by an Alliance worker serving in West Africa
Thousands of boys fill the streets of our city. A majority are the sons of impoverished Senegalese families who have sent them to the local teachers of this region’s predominant faith to receive a religious education.
Most of these youngsters are required to beg for food and/or money. They experience everything from loneliness, abandonment, hunger, and disease to abuse—even rape. When they reach young adulthood, they have no jobs or life skills and face a future of near certain physical and spiritual destitution.
Demonstrating Jesus’ Love
Four years ago, we built a boys’ vocational school to reach these youth in partnership with the YN Center, a local fellowship. Our Alliance team members attend this church, which demonstrates Jesus’ incarnate love through providing health clinics and educational opportunities for our impoverished community.
Our goal for the boys’ school has been to help them find a brighter future founded in a relationship with their loving Heavenly Father. In this nation, less than .01 percent of people follow the Jesus road.
A Packed-full Day
Over the past several years, we’ve cultivated a relationship with three local religious schools where the street boys live and study. Every Thursday (their day off from studies), one of the schools sends their boys to our center to enjoy a packed-full day of fun games—soccer is the favorite.
We also provide the boys wound care (as needed) and the opportunity to shower, do laundry, and enjoy a healthy lunch. We then share a biblical teaching.
It truly is a sight to see these youngsters let go of their worries for a few hours each week and simply be children while experiencing the compassion of people who genuinely love them.
Oral Bible Stories Connect
Over the past six months, we had been praying about building new relationships with additional religious schools here to further advance God’s truth and power in this city. In January, God answered our prayers when two schools contacted the YN Center, inquiring about allowing their boys to attend our Thursday activities.
Lately I’ve been encouraged as we’ve pushed to be more effective in sharing our faith in Jesus Christ with these kids, who are particularly hard to reach with the truth. But we are finding now that one of the best methods to proclaim Jesus’ truth is through oral Bible-story telling.
We have not seen any of these street boys come to Christ yet (as far as we know), but we have witnessed significant changes in their openness to Christians here.
Church members once mocked and ridiculed for their faith are now often seen walking hand-in-hand with these boys singing together, “God is so good . . . He’s so good to me.”
Please pray for a greater softening to the truth of Christ among these youth and that many will come to faith in Him.
Learn More
Read “A Story in the Baobab Tree,” which describes the new life “sprouting” in this spiritually hardened area of West Africa.