LAST SATURDAY I ATTENDED THE AFRICAN CULTURE FEST
in San Diego. I was invited by my friend Abraham Tessema. It was quite an afternoon. The drum group shown above was fantastic. They are all San Diego residents.
Here are a few other pictures of the event. There were people from many of the East African countries. The event was sponsored by the Somali Youth United. There were local politicians there as well as many city and non-profit organizations. There was a long show of musicians, singers, poets and dancers from Africa. My friend Abraham (see below) knows many of these people and is working with them in the community. I’ll share more about his dream below.
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| These three young ladies parents are from Ethiopia. They were part of a dance group showing traditional Ethiopian dancing. |
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| This group of ladies was watching the entertainers. Most of the women who dress in this fashion style are of the Muslim faith. There are thousands of them in San Diego. Most of them come from Somolia. |
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| THESE stilt walkers were the hit of the show for the children. They were having a great time running from them. They are modeled after something similar in parts of Africa. |
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| This shows more of the Festival dress for many of the women of the Musllim faith. It was a very colorful afternoon. Most of these are mothers of youth participating in the days Fest. |
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I’m currently teaching the IAAR presentations to two of these men on Friday nights and then after that I’m presenting Dragon Slayers to a group. I’ll be working with and getting to know this area of San Diego better over the coming months.
Please keep all we will be doing here in your prayers.
FYI; I will be speaking at the Filipino & American Christian Convention in Seattle, the week of the forth of July.
I will then be making a trip at the end of July into Mexico to do some teaching. I’ll be going with some Missionaries from the Chandler area. |
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Abraham Tessema; born in Ethiopia. He moved to San Diego as a teenager as his family escaped political turmoil. He got his Masters from San Diego State and later became a Christian. He is a businessman. He is well known in this area of San Diego which has over 100,000 immigants from Africa. He is forming a non-profit called Refugee Assistance Center. His goal is to work with all the non-profits and govenment organization to help these thousands of refugees assimilate here in San Diego. His ultimate goal is to build relationships and share the Gospel with others.
A large part of this effort is developing a training program for the Christian community in this area. We are developing an intense 6 month training program for all those who will work with him in his non-profit. We hope to launch it in October of this year. We plan on offering it in English and Spanish. Abe’s goal is to train Christians how to share the Gospel (especially using IAAR) and also to help insure they understand the basics of the faith. I am helping him develop that program and I’ll be the lead teacher in it for now. It seems as though God brought Abe and me together to do something very interesting here in San Diego/Africa???
He also hopes that some day they can start sending Christians from here back to Africa to reach people there and train up Christian leaders. Abe is currently taking my online Relational Evangelism class. Part of the six month training will include trainees taking the course. |
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