Let the Little Children Come

After 7 hours in a mall waiting to check in to our flight, 14 hours on a plane with a quick stop in Hong Kong, and 3 hours in a van, my team and I arrived in Harbu Chulule, Ethiopia! We worked with a ministry called HopEthiopia, which is primarily a children’s village for orphans or kids whose families cannot care for them. We lived on the compound with all 34 sponsored children and made the most of many opportunities to love them well!

For about three of our weeks there, we ran a vacation bible school (VBS) for the children at HopEthiopia. We split up our classes between the little ones, the 10-14-year-olds, and the older teenagers. Ella and I worked with the middle group, usually about 12 kids. We led them through Hebrews 11, which is also known as the hall of faith. It emphasizes the faith of many characters in the Bible, sometimes unexpected ones, and helped our kids to learn that if God can do these awesome things through these people of the past, He can do awesome things through them today, too.

Most classes included a lesson, a craft, and a game. It took Ella and me a few days to get the hang of our routine, but soon we learned that the kids wanted more time in the Word than we thought. We could spend about 30 minutes walking through the stories with them, sharing our passion and making it come to life for them. We illustrated the stories on the board while Dereje, our friend who grew up there and now works there, translated into Oromo. The kids were very attentive and eager to learn, and rarely got distracted. Then we would make a craft together, like our own arks for the Noah’s ark story that we then took outside to see if they could float even with all the animals (rocks) on board. They really loved that one, even after all their boats sank in the first five minutes, but we emphasized that Noah’s did not!

We did fun games to tie in lessons too, like an obstacle course to learn how to walk by faith, like Enoch did. We sent two kids through at a time, with one ankle and one wrist tied to the other’s ankle and wrist. They learned how to walk closely with God by seeing how closely they had to walk with their partner to the end of the course. We even blindfolded one partner so that he or she would have to listen more intently to the other, to learn how to listen to God and walk by faith when we can’t see what He’s doing, but we can still always trust Him. I don’t think God yells at His kids as much as they yelled at each other when one was blindfolded, but still they got the picture!

Between the second and third week of our VBS with our kids, we put on a VBS for the churches in the community. We were told to expect about 50 kids, but by the end of the week we had over 75 children attend! If it weren’t for the kids at HopEthiopia, we never would have been able to pull it off! Praise God that these kids were leaders in and of themselves, ready and eager to jump in any way that they could! They helped with everything from prepping materials to executing the vision day-of. They loved the kids well and already knew lots of them. It was a full-circle experience to see the kids we’d poured so much into pour it right back out again for their community. To be invited into that was surreal.

We came outside every morning to a hoard of kids running up to greet us with hugs to give and hands to hold. They were infatuated with us! We could barely get through the door with 75 kids’ hands reaching for us! We taught a Bible lesson everyday of the week, using the same curriculum that my teammates created for the youngest VBS kids at HopEthiopia. We also did a craft with them, colored our hand-drawn coloring sheets, taught them dances, and played musical chairs and four corners. On the last day of the week, we shared the straight-up Gospel message and prayed with the kids who wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts! It was such a sweet experience. All their little voices talking to their Father in heaven and their little hands folded in prayer. I know He was smiling. One of those moments that just makes you think, “This is why I’m here.”

We used the full week to give these kids from the surrounding community the best experience we could, but at the same time we missed the intentional time we used to have with our HopEthiopia kids in our original VBS classes. We had all fostered connections with the kids from the children’s village that it seemed only right to finish out our time in Ethiopia with one last week in our original VBS classes. Ella and I finished up teaching Hebrews 11 and just spent sweet time with our kiddos. Games and stories and laughs. Our most difficult goodbye of the race so far was right around the corner.

Our last night with the kids fell on movie night, Friday night, which was perfect! Our team had made cards for each of the children so that everyone had at least one. We swapped movie night with a worship/prayer night. Ella led worship on her guitar, we all sang together, and our team ended worship by singing “The Blessing” by Cody Carnes over all the kids. Just a simple and scriptural blessing over everyone there. Our team spread out throughout the room and prayed over all the kids, as a group and with them individually. Hearts were heavy as we knew we’d have to say goodbye tomorrow. Lots of God’s love and power in that room, you could feel it. I hadn’t realized how much our time there had really impacted them until that night. Even some of the older teenage boys were crying. The kids even took the time to pray over our team. I didn’t understand their language, but I knew they were speaking a whole lot of life over us. We passed out our notes and received some from them, too, and gave out a lot of good night hugs.

A sweet time of finding God in the still, in the slow. Of pursuing Him through loving His kids well. Of stretching ourselves in new ways. Ethiopia was a time worth cherishing.