How a Bumbling Missionary Started a Street Kids Ministry

Written in Ethiopia, published in Urban Mission

I wrote the following article in Ethiopia about the out-reach program we started to street kids in Addis Ababa. It was published by Urban Mission.

I'm probably the last one you would think would start an outreach to the street kids of Addis Ababa. For one, I don't even speak their language. I went through three months of language school and about the only thing that stuck was how to say the equivalent of "Hello, how are you?" in Amharic. Also, there is my track record. I was involved in a little outreach to kids involved in gangs in Los Angeles. I was a flop. I could have been written up as a case study in failure. Finally, I wasn't sent there to be involved with kids anyway. I like theology. Give me a good debate on supralapsarianism over trying to organize a bunch of shoe-shine boys in a game of "duck, duck, goose" any day. So, I think you agree that I shouldn't have even dared to dream about trying to start an outreach to the street kids of Addis Ababa. Chances are that I would just frustrate myself and bring disrepute on our whole mission. But I pulled it off -- sort of. Want to know how?

First let me tell you why I wanted to take this crazy risk. It wasn't, like so many other urban missionaries imply, because I knew that there were 100,000 street children on the streets of Addis Ababa or that an estimated 30,000 girls from age 12 to 16 feel desperate enough to sell themselves into prostitution (Sounds of the Street, June-August 1994). Those are stunning statistics – all the more so when you are sitting in the comfort of your mission compound realizing that you are an island in the ocean of that kind of destitution. But numbers can only hold your attention for so long. They had nothing to do with pushing me to take the first steps to do something. My reason for thinking that I had – I simply had to do something – was just that I had to. How could I not?

The kids who sit listlessly outside our compound hoping for some business in shining our shoes or guarding our cars or whatever they can get became familiar. I began to recognize their faces and learn some of their names. I was new in Addis Ababa so I had not acquired a car; I could not easily cruise out of the compound ignoring the pleas for bread or money. I had to walk past them every day on my way to the taxi stop. I walked past their little plastic huts propped up against the walls of our compound. I had to ignore their begging for money but I could practice my “Hello, how are you” with them. I won’t say any fast friendships developed but they did become human beings in my eyes. And I guess that is why I had to do something.

But even as I began thinking about what I could do, you could quickly spot that I was the last one who could be successful at this sort of thing. I automatically began to think of programs and any bona fide urban missiologist will tell you that what matters is “people” not programs. I certainly won't argue with that but I have to confess that my mind went to thinking of programs as automatically as Pavlov’s dog salivated at the ringing of a bell. So, I thought of a program. It was a simple, unambitious idea to offer a room for educating these kids and give them a small snack three times a week. I knew that I was not qualified to do anything really engaging; I had a thimble full of faith and I probably would have been surprised if that had been filled.

But I had a plan. The plans were modified a bit by the fact that the mission station in central Addis Ababa simply could not spare the room for these kids. I would have to venture out to the unknowns of the squalor of Addis Ababa. We were allowed to use a tin-roofed hall that, with the lights out, resembled a planetarium because all the holes in the roof made a good simulation of the night sky. We had to bring our own light bulbs.

I say “we” because there was my ace-in-the-hole: my wife. She could pull this off, I believed. I saw myself as the conceptualizer, the initiator, but she would be the one to make it work. She has a degree in social work, experience with working with the homeless and the no-nonsense approach to the poor that only those who’ve risen from poverty themselves can fully share. My wife, Mary, would be the means through which God filled that thimble full of faith I had. Once we got started, she, with the help of an Ethiopian evangelist-helper, would take over.

Things turned out differently. After organizing the program and getting an Ethiopian evangelist to be translator and co-leader we were ready to go. I was ready to recede into the background and let my wife and the evangelist take over. After all, I thought, I’m lousy with kids. Three days before our first meeting my wife, then pregnant, had an emergency that confined her to bed indefinitely. It was now just me and the evangelist and his English, being something less than Shakespeare’s, made our communication difficult. This was going to bomb.

The first day was a disaster. Too many kids showed up, some just curious ones from the surrounding neighborhood. They were unruly. My bumbling was evident to all. The second day we weeded out the kids who had just dropped in but they were determined to remind us of their presence by throwing rocks on the metal roof as we sang or tutored or gave out cookies. My efforts at teaching geography, with a big world map that I could point at, was so out of this world that they couldn't understand it. They could be taught the alphabet but they had a hard time putting the letters together. The few games we taught them didn’t go so well; they had a hard time remembering the rules. When, in the first couple of weeks, the attendance would drop to about 20, I knew that my dream was fast evaporating. Soon I was reluctantly dragging myself out to the hall thrice a week, kicking myself for having again brought to birth another failure. I was looking forward to moving south just as an excuse to wash my hands of the whole effort. Well at least, I could assure myself, I tried.

Two Amazing Things

But two amazing things happened: the kids kept coming and God’s aces-in-the-hole appeared. As the time neared for me to leave for the south, scarcely over a month after I began the program, I cast about for missionary volunteers to fill in the gaps that I would leave. The program may have been limping but it could still go forward. Surely, I could find, in a missionary community of about 100, enough people willing to give an hour and a half once a week. I was overwhelmed with silence. Oh, there were a few volunteers; two, I think. A few others were willing to help supply some kind of snack for the kids. But somehow, against my intentions I assure you, word of our program got out to some Ethiopians. Well, it couldn't hurt to let one of them help, I guessed. I was desperate. Her name, by the way was Deborah and she turned out to have as much skill at handling kids as any seminary trained youth worker I’ve ever seen. What’s more she had a sister, Liya, who lacked none of her abilities. Friends galore followed in their train.

Then a tragedy struck with my wife's pregnancy. Suddenly I, the indispensable leader, could have nothing to do with the program. I had just been introduced to Deborah and her brigade. Surely, they, without my depth of expertise, couldn’t possibly carry on. The next week we left the country for a two-week break; when we returned we were whisked down to the south where we remained in virtual exile from the rest of the mission for another two months. The next time we came up to Addis Ababa, I was flabbergasted. Deborah had whipped the program into proper shape. Attendance was way up, kids were broken into groups during the tutoring time according to age, volunteers (mostly all friends and family of Deborah) were drilling them in English and other subjects, a curriculum had been set and plans were in the making for a much more intensive “rainy season” program that they were going to call “King's Kids.” (Wait a minute, I had the seminary degree and I was the missionary! How dare they show me up like that!) My thimble full of faith was filled with a reservoir and with Deborah and her sister, Liya, there was the capacity to hold it.

“Kid's Kids” had their end of year program. Deborah and Liya had about sixty kids that they had tutored, fed snacks, taught a basic skill like sewing, entertained and shared the gospel with. To display their newly acquired knowledge and revel in the good time they’ve been having, the kids put on a singing and play acting program on the grounds of the mission. Parents were there with more than the average joy of seeing their kids performing; these parents had never been to anything like this before – or had ever dreamed that they could. In the middle of it Deborah humbled me: she chose me to give away the commemorative gifts to the kids who had faithfully finished her program. The kids were exuberantly congratulated by their parents. They didn’t know who the skinny white man was; I’m sure they must have thought I was important; as they strolled to their ragged lean-tos on the other side the compound wall they probably guessed I was something of an evangelical Mother Teresa. Boy, did I fool them. I’m just a bumbling missionary who dared to do something that I was almost sure would fail. The fact that it led to a celebration was the result of God's grace; grace which manifest itself through the provision of some competent nationals.

Last week I went back to the ramshackle hall to join the “Kings Kid’s” program. But this time I was just another volunteer. Liya, Deborah’s sister who has stepped to the fore in the last few months, was the boss. If she told me to jump I would have to ask “how high?.” If I left, and one day I will, Liya and her legion will wave good-bye and carry on. It is theirs now and I couldn't be happier.

Missionary Lessons

I would be less than an expert (and I am less than an expert) if I failed to list some principles that should be gleaned from this experience.

First, don’t leash new missionaries. I was told when I was being oriented to the missiological sub-culture that I shouldn't try to criticize or change anything in my first year on the field. I was either too dense or too arrogant to follow that advise. The result is the “King's Kids.”

If I had waited until I was established in my missionary vocation, I would probably have grown used to the hungry, bored kids lingering outside our compound. They would have begun to fade into the background like the clouds. Whatever good intentions I had developed as a novice missionary would have remained only that. Maybe Deborah would have started it on her own; she’s certainly capable enough. But I think that my initiative, as bumbling as it was, was necessary. Through me God provided the spark; through Deborah and Liya God provided the tinder. If I had waited, I would have grown cold and there would have been no spark left. I’ve noticed that change already. I can hear the pleas of the hungry, the appeal “mother dead, father dead” and quite frankly feel nothing. The bombardment of the desperate has calloused me. In my current state, as a busy theological teacher now well acquainted with the fate of the 100,000 street kids, I simply couldn’t be moved to bother with starting the same kind of program. It took a naïve, spoiled American, still over-whelmed with poverty on a scale I never dreamed possible to do take the trouble.

“Don't despise the day of small beginnings” — Zechariah 4:10

Second, as the Bible says “don't despise the day of small beginnings” (Zech. 4:10). Missions thrive on grand projects. Large catchment dams, houses for the homeless that number in the thousands, feeding the hungry who number in the hundreds of thousands or evangelistic crusades that reach millions. It makes great PR and draws those hefty checks in. My original idea was so simple, so small, so nearly inconsequential that I was almost embarrassed of it. Just offer the kids a nutritional cookie and a little tutoring (and that maybe just from the radio!). You won't lure any cash cows with that kind of proposal. It was planned small because that is the most I thought was possible; with just me that is probably all that was possible but God has, so I discovered, other concerned saints out there just looking for an opportunity. Let’s free our missionaries to start small things. We never know how many of them may be picked up by eager, skilled nationals just looking for a way to serve God.

Lastly, God is not bound by us, not even our faith. If He could use me with all my doubts and the grudgingness that crept into my attitude very quickly, then He could do anything. I cannot claim that “King’s Kids” is a triumph of my faith or even my faithfulness. Its success is simply from God's grace. Of course, God used means. Without eager, skilled nationals (whom I wasn't looking for!) “King’s Kids” would have been a flash in the pan. But due to God’s grace, my modest plans for a missionary run outreach became an ongoing Ethiopian owned program; the result is that the local street kids are, for the second year, “King's Kids.” I'm Calvinist enough to simply assert that God can do whatever He wants; He can even use a bumbling missionary.

So, whatever you do, whether you think small (like me) or you are still wet behind your missionary ears, God can still plant something big through you. Just go ahead and take that first step.

Post-script:

In 2007 Mary started a similar ministry to kids in Caswell County and Danville, called “Gym, Jr.” If you’d like to be involved, do.

“How a Bumbling Missionary Started a Thriving Street Kids Ministry,” Urban Mission, Sept.  1995.

John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022).