Building Schools

This is the major focus of our ministry in Ethiopia. We have built about 45 children’s schools across the entire country of Ethiopia spanning about 700 miles. We have finished 10 schools the tribal Omo valley and have built schools all the way east, to the border of Somaliland covering about 50,000 square miles of territory form the western to the eastern borders of the country of Ethiopia. Each new school now is just over 2,000 square feet with concrete floor, cinder block construction, windows and steel roof. We plan to have desks and chairs for all students and solar lighting. There are two missionary teachers per school and from 50 to 150 children. They receive three years of preschool education with plans to extend this in the future. We have been exceedingly satisfied when we come to a class for of children and ask them to come to the blackboard and solve mathematic problems! One school received a donation from South Africa for uniforms for each student. What a blessing that was!

Our missionaries are mostly affiliated with Rift Valley Vision and act as teachers for the children’s school. They have almost 500 missionaries throughout the country. By the end of the year we will have about 90 teacher missionaries with our 45 schools. We also have interpreters who go into church sand prisons with us who are often local pastors in the churches next to our schools. Some of them have faced severe persecution and have had their houses burned down.

Wherever we build a school, we have also built a dry latrine for he sanitary benefit of the children and the community. This will help prevent the spread of many deadly diseases in their villages. We have also given Nursing lectures to mothers about how to prevent illnesses on their children.

In 2015, we completed the building of two new schools in the Afar area. Thank you to all those who hve donated to help us continue to build more schools.

Addis Ababa Orphanage

Since our first visit to Ethiopia, we have been involved in Hanna’s Orphanage in the capital city. There are almost 200 orphaned children there, in separate houses under the care of house mothers and Hanna. They are enrolled in schools and are allowed to stay until they finish college and earn their degree. The goal is that they will be giving back to society after having been cared for all their lives and given love and education. We currently sponsor two houses of children to a total of almost 20 children and have visited them many times since 2011. On one of our visits, we fed the entire orphanage and prayed for each child individually. We were genuinely touched byGod’s love for these children.

Prison Ministry

In Ethiopia we have gone to many prisons including Sheno, Awassa, Jinka and Duramie. We have been able to preach the gospel to an entire yard of men, with many salvations. We found out that children must go to prison with their mothers if no one will raise them, so there are many children that are innocently incarcerated. We are starting a program to build homes for the children just outside the Jinka prison, in Omo Valley, to help raise them in a loving environment, while not separating them from their mothers. God has really blessed this project due to his compassion and love for the children of Ethiopia. We have purchased key boards for worship, bought soap and Bibles for the inmates . We believe that prison ministry is very important in our work in Ethiopia and plan to grow this area as God leads.

There is a prison in Jinka, Ethiopia with about 30 children who must be in prison with their mothers if no one else can care for them. Thanks to a donation, we will be able to build them a home next to the prison so they can be raised in a nice environment and still see their mothers. We will be going back after Christmas to visit them again. We are in process of building about 6 schools in Omo Valley now. Here is a photo of the Jinka children. There are about 10 of them below the age of two, not pictured.

Building Churches

Although our primary emphasis is on building schools for children, we have built or completed several churches. In Sheno, to the northeast, there was a church that was partially done that we helped complete. In Bui, the church was literally falling apart and we built a new church. Both were done with our church partners in Addis Ababa. In several of the rural sites, the local church has put a church building next to our schools during construction. It is wonderful to see the church ministry increase year by year by the faithfulness of God. A school next to a church draws many families to Christ who would not normally come. Their own children are witnesses of the love of God in their homes.