From Rwanda to Ethiopia

The Team left Rwanda on the 4th of July, leaving behind the lush green shades of the land they had come to love and flying into Addis Ababa, the capitol of Ethiopia, where the weather is soggy from the rainy season.  Travel and checking into their new living quarters filled this day but tomorrow would once again change their lives forever.

July 5th brought the Team to Korah, Ethiopia where they were scheduled to work
with Project 61.  This ministry works with the kids who live in the city dump, scavenging for food to survive.  The community of Korah started as a place where lepers lived.  Lepers exiled from the rest of society much like in Biblical days.  Today Korah is an area for lepers, for people with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis but also an area for the poorest of the poor.  All are outcasts, living in tin paneled, hole-filled homes smaller than one of our outside storage buildings or smaller than a walk-in closet.  Without roads, mud was everywhere, deep, oozing mud 5 inches deep.

The Team was assigned jobs, women painting tin buildings to be used by Project 61 and the men pouring concrete. 









Other Team members worked with children who came from nowhere and everywhere clamoring for attention and food.  As in Rwanda, immediately the Team began to bond with the children who wanted to be touched and drawn close.  Open hearts looking to the Team for help and love.  Lindsay Allen writes "...I went from a nervous girl holding back when we first got there, to the girl with 8 children hanging all over me, kissing their little heads and wiping their snot. ...God showed me that these people might be outcasts from society, but they are still loved by a great God.  They are not gross or weird or evil.  They are beautiful and kind."

Later some of us visited a home in Korah where team leaders, Laura and Tymm Hoffman, sponsor one of the daughters providing her with boarding school education.  The home was tiny, divided into two sections with cooking outside. 

        

                                                        

As believers we are commanded to be hospitable and in this place were they have next to nothing, we were welcomed with open arms.  Out of their little, we were given seats while the family stood.  We were served Ethiopian coffee and sweetened popcorn.  They offered to wash our feet as we came inside covered with the mud from the pouring rain. 

They asked us to pray for them and we did.  Hands holding hands, heads bent in reverence to the Father seeking His blessing on these precious people. We will never forget the home visits, the loving hearts of the people of Korah and the generosity of the people.  In their poverty, they served us who have so much.  It shames the deepest part of our hearts.

July 6th was a day no Team member will ever forget.  So many children coming from every direction.  Children who had great need for food, for clothes, for shelter, for love.  Needs more than we had ever seen before.  They surged around us wanting candy or gum or someone to play with them or hold them.  Too many to help.  Too many to hold.  Too many.

Goats for sale

The Team put their money together and purchased 2 goats which were slaughtered and cooked.  The meal of goat meat and Ethiopian bread was to be served to the Project 61 kids in the Church made up of a tent.  The Team did not at first understand they were only feeding the sponsored kids of Project 61.  Soon it became apparent that there were hundreds and hundreds of starving people crying out and screaming for food.  Lindsey wrote "Have you ever seen a really really hungry person?  I know I'm always saying, 'I'm starving!' but before today, I didn't really know what starving looked like."   The crowd knew there was food.  They knew there was meat.  The mass of people pushed forward, shoving smaller ones out of their way as they grabbed for food.  Small children were knocked down, walked on and trampled in the mud in a desperate attempt to eat.  Again Lindsey wrote "I felt so helpless.  I felt horrified.  I felt scared.  I wanted to throw up....Now I know what starving looks like."

With only a short time left in Ethiopia, we had so much to do and so much to learn.  We met with Jerry Shannon and his family of Embracing Hope Ethiopia.  This ministry is also in Korah but they work hard, keeping children out of orphanages and off the streets.  Day care is provided for dozens of children while mothers seek some kind of employment, scavenge the dump or even beg to support their families.  The Team presented EHE with a gift from the ladies of First Christian Church.  This gift will be pictured in the next blog post. 

The Team visited the grave of little Brighton, the tiny son of Laura and Tymm Hoffman who passed away before they could travel to bring him home.  Broken hearted by their loss, "Brighton Their World" was established to send life sustaining baby formula to the poorest orphanages especially in Ethiopia.  Just barely 2 months old, Brighton's short life has influenced the lives of many, resulting in mission trips and tons of formula feeding the tiniest of orphans.

 

After vising the cemetery, the Team visited the largest of the state orphanages in Addis Ababa where tons of formula has been donated by Brighton Their World.  Donations from First Christian Church along with many others provided the means for the Team to be present when a huge gift of formula and diapers was delivered by the Hoffmans.  No pictures were allowed in this orphanage but I have been there and it is filled to overflowing with kids of every age from the newborn to the teen.  When I left there I wanted to put every single child on the plane with me.  I wanted to group them on the stage of First Christian Church and say "These children need parents.  Who will accept the call to be their mother and to be their father?"  In my heart I knew the stage would soon be empty of children, all of them on their way to their new home with their forever families.

At the end of a mission trip, when the Lord has pierced your heart with the reality of how much we have and how little others have, it is time to take responsibility. Time to make a change.  I went to Ethiopia feeling like a lower middle class American and came home understanding that I am wealthy beyond measure.  Why are we so blessed when others are starving, hardly living, needing medical care?  Why?  Because the Lord is telling US to be His hands, His feet, His love on this earth.  At the end of our days, each of us will stand before Him, look Him in the eye when He asks "What did you do with what I gave you?"  

I have seen and I am responsible.  Through this blog I hope you, too, have seen and you, too, will serve according to His Will.

"Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring

for widows and orphans in their distress and refusing to let

the world corrupt you."  James 1:27