An Introduction to ELO
Welcome to YWAM Ethiopia Life Overflowing’s blog!
To kick off our website and blog, we wanted to give you a little bit of an introduction to YWAM ELO: what God has spoken over our base over the past few years and how our base came to be. It all started when Amy, our base founder and previous base leader, was attending a morning worship service during her Discipleship Training School in Perth, Australia. God suddenly spoke to her, the words “A long-term YWAM base in Addis Ababa.” Amy began sharing the vision God had given her about pioneering to Ethiopia with different DTSes at YWAM Perth. In October of 2015, Amy shared with one of YWAM Perth’s secondary schools: the School of Frontier Missions.
From that, God created a team of four YWAM-ers from YWAM Perth to move to Addis Ababa. There were three girls and one guy: Amy, from Australia, Tessa from New Zealand, Marion from France, and Anders, from the United States. As the team interceded and got ready to move to Ethiopia, God began to speak about their new home and ministry. To Amy, God spoke to name the base “Ethiopia- Life Overflowing,” or ELO for short. About the vision, God gave them a picture of a lighthouse, giving light to all the other nations, and also Ethiopia as a heart, pumping blood to the nations surrounding it. It was clear that God didn’t want Ethiopia just to be a country that accepts and receives missionaries, but missionaries are meant to come from Ethiopia, and He wanted the YWAM team to be a part of that.
As far as ministry, God spoke about two things: running Discipleship Training Schools and doing kids ministry. At the end of 2015, Amy, Tessa and Marion were preparing to leave for Ethiopia at the start of the New Year, and Anders…. Well, he tried. He ended up breaking his collarbone playing soccer, while he was still in Perth. He went back to the US for a few weeks to get that sorted, and then he joined the girls in Addis Ababa six weeks later. The three girls moved to Addis Ababa at the beginning of 2016 and lived at a guesthouse for a little while, before moving to a condominium. The girls took turns sharing a mattress that was filled with bed bugs, while Anders slept on a sofa. In March, the team found and moved into the house we are still in today, a pink (inside and out), three-story house, in the outskirts of Addis Ababa. When they moved, they started out without any furniture, except for four mattresses and a small table and chairs that the landlady let them borrow. Around the time the team moved into the house, Amy’s aunt and uncle moved into the house with them, and helped buy the things they needed, like a washing machine and kitchen utensils. The base was now becoming a home.
In 2017, YWAM ELO was able to see one of the things God spoke about in the very beginning, come to life. That August, YWAM ELO was able to run their first DTS, and since then (except for 2020, because of COVID-19), we have continued to run a DTS almost every year since then. We have witnessed life change and people called into the mission field through DTSes, and it has been such an honor that God has called YWAM ELO to be a part of it. Along with running DTSes, we have been able to train many people in missions. Over the past five years, we have had people on staff with us. We have been able to run leadership trainings, run an online secondary school and host many outreach teams. At the start of ELO, God spoke about doing kids ministry, and we are excited to announce that one of our lovely staff members is working on getting kids ministry started. We are excited to see how God uses this ministry to impact childrens’ lives around Addis Ababa.
This is the story of how YWAM ELO began. While it may not have been our idea, it has always been God’s, and we are humbled and blessed that He chose us to be a part of it. If you are interested in being a part of what God is doing here at YWAM Ethiopia Life Overflowing, we would love to invite you to take the first step and do a Discipleship Training School with us, on August 29.
If you would like more information about our DTS, email us at ethiopialifeoverflowing@gmail.com or check out our website.
