Two years after committing his life to Christ, Asfaw Araga visited Ethiopia for the first time. On his way out of the airport, he witnessed a sight that would radically change the trajectory of his life.
“I saw a mother with two small children on the side of the street,” he remembers. “She was sitting on the ground with her head on her knees. One of the children was missing pants. Everyone was stepping over them, oblivious to the life beneath their feet. I felt like I was watching this in slow motion.”
Over the next month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, Asfaw’s heart was broken over and over as he observed similar vignettes of street life: Parents struggling to nurture their children. Young people strung out from substance use, wandering around like zombies. Elders who lost hope from sickness and weariness.
He returned to Georgia with a heavy burden for the Ethiopian people at the lowest rungs of society.
“I kept closing my eyes and seeing them,” he says. “That’s when I knew God was calling me to return to Ethiopia to serve the poorest of the poor.”
But not yet.
Exploration
Raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia, by parents of Ethiopian origin, Asfaw experienced little desire to know God throughout his childhood. In the Ethiopian Orthodox church his family attended every Sunday, he remembers a stronger emphasis on ritual and repetition than on Bible study and prayer.
“I never really opened a Bible or pursued a relationship with Jesus,” he says. “God was my ticket into heaven, and that was enough for me.”
He enrolled at the University of Georgia as a biology student with a dream to become an optometrist. Visually impaired as a child, a life-changing corneal transplant inspired him to give others the same access to care.
After being immersed in traditional Ethiopia culture for most of his life, he found himself gravitating toward secular culture as an undergraduate student.
“I fell into unhealthy behaviors—getting drunk all the time, constantly going to parties,” he says. “It became a way to escape from stress and negative emotions.”
Asfaw hit a wall when he realized he was powerless to overcome a growing substance abuse problem. As his lifestyle spiraled out of control, deeper questions about his purpose and meaning began to prick at him. When a fellow student invited him to a Navigators Bible study, he would always find an excuse to decline.
“I had a picture of Christians as perfect rule followers, and there was no way I could fit into that mold,” he says.
Eventually, he ran out of excuses and accepted the invitation. After attending the study several times, he agreed to go to lunch with Dustin Butler, the director of campus ministry for the Navigators at UGA. One lunch turned into weekly meetings where he and Dustin took a deep dive into questions about meaning and purpose, suffering and hope.
“What I appreciated most about Dustin was his transparency about his own doubts and struggles,” says Asfaw. “The image of the perfect Christian was shattered and the gospel began to make sense to me.”
After meeting regularly with Dustin for several months, Asfaw committed his life to Jesus. He was partway through his senior year at the University of Georgia. Overnight, he felt God pulling him away from his dream of becoming an optometrist and toward a new dream of joining campus ministry. After graduation, he became a facilities and securities coordinator for university libraries to maximize his opportunities to volunteer on campus. As he was being discipled, he joined in the work of discipling others.
Preparation
Asfaw had served in campus ministry for several years when his family trip to Ethiopia opened his eyes to the vast unmet need in his ancestral land.
When he returned to the U.S., he struggled with a burden for ministry he didn’t know how to answer.
“I didn’t know where to start serving these people or who to turn to,” he says. “I even started denying the call because I didn’t feel equipped. But finally, I prayed for God to lead me to the tools to engage with people in the way He wanted me to.”
God answered his prayer at a Navigators conference in Blue Ridge Mountain in the fall of 2017. During a session break, Asfaw connected with Eric Ketcham, a field staff member for the Resilient Communities Center (then Discipling for Development).
“I sensed that this was the person God wanted me to talk to,” says Asfaw.
He was intrigued to discover that not only was Eric’s father born to missionaries in Ethiopia but that the Resilient Communities Center was committed to whole-life discipleship in Clarkston, Georgia, the home of a sizable Ethiopian community.
At Eric’s recommendation, Asfaw read When Helping Hurts and enrolled in the ministry’s six-month online foundations course to glean practical insights into engaging with people living in poverty.
“It was without a doubt the most impactful course I have ever taken,” says Asfaw. “It felt like God was teaching me exactly how He wanted me to pursue my future ministry.”
In his course, Asfaw’s eyes were opened to the layers of brokenness that people living in poverty experience.
“I learned that reaching them starts with peeling back the layers of the onion to understand the core of who they are,” he says. “Only then can you begin building a relationship of trust.”
Without a right relationship with God, he also grew to recognize, sin and dysfunction overtake relationships with family, friends and the natural environment.
From his home base at the University of Georgia, Asfaw began traveling back to Atlanta every weekend to engage with participants in the Resilient Communities Center’s residency program, participating in Bible study, activities, and trainings. Over time, the Resilient Communities Center team empowered him to visit churches and deliver workshops on whole-life discipleship.
After three years of intensive training and preparation, Asfaw moved to Ethiopia in early 2020 to lay the groundwork for his future ministry. Though Ethiopian by birth, he was acutely aware of the need to familiarize himself with Ethiopian culture in a foreign context. For the next 11 months, he sharpened his language skills, networked with local churches, surveyed the ministry landscape, and cultivated relationships.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hamstrung his ability to build relationships in person, he enrolled in a local leadership training program. The first month in the program, he met the woman who would become his wife. A fellow believer, she helped him develop a new outlook on his environment.
“I viewed Ethiopia as a needy place that was full of problems, but she showed me a glass-half-full perspective,” says Asfaw. “She showed me there was beauty and culture. There was a bright future I couldn’t yet see. I felt the Lord speaking to me through her.”
By the end of the seven-month leadership program, Asfaw proposed. He and his wife were married in early 2021 and welcomed their first child, a son, two years later.
As he experienced the joy of starting a family of his own, he also battled rising frustration at the time that had passed since he first sensed a calling from God.
“I kept pleading with Him to let me start my ministry, to let it take off,” he says. “But I wasn’t ready. He kept me waiting.”
In the waiting, Asfaw continued to build relationships, particularly within his local church, Eastridge Addis. Though he didn’t know it at the time, these relationships would become the key ingredient in starting his ministry at long last.
Mobilization
In 2023, Asfaw legally registered his ministry, called Everlasting Hope, and began scouting a location to house it. A friend from his church offered office space at Addis Ababa Bible College, where he serves as a dean. God couldn’t have provided a more strategic launching pad. The college is located in an area with a large population of people living on the street. Eager to serve those in their immediate vicinity, a team of student volunteers quickly formed. Most local restaurants are closed on Sundays, making it difficult for people living on the street to access leftover food, but the college cafeteria was available. A physician and psychiatrist volunteered their time to address medical and substance abuse issues onsite.
By March 2024, the table was set for Everlasting Hope’s first event. That first Sunday, 71 people living on the street gathered to eat a meal, receive medical and psychiatric care, and listen to a 20-minute sermon delivered by a local pastor.
“I was shocked to see that many people in the crowd were listening closely and bowing their head during prayer,” says Asfaw. “You could tell something was stirring in them.”
The first sermon—and those that came after it—focused heavily on the love of Jesus.
“We wanted them to understand how loved they are even though society has rejected them,” Asfaw emphasizes. “They heard about the hope that is available to them, whatever their situation.”
After delivering the sermon, the pastor invited attendees to stay and discuss what it means to put their hope in Jesus.
The second week, many of the same people returned for the event. The third week, 12 people committed their lives to following the ways of Jesus. The ninth week, 310 people attended and 57 of them committed their lives to following Jesus and his teachings.
At that point, Asfaw might have dreamed of exponential growth. Overwhelmed with the sheer number of people to feed, he might have worked to expand the ministry’s capacity so it could serve hundreds and thousands at a time.
Instead, he chose to go deeper with fewer. Of the dozens of people who expressed interest in learning more after the sermon, 17 finished a one-month salvation course through a partner church. Of the 17, 12 committed to a discipleship program hosted by Asfaw and three full-time volunteers.
These 12 people range in age from 18 to 63. They are adherents to major and splinter religions, poor and middle-class by background. Most came to Addis Ababa in search of work and soon realized work was difficult to come by, even for people with degrees. They sold their belongings to survive before running out of money entirely and ending up on the street, too ashamed to return to their hometown. All of them struggle with substance abuse issues.
Asfaw marvels at the power of the Holy Spirit to change people who are ignored and disregarded by the people around them. He shares the story of Amal*, a young man in his early 20s from a different faith background. After moving to Addis Ababa for work and not finding it, Amal lived on the street for two years. He joined a friend at an Everlasting Hope event, but the message didn’t resonate with him. His friend kept attending without him and eventually turned to the teachings of Jesus. When Amal saw that his friend had gone in a different direction and was actively resisting drugs and alcohol, he decided to give an event another try. A week later, Amal began to follow Jesus and joined his friend in the ministry’s discipleship program.
In addition to mentoring Amal and his cohort in their faith, Asfaw and his colleagues help them cultivate skills in personal finance and communication. A handful of the 12, including Amal, trained in carpentry, and three have established micro-businesses.
They are all off the street, but progress is slow and hard-fought.
“Training with the Resilient Communities Center prepared me for the reality that discipleship is not a quick fix,” Asfaw reflects. “It is a transformative process that centers on relationships, and building relationships takes time. It is a marathon.”
Everlasting Hope faces the same hurdles as any young ministry. Raising funds and identifying partners while discipling a dozen people at a time requires an intense, sustained commitment. Asfaw is trusting that God will continue to supply the resources to expand integral discipleship in Addis Ababa and beyond.
In early 2025, the 12 participants will graduate from Everlasting Hope’s discipleship program and the ministry will resume Sunday events at the Addis Ababa Bible College campus. Over the course of several months, Asfaw and his team will identify another cohort to disciple, and the cycle of spiritual reproduction will begin again. In the meantime, the newly minted graduates have a mission of their own.
“It’s not enough to see people come to Christ, get sober, and find a job,” he reflects. “Our hope is for every person we disciple is that they disciple others who go on to disciple others. The process starts with exploration and mobilization, but in the end, it’s all about reproduction.”
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*Names changed to protect identities.
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