Week two

Our guest speaker was Steve Bartel who works with street children in Columbia. Steve has been doing this work for around 25 years and subsequently has a lot of experience and wisdom. I was particularly interested in this topic as much of what Steve has to say was very applicable to my ministry with the garibouts.

We started out the week taking about why children become street kids and came to the conclusion that it is usually due to dysfunctional families. We then looked to the Bible to look at dysfunctional families there. I have to admit I was quite shocked by the list we piled up: the very first dysfunctional family was Adam and Eve’s – siblings killing each other, then we also have fathers willing to kill their children (Abraham), fathers having sex with their daughters (Lot), mothers boiling their children to eat them, sacrificing their children to idols and also Jacob’s family (rejections, favouritism...), David’s family, Tamar... Lot offering his daughters to rapists to protect his guests and even the high priest Eli’s family was messed up. It wasn’t the fact that these stories are in the Bible that shocked me but I had never put them all together like this before; it makes for scary reading but also a little reassuring that these issues are new to our present time.   

We spent quite a bit of time trying to understand street kids, where they come from, why they do what they do and how to help them. I was saddened to hear about these young kids, some only 5 years old, sniffing glue, being in gangs, getting beaten and taken by the police and many more atrocities. My heart goes out to them.

Steve also shared with us a model for developing a ministry with street kids. There are many aspects of Steve’s ministry that I would love to develop with the garibouts in Mali and but I am still trying o figure out how it will all work. These fist two weeks of the CRS (Children at Risk School) have really got me thinking about what I want the ministry to look like. I have had to examine my plans and dreams for Mali and see if it that would really produce a sustainable, successful and God centred ministry. The core things that I want to do have remained the same but I am re-thinking the methods and end goals. I hope this process of building up a plan for the ministry will continue throughout the school.

This past week we started our local outreach which is basically a weekly children’s program for at risk kids in the red light district. As it was the first week we played games with the kids and were just getting to know them. While we were playing the kids were just like any other kids, happy and having fun but I had to remind myself that these kids are probably from single parent families whose sole income comes from prostitution. I don’t like to think too much about the lives these kids lead out-side of school time but I hope and pray we can bring them some respite from it in the couple of hours we spend with them, also I hope we can share the gospel with them which will do much more in their life than I ever could.

Here are some photos from the ministry time.