Every Thursday, our community looks forward to visiting our friends in the Kroo Bay Community during our Outreach program. On this particular Thursday, three of our staff met a young boy named Julian, in a heated quarrel with a relative, who threatened to hit him. They stayed to help calm the situation and later enquired about the boy’s family.
Julian* and Gabriel* (his younger brother), nine years old and eight years old respectively, live with their father and elder sister, on the shores of Kroo Bay. Their father is an aged fisherman who is mostly out at sea, and their mother left them when Gabriel was only a baby, with no clue of her whereabouts. They had dropped out of school after they lost their home by a fire accident and spent their days going through piles of garbage, looking for scrap metals to sell. This was their main means of survival. Their elder sister was just a teenager who hawked, selling different goods for their relative who’d been promising to admit them into school.
After listening to their story, we admitted them into the Word Made Flesh Sierra Leone Tutoring program. Over the past seven to eight months, they have been welcomed into the Ale Ale Center regularly and enjoyed learning, playing, and sharing meals in our Tutoring program. Our Tutoring staff took a keen interest in their well-being, paying frequent visits, providing food, and other necessities for them. With the support of two staff members and Alie (a graduate of our Lighthouse program), they have now been admitted into school, being supervised, groomed, and fed daily. Alie, having been transformed by Christ’s love through our community, is in turn learning to give back that love by being a caring elder brother to Julian and Gabriel.
*A pseudonym has been used to ensure privacy.