in Ethiopia. It is all up to God and what he is calling us to in those weeks. This is all so exciting for me, because Africa is my dream and it is actually happening. The actuality of this reality has not quite struck me yet, but I know that once I am on the plane and definitely once I have stepped foot onto African land my heart will begin to beat so fast. My prayer is that my heart will beat alongside the people of Ethiopia and eastern Africa. I desire to have such a heart for these people so that I can show them the love that God has for them. Something huge that I learned from Dan this week is that the Christian life isn’t about being exactly right and making the best decisions all the time, it is about leaning more into the character of God and just falling more in love with him. Hearing from God and making decisions is difficult and frustrating sometimes, but that does not mean we give up and stop communicating with God. We should always be asking God for guidance, and yet we cannot just be stagnant and do nothing when we are unsure of where God is guiding us. We still must do something. The main will of God for our lives is to love God and love people; therefore we always have something that we are able to do. If we desire to follow God’s will, we will obey that major commandment and love. Love is an action; it is something that we choose to do. Love responds.  

My prayer is that you are continually able to be in awe of Jesus and the love that he has for you, and from that loving God and loving others will come so simply to you, that all you can do is respond. I ask you for prayers for my team and myself, for safety and health and protection from all kinds of danger, both physical and spiritual. Prayers for focus and unity within our team as well as just always going to God first and having him as the center of everything on this outreach and in our lives. Prayers for encouragement and just a joy and peace that can come only from Him so that we will be able to constantly be able to share the love of God with all that meet.

Thank you so much for your support; it does not go unappreciated nor without significance. I will be back in Germany in twelve weeks, at the beginning of July. I will do my best to update you as much as I can while in Africa, but internet will be rare so do not expect too much. Thank you again for sharing in my journey with me. May God bless you in whatever you are doing; my love goes out to you.

Take care. And remember, God loves you. :)

Love always,

Fina