Bizrat has been employed by CHE since early 2008 and serves as an assistant to the director as well as a social worker. His responsibilities include:
- meeting with the parents or guardians of both the Drop-in Center and SAFE Project beneficiaries
- visiting schools
- checking in on the students
- paying school fees
- talking with and caring for the Drop-In Center children
- teaching Amharic to the beneficiaries
- facilitating the Saturday SAFE program,
- and helping the Director with administrative and financial issues as needed
Bizrat is a true asset to the CHE team. He will not only perform any task that’s asked of him but he will do it with a cheerful heart.
Bizrat was raised in an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery by his blind dad, who is a monk, and his blind mom, who is a nun. When Bizrat was about 13 years old two visitors came to the monastery and shared the gospel with him.
Bizrat became a believer!
On the next visit, the visitor brought him a bible and he fell in love with Jesus and His Word. When he was 18, he began to boldly tell others in the monastery about Jesus. He was thrown into jail for 3 days without food or water. After 3 days he was placed on the top rack of a car, escorted out of the monastery, and taken to Addis Ababa.
Bizrat was not allowed to ride inside the car because it was believed that he would curse it. He knew one man in the city who was also forced to leave the monastery and Bizrat eventually found him. They began a bible study and Bizrat became employed by Young Life Ethiopia.
Bizrat definitely has a gift for evangelism...
Shortly after coming to Addis Ababa, he began visiting a leper colony. He started a church, which has now planted other small churches within the colony. Many of the families eat from the garbage left over from local hotels. Bizrat, knowing where the meals come from, eats whatever is offered him by the families. In his words, “if you don’t eat with them then you can’t share the gospel with them.”
As you can imagine, there is a stigma attached to leprosy. Bizrat works to displace the stigma of leprosy by loving the “unlovable” just as he works to displace the stigma of being HIV positive, an orphan, a widow, or a child living on the streets by loving the children and parents associated with Children’s Home Ethiopia.