LDS man helps homeless youths in Ethiopia

Before embarking on a planned LDS mission in 2003, Jason Burton left his home in
 Oregon to perform service work in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.
 Today,  Burton cares for 20 former homeless youths, showing them a life beyond the streets.

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — It’s lunchtime at the Yehiwot Reay compound in the Megenagna District of Ethiopia’s sprawling capital city, and a mob of gangly boys scrambles for seats at a worn wood table. They dive into plates of injera and shiro, 12 hands ripping at the food. The room reverberates with dinner-table chatter in three languages.

They are as young as 6 and as old as 20, though most can only guess at their age. And like boys anywhere, they push and scrap, argue and pout. Two of the older boys toss a ball across the room, goading each other to see who can hurl it harder.

One of the youngest, Tareku, plays music videos on a laptop computer — a technological incongruity in this meager brick and plaster home. The skin on his forearm is cracked and disfigured — an eight-inch sleeve of scars. He glances away from the screen and to his arm.

“Fire,” he explains.


Jason Burton does his best to piece together the difficult — and sometimes horrifying — facts of the lives once lived by these boys, who have come to him off the squalid and often violent streets of one of the world’s poorest cities. Some have been abandoned by parents who cannot feed them. Others came to the city from their rural villages intending to support the families they left behind. While on the street they sometimes slept against the walls of churches, under bridges or in trash-strewn alleys.

Now they are part of Burton’s family. Like all families, this one has its struggles. But after five years of this work, Burton can’t walk away — even though he recognizes that he’s put many aspects of his own life on hold to answer this call.

By the time they met Burton, many of these boys were addicted to tchat, a mild narcotic that is cheap and popular in Ethiopia. Others have struggled to overcome alcoholism. Burton aims to provide a home, a shelter and a place where they are wanted.

As lunch winds down, the 25-year-old Oregon native and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints looks across the table.

“It’s time to get to work, you guys,” he says.

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