Sarah looks back on her first year of working in Ethiopia

YOUNG Ballymena woman, Sarah Gregg, has just completed her first year as a missionary in Ethiopia with Serving In Mission (S.I.M.)

Over the last 12 months Sarah has been working primarily as an English teacher and has enabled people of all ages to get to grips with the language.

In the main, she has been based at the government-run Mekelle Youth Centre.

Situated about two one hour from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa by air, this facility provides sporting opportunities, HIV/AIDS awareness classes and the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) programme to children and young people:

“It was quite challenging because they were all at different levels”, said Sarah. 

“Also when it came to topics of conversation there were so many things that they couldn’t really relate to.  If you were going to talk to a group of teenagers in Northern you might decide ‘oh, lets chat about fashion or famous people.’  But you have to completely reinvent your lessons and topics to suit the audience because that didn’t work in Ethiopia”, she added.

However, Sarah ‘really enjoyed’ this work. She also had an opportunity to teach English at a theological seminary.

She continued: “With the trainee priests it was much more of a learning curve for me because I would go and tell them things but I would also be finding out so much about Ethiopia from them and about the Orthodox Church. We enjoyed having discussions about the Bible and lots of other things.”

Sarah also loved her weekly visits to a local school for children with varying degrees of visual impairment.

She went on: “There are about 100 kids.  All of them were either partially sighted or completely blind and they didn’t really have a lot so we would go there during their break time to play with the kids and spend time with them.”

  “I think they gave us a lot of trust because we were coming every week and were excited to see us.  They also got bananas so it was like ‘woohoo, bananas on Friday”, she smiled.

From Sarah’s point of view, it seems that having the opportunity to meet and make friends with people of other nationalities and cultures was, and will continue to be the best thing about working abroad.

During the past year, she has lived with people from England, America and Switzerland. It would be remiss not to mention her many African friends as well.

Sarah commented: “Ethiopians are quite open, really friendly and very generous. The group of people that I got to know best were a group of older girls who taught me language.”

“They have been going to the youth centre since it was set up about seven years ago and so they came up through it and they are now 19, 20 and 21 years old. I would go for lunch and socialise with them. Some of those friendships are really important to me and they are just really special girls”, she added.

It was be true to say that Sarah has really grown to love the Ethiopian people and way of life during her time there. Certainly, she is looking forward to going back in September, God willing.

Leaving a few points for prayer, she said: “People could pray for the next few months that I will find what God wants me to do. Hopefully I will get some work.”

“Also, pray about raising support financially for when I return because I think I am going to be down to zero at the minute so I need to raise around £8,000 for the year. It is your flights that are expensive. Once you are actually in Ethiopia then the living costs are pretty low”, she concluded.

If you want to hear more about Sarah’s year in Ethiopia, go along to High Kirk Presbyterian Church on Sunday, 20th February at 6.30pm when she will be speaking about her expedition.

Related topics: