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
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
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