Sweep Our Hearts: Kumasi Street Cleaning
Early Saturday morning, volunteers, local church members and city workers gathered in their hundreds to clean the street of Kumasi. With gloves and brooms at the ready, they marched into the markets and the alleyways sweeping up the rubbish and waste that plague Kumasi streets.As the volunteers began cleaning, a look of astonishment could be seen flashing across the faces of the street vendors as the crowd descended upon the market to clean. Some even joined in on the activity by sweeping and cleaning their own areas and adding the rubbish to the pile!
“This is great!” one market women said,
“This shows me that the church is thinking about us.”
“This is great!” one market women said, “This shows me that the church is thinking about us.” Clement, another volunteer said, “The women in the market are amazed. They are saying they’ve never seen Christians do anything like this before!” When asked what he hopes the outcome of the mission will be, Clement said, “Our hope is that during this week people will see Christ’s love for them through our actions. We hope that this mission will transform many lives in Kumasi.”
As the cleaning teams continued their work, they had the opportunity to share gospel tracts with bystanders and explain the reason behind this event. “This is a symbolic exercise, as much as it is a physical one.” said Stephen Mbogo, AE CEO/ITL “Our sin makes us just has filthy as these streets. We need Jesus to sweep our hearts clean.”
Back at the meeting point the Kumasi mission leadership, in partnership with Royal Bank, who sponsored part of the event, presented new dustbins to various organisations around the city including a school, the marketplace authorities and the Kumasi Prison which were presented with several bins and wheelbarrows in particular.
“Our sin makes us just has filthy as these streets. We need Jesus to sweep our hearts clean.”
Andrews, Discipline Officer at the prison said, “We have a huge sanitation problem in the prison. You can imagine with over 1,000 prisoners the rubbish can become overwhelming. Unfortunately, the government is not able to provide everything we need to take care of problems like these so we rely on organisations like African Enterprise to help us fill the gaps. These will be a huge help to us! Thank you so much!”Following the presentation of the dustbins, the volunteers took to the streets in a ‘March for Peace’ through the main thoroughfare of Kumasi. A band from a local church played songs and the marchers sang and danced along. The group was lead by a police escort and tailed by a fire engine with siren blaring. There was no way to miss and the city of Kumasi is now fully aware of our presence here this week. Continue to pray that many hearts would be touched by the love of God this week.
“We have really worked hard today. Some people were asking me why we were cleaning so I was able to tell them that the churches in Kumasi care about them and Jesus loves them most of all.”
Abena Kusiwaa, a volunteer from a local church said, “We have really worked hard today. Some people were asking me why we were cleaning so I was able to tell them that the churches in Kumasi care about them and Jesus loves them most of all. Some other wanted to know what they could do to help! I believe this event has had a good impact on the people of Kumasi. Thank you African Enterprise for coming and making this possible for us.”
Sunday will be the Opening Ceremony for the mission and on Monday our teams will disperse across the city to share the gospel with everyone they meet! Thank you for your prayers and your support. Kumasi will be a changed city when we’re done.