Perspective

This past week, Asaua and I had the privilege of going to Kenya for 8 days for Visa purposes.  We were amazed at how different Kenya is to Ethiopia.  While still Africa, it displayed many characteristics of the Western World- Malls, Supermarkets, Civilization, Development.  Although we were able to visit the slum area of Nairobi and see the poverty that exists there, we were also able to enjoy the benefits of its colonialism.

This was a benefit yet also a resurgence of our materialistic nature that comes with being brought up in a country that is full of it.  How can we help it when reminded that this is Christmas season and spending and eating is what you are meant to be doing? 

It kind of made me frustrated on our return, being tempted to ask, what are we missing out on?  Should not Ethiopia be more like Kenya, availing everybody to the “spirit of Christmas” that exists “everywhere” else in the world?  But then I did ask the question and was questioned in return about the purpose of all this festivity and celebration so early before the Christmas day that is celebrated on a totally different day in Ethiopia. 

Why do we celebrate Christmas for so long?  I am not totally sure of its reasoning.  Perhaps because of the Advent season that leads up to Christmas day that is celebrated by Catholicism.  Most probably because of the commercialism that comes with the season and the high retail dependence on this time of year.  I know that I have always enjoyed celebrating many different Christmas and End of year “feasts” to have an excuse to have that get-together that all year, we have promised we would have with friends and family. 

The truth is, though, that Christmas is about Jesus, who was born into this world, not in the form of a rich man with many material possessions, but in the form of a baby with no place to stay.  He was born in a home, more like the homes many of the children in our programme are born into-with hay for bedding, sharing his room with donkeys and animals. 

From day one, Jesus was resonating with the poor and the needy.  He invites us into His world and He has asked us to follow Him.  Sometimes, well many times, that means that life will be uncomfortable.  We can choose to work with the rich or the poor.  Sometimes, working with the poor isn’t appealing, and I’m not saying that working with the rich is bad- but it definitely demands less stretching for our human nature.  Would you rather work with the rich, or work with the poor? They both mean totally different things.  Working with the rich, more often than not, means that you yourself are rich.  Working with the poor, however, means getting to know people who have stories and lives that will break your heart.  It means lowering some standards that you may previously have held.  It means that life can get uncomfortable and dirty.

There is a song I’m sharing below by Leeland.  This song is so powerful.  It is more often a tragedy for us to turn away from the opportunities God gives us to serve those who need it most.  He turns our attention to the broken, the needy, the orphaned, the fatherless and the widowed-those who can’t fend for themselves-those who don’t have a government to look after them- these are those in whom the Church has the opportunity to rise up and work with. 

There is a greater perspective that we can have-not an earthly one where we just live life for ourselves and for this life- but we can live life for others, for eternity, like Jesus did.  Jesus only had 33 years here on earth.  He lived each day with purpose.  He has asked us to live like Him, follow Him, and to be USED by Him..  We don’t know how long our life will be here on Earth.  What you got for Christmas in 2011 is not going to matter when you die, but what you GAVE for Christmas in 2011 might.  Give Your All!

Heart

Not long before we left New Zealand I was asked what it was that attracted me to Ethiopia.  I felt almost dumb-struck by this question.  Just on the weekend, my niece, also asked me why we came to Ethiopia.  And so without sounding super spiritual, I often find it hard to explain WHY exactly why we decided to do something crazy like leave our beautiful country and come to a country that is displayed on the media as drought ridden and poverty stricken.  And why we would leave our families and friends to go where we know virtually nobody.

But this morning during my talk at church, I was able to articulate to the people there why we came to Ethiopia-something which I have found hard to do in the past.  Two years ago I came to Ethiopia for two weeks and a year ago Asaua also came.  On our visits here, we both returned feeling like we had to return. 

My way of explaining what happened came to me as I sat in church during worship.  It was almost like God took all the love he had in heaven for the people here, and poured it into our hearts.  So much love He had for these people- that for us to contain it was difficult. 

So we went back to New Zealand full of love for Ethiopia.  Like a bottle that was about to explode, overflowing with no appropriate outlet for us to let out what was in our hearts.  God wanted us to come to Ethiopia and share that love with the people he intended it for.  This for me, explained why it was so hard for me to stay in New Zealand after that, and why at every mention of delay of our return I felt like a pipe that was about to burst. 

I also explained this morning to the congregation that for us to come here, looks like a sacrifice to most– but actually for us to stay in New Zealand would have been a greater sacrifice.  For to stay in New Zealand would mean that we would have been sacrificing something that is far greater than material possessions- it would mean sacrificing our dream.  This is not your typical dream, of course.  Most people dream of luxurious lifestyles and jobs that bring great success and fortune, but our dream was to outpour the love that was placed inside us for the people here.  Sacrificing that would be too much to bear. 

So right now, we are in Kenya, desperate to renew our visas to get back in and stay in Ethiopia.  The mission is not accomplished yet.  There has been some relief in our love pipe as we have shared some love, but there is so much more to give.  Please pray for us to get our visas this week. 

Patient

To live a life like the one I'm about to describe, you must be patient.  Patient for the breakthrough, patient for the promise and patient to see freedom like you could never have imagined.   Maybe that's why her mother named her Tigist.  Meaning Patient.

Tigist was eight years old when she was taken from her home by a band who was visiting her rural township in Oromia.  She was taken from her place of safety and familiarity to be the house slave of people she never knew, people who never appreciated her and people who never gave her anything in return for the tireless hours she worked as a little girl.

So ten years later, after being tired of having nothing for herself, Tigist ran away.  On her journey to freedom, however, she found herself once again imprisoned in a rape attack that left her pregnant.  At 18 years of age, she gave birth to a beautiful son she called Philemon.  Her hope she found to get her through this horrible ordeal was in God.  She recovered and raised her son.  She attended church and started to work- earning good money to support herself and Philemon.  Attracted by her confidence, beauty and wealth, Tigist was soon married to a man in her local church who seemed to have it all together.  He attended church regularly and displayed commitment to the work of God.  But after marriage, that changed.

Soon her husband became abusive, regularly drinking alcohol and chewing jutt (a local drug).  He had no respect for Tigist or her son and would spend all the household money going out with friends to eat and drink while Tigist and Philemon were left at home with no food.  She knew this wasn't right.  She knew she deserved better, but once again, she found herself trapped.  And once again, she found herself pregnant - with twins!

Nothing changed with her home situation- in fact it got worse.  Not only did her husband stop going to church but he refused to let Tigist go to church- the only place she felt supported and nurtured.  She was isolated, trapped and heavily pregnant.  The only support she had for her family was the money Philemon was getting from his sponsor in Canada through Compassion.  But soon she would have 3 mouths to feed and she didn't know what to do.  So the babies were born and the next day, her husband left her.

Desperate now with no support, she had two new born babies, living in the slum and very little resources.  She prayed and she prayed.  Then one day, when the babies were two months old, she had a dream.  In her dream there was a man with a white robe and a face, shining like the sun.  He ordered two boys to give her many things- Ethiopian Birr, clothes, gifts.  He ordered the Compassion people to release to her what she deserved.  Encouraged by this dream, Tigist shared it with her Compassion social worker.  She had been patient for so long and now it seemed like God was sending her a message- that good things are coming her way.

A week later, she received a visit from her Canadian sponsor.  He was surprised and distressed to see her living in such poor conditions and troubled by her situation.  He bought her a months worth of groceries then headed to Debre Zeit where he was about to spend two weeks with Blessing the Children.  After he left, however, the landlord saw all of Tigist's gifts and immediately doubled her rent- far exceeding what she was able to pay.  So she was out on the street.  She was given a week in a temporary accomodation, but she didn't know where she would go after that.

Ignorant of what was going on in Tigist's life, Brad, her sponsor from Canada, had shared her story with the team in Debre Zeit.  After much thought, he asked the director if they could move the family to be a part of Blessing the Children.  Phone calls were made, and it turned out that Tigist's Compassion Co-ordinator was good friends with the director.  They were happy to release her family to go to Debre Zeit but there were arrangements for accomodation that needed to be made first. 

On his way out of Ethiopia, Brad made one more stop to visit Tigist.  When he arrived, he found out that she only had four more days to move out.  They hadn't found a house for them yet, so they were left questioning what to do.  The twins were also in jeopardy as the father's family wanted to take them off her hands against her will.  So the team in the van that day, talked about what they could do.  She needed to leave town right away.  God had been working in the heart of a man, who was not about taking people into his home, but had been convicted by the verses that say "When you do this for the least of these, you do it unto me."  So he and his wife, briefly agreed that they should take them in.  That they could make room, because they knew what it was like to have twin baby girls and that a slum was no place to raise babies.  So that night, Tigist went with her family, to Debre Zeit.  Every thing was set up for her when she arrived.  A double bed for her and her babies.  Clothes that were left to be donated by a missionary.   Money was given for nappies and milk.

After all her waiting, Tigist was able to see the breakthrough.  God has blessed her for her patience.  We are so blessed to be a part of her life and the life of her children.  They are beautiful and we now have four boys and four girls in our home.  The even number I have wanted for a while.  Thank you Jesus.

Mission

I was 6 years old when I announced to my mother that one day I wanted to be a missionary to Ethiopia.  Back then, my parents had bought a vinyl record called “Psalty’s Worship Workshop: A heart to change the world.”  It was basically an audio theatre production that not only had music about “going into the world” and being a missionary but it also had verbal scripted conversations happening between each song.  I do believe that the word “missionary” was used in there somewhere for me to desire to become a “missionary” at such a young age with no model of what that looked like around me.

Over the years, however, my view of the word “missionary” has changed.  Through taking various Missions classes and being involved in church life in New Zealand, I came to realise that being a missionary wasn’t just about long distance travel or  pioneering new churches or programmes across the ocean.  When I moved to South Auckland and started getting involved with the children’s ministry in our church, I remember my mother saying to me “this is your mission field now.”  Perhaps, I thought, that this is how far I will go in terms of leaving my homeland (the North Shore) and going into “all the world.”  South Auckland was, indeed far from the culture that I was brought up in and these children that we picked up off the street were very needy and somewhat “poor”.

A song we used to sing with the kids in Otara was a song that went “Be a missionary everyday…” and we encouraged people to reach out into their community, into their family and not think that they had to spend a lot of money to evangelize the world.  This started to be comfortable with me, especially as I read and heard about “missionaries” who had ignorantly colonized different countries including our own.  So called “missionaries” who had done more damage than good as they intruded on foreign lands with the intention of imposing their own culture on the indigenous people without thought or care to preserve the rich culture that already existed.  Yes, I was happy to drop my ambition to be a “missionary” but I was not ready to drop my desire to go to Ethiopia to help the needy.

I was left however, with no other option but to do what I wanted to do, under the guise of a “Mission Trip”.  Even though a short term stint, the fact that you come under the umbrella of a “Mission organisation” and are on a “Mission Trip” somehow, makes you a Missionary.  I wonder if one day, we will be able to rename this phenomenon that is the “Mission Trip” to something a little more Post-Modern.  I guess, yes, we are on a mission.   But we were on a mission before we left New Zealand also.  We look at the New Testament and see Paul’s missionary journeys and we compare that to today.  Yet I’ve just found another journey that is a little closer to home, and a little more reflective of what I see here happening today.  It’s found in 1 Kings 10 and it comes straight out of Ethiopia. 

Now when the queen of Sheba heard of the fame of Solomon concerning the name of the LORD, she came to test him with hard questions.  She came to Jerusalem with a very great retinue, with camels bearing spices and very much gold and precious stones. And when she came to Solomon, she told him all that was on her mind. And Solomon answered all her questions; there was nothing hidden from the king that he could not explain to her. And when the queen of Sheba had seen all the wisdom of Solomon, the house that he had built, the food of his table, the seating of his officials, and the attendance of his servants, their clothing, his cupbearers, and his burnt offerings that he offered at the house of the LORD, there was no more breath in her. And she said to the king, "The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard.”

 Today, what I see is people, like us, coming here to Ethiopia because of what they have heard.  We came here, not only because there is need here, but because we found this great organization on the internet and we wanted to be a part of what they are doing.  We only knew of what we had read on their website, but it all sounded great to us and resonated with so much of what we believed to be good and wise.  It was an organization that worked with widows and orphans (something that the Bible says repeatedly that we should do.)  They worked holistically to meet the needs of the orphans while working alongside their church.  They had plans for a Children’s Centre that would function to help meet the needs of the community.  Their motto was “Excellence in Everything” and they were all about equipping people to be effective in the ministry and in life in general.  They were not under one church but partnered with five churches.  There was a great model being utilized here and they were open to more vision. 

So like Queen Sheba, we packed up all our belongings, and we see others bring many gifts and great resources to see what is happening here.  Now after being here 8 weeks and having visitors join us from overseas, we get to see others witness the great work that is happening here and then leave even more supportive than when they have come.  There is a saying that I coined when I came to Ethiopia on my first trip that says “You don’t know until you Go!”  This is what Queen Sheba experienced and articulated when she said “The report was true that I heard in my own land of your words and of your wisdom, but I did not believe the reports until I came and my own eyes had seen it. And behold, the half was not told me. Your wisdom and prosperity surpass the report that I heard.”  Even though she was leaving Ethiopia to visit Israel and even though she went to find prosperity and add to it, she experienced many of the same emotions that we see others experience here. 

This is the kind of mission I like.  The mission where there is not a discovering of lack, but a discovering of fulfilment.  Where the impact of your visit is an encouragement to those you are visiting.  That it isn’t about creating something new, but adding to what is already going well.  This is what we are experiencing now.   We came to find that Ethiopia is progressing forward, that the people here are using wisdom in finding solutions to help meet the needs of the poor.  

Hearing great things about what is going on here, we encourage people to come and see for themselves because you really don’t know until you go.  And so we press forward and say, what more can we do?  How can we give, like Queen Sheba, a gift of blessing to endorse the work that is being done here and the wisdom that is being displayed?  In the last month we have seen people come and give generously to the work here and it encourages people to keep on going forward.  This is the feeling that should be left after such a trip.  Not a feeling of lack or discontentment.  So we also remain encouraged and move forward with great anticipation of what God is going to do in the future. Amen!

It takes a village to raise a child

Let me take you into the home I visited on my first home visit.  We walked through the gate of Sara’s house.   To the right we saw that their home was back dropped by one of the seven lakes that provide an oasis from the hustle and bustle of Debre Zeit.  We walked up a few stairs and into a dark room that was their home.  There was no natural light or lamps that lit up the home but I could see that it was made out of mud clad walls that were mixed with hay.  It looked old and was rented by the family from the government for only 2birr per month (the equivalent of NZ14c).  There was one bed on the left that we were welcomed to sit on.  The bed that slept all three females in the home, doubled as the lounge suite and Betty, their social worker sat on their wooden chest that doubled as their storage.  There were two of us visitors, Mariana from the Netherlands had come to see if there was a place for her at BCI.  She was asking many questions to Betty and also to myself.   As they talked, there were cockroaches running up and down the wall.  It was evidence of the lack of hygiene standards that existed in their home.

Like many houses, there is no bathroom.  The bath is a bucket and the water supply is not on site so water fetching is a daily ritual. The toilet is an outhouse with a hole in the ground.  It had been raining that morning, very heavily and I noticed that there were gaping spaces between the tin sheets that made up their roof.  I asked them if they had water coming through their roof, and of course the answer was yes.  A missionary had fixed her roof the year before but it still left room for improvement.  The smell of the house was also unsanitary, like cat urine on dirt.  There is no maintenance requirement from the government as she pays so little in rent so she is left to fend for herself.

The mother was beautiful.  She was young and had two daughters.  Her husband had died so she was left to care for her children on her own.  She worked when the girls were at school but this was as much as she could afford for her girls.  The girls are 7 and 5 and now able to attend school because Sara is sponsored through BCI.  They also get a monthly food budget.  She provides for her family by making and selling injera and also by cleaning houses.  She obviously has a great love for them and desires the best for them, but in Ethiopia, if you don’t work, you don’t get any money.

Another home we visited was of Siam.  Siam and her mother have HIV.  At the time we visited her, she was also sick with Tuberculosis.  They rent a home on the back of another property along with others who can’t afford their own homes.  The size of their whole house was the size of mine and Asaua’s bedroom here.  And our bedroom isn’t that big.  Yet their home did not have tiled floors with painted walls and an ensuite.  Their home was one room with one bed for their mother and 7 year old Siam and her 6 month old baby sister who Siam often has to look after while her mother goes to work.  See, if her mother does not work, she cannot pay the rent on her home.  She is in a desperate situation yet she is managing well.  She prepared for the five of us visiting her, a coffee ceremony.  Even though they hadn’t eaten all day, she had saved some coffee beans and popcorn for our visit.  Her baby sat on my lap, wet from her urine, and Siam sat on one of the two couches that they owned. 

Siam's mum and Betty outside their home

Siam's home.  With her social worker Betty and visiting Susan from America

Most of the homes of our children are like the ones I have just described.  There is a gap here in the care that we provide for these children and it is a very important one.  If the home environment is not good,  sanitary, or a place where the child feels safe and warm, then the rest of their well- being will suffer.  Studies show that seven out of ten children who live in such conditions will not succeed at school.  We can see the disturbance in these children.  They are restless at school.  They don’t sleep well and they are given more responsibilities than they deserve at their young age.

 

Some suffer with HIV or other diseases, and in the developed world, we would provide a sanitary environment for them, ensuring they are offered the best care.  Here, they have no choice but to keep living in the same environment they subsist in.  The mud floors should be tile like mine.  Their kitchen should have wipe-able benches so that they can ensure hygienic preparation of their food so as to not cause more illness.  The government provides medicine for HIV infected children so that they can live on with their disease.  But is it enough for them just to survive?  Should they not be protected from other potential diseases that exist?  Should they not be allowed the light of the sun to shine into their homes and welcome healthy minds and healthy bodies?  They are entitled to it as much as we are.

 

My desire for this area is to build a village.  A village like unto the Watoto Village in Uganda where one mother (usually a widow) cares for 8 orphans.  We can build many homes so that mothers like the ones I have described can have purpose and vision.  The village will be near the school so that the children can walk to school.  They will be purpose built and provide a warm, healthy environment for our children where they can be supported by others in the village and by the community around them- rather than isolated in remote areas where some who are disabled have to rely on the delivery of food and other necessities from other people. 

Will you pray about this vision with me?  With us?  Maybe you can help with making this dream a reality for our children.  We have 120 something children on our program right now, but this will mean that we will be able to take in more orphans and care for them as they deserve to be cared for.  But for us to take in more children, we will need more sponsors.  Really, a little does go a long way here.  It’s just a small sacrifice that we all need to take to show these children that they have value and that they too can be leaders In their families, community, city and nation.  We are here to raise leaders.  

Gullivers Lessons

If you haven’t seen the latest version of Gullivers Travels, I highly recommend it.  We were watching this movie on our first week here in Ethiopia and I couldn’t help but see some lessons that we can all learn from this story- especially for us as new comers in a foreign land. 

To give you a brief overview of the movie, the story is about Gulliver, who is a slightly immature, overly confident, yet very insecure, mailman who works for a large magazine company.  He likes a girl in his office where he delivers mail but can’t work up the courage to tell her.  He instead pretends to have some hidden writing skills and she asks him to put together some examples.  He freaks out then ends up copying and pasting off some other travel websites, which  she believes to be true.  She then offers him a small job and sends him away to the Bermuda Triangle to write his first piece.

 

On his way to the Bermuda Triangle he gets caught in a storm and wakes up on a beach where he is tied down by a whole lot of little people.  These little people try to capture him in a prison and he ends up using his size to the advantage of the Kingdom and helps to save them in their time of despair. They end up building him a nice big house, giving him whatever he wants and in light of this, he plays on their great admiration for him by making up stories about what his life was like before he came to their town.  He uses Hollywood films like Titanic and Star Wars to portray his former adventures.  He claims to be a king in his homeland and ends up being highly exalted.  Until one day, one of the potential Princes, who was on to Gulliver’s lies and who turned against him after Gulliver convinced his princess that she was in love with another man, decided to attack Lilliput and made himself a suit that outsized Gulliver. 

Gulliver’s lies all came to light and he ended up being imprisoned once again.  His boss from the magazine who he liked, also found out about his lies and came looking for him and the story he was meant to be doing.  She ended up in Lilliput too and thrown into the prison.  She discovered that Gulliver had told everyone that she was his queen and therefore found out about his little crush on her.  Together they went out to save Lilliput from the enemy that had overthrown them and they came out victorious and they lived happily ever after. 

This whole movie reminded me that WE as westerners, people coming from a developed and blessed country, could be tempted to feel like Gulliver.  We could come here and think that we were “bigger” than them and have so much to offer them.  We could feel a false sense of security because the land that we come from, the society that we were living in and the opportunities that we were exposed to offer us some stories that we can relate to and relay to those who will listen. 

There is a temptation, even as Westerners still living in Western society, to feel like we have so much to offer to the third world.  That actually, we ARE heroes, that we have SO MUCH MORE, and that we DESERVE to have better homes, to be waited on by those who have less and that perhaps, we can solve and fight any battle for those who are too small to fight for themselves.  That would be REALLY impressive and would ultimately give our egos some good stroking.

 

However, like Gulliver, we would or should soon discover that this perception, is a fallacy.  That actually, this community or country, or land that we have just landed in, are not in NEED of us.  There story of survival preceded our arrival.  There tactics for defeating their enemies have been proven effective and they are actually going from strength to strength.  Though they look defeated and small, they are actually no different from us.  They go through the same struggles and they celebrate similar victories.  They value relationships and pursue them with greater courage than we ever could.  They have a culture that exceeds our knowledge and place a higher value on the important issues in life and a lower value on things that we value too much. 

Perhaps if Gulliver had stayed true to who he was, the people of Lilliput could help HIM gain the confidence that he needed to be a REAL Hero in his world.  This takes humility and an attitude of learning.  We need the same combination.  We need humility and an attitude of learning – of coming alongside our brothers and sisters and listening to their stories, hearing the cries of THEIR hearts and not thinking that WE are the solution, but helping them to find THEIR Solution.

 

Asaua and Abraham -his right hand man on the field

The Bible says this “The rich and poor have this in common, Jehovah is the maker of them all.”  Proverbs 22:2.  This morning we asked our co-ordinator to explain a picture that was hanging on the wall of the guest house. . It is a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross and below each of his hands is a man on a scale.  On the right is a rich man and on the left a poor man.  The scales are equal, showing that God weighs both the same.  However, below each man is a conversation they are having with Jesus, written in Amharic.  The basic message of the rich man was that he was thankful to God for all his blessings, and God told him that it was not just for him but so that he can help to meet the needs of the poor.  The poor man was thankful to God also for all that he had and God told him that he was blessed because, though he had little, he still believed and trusted in God.   James 2:5 says “Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He has promised to those who love Him?”  So who really is the richer? We may be richer this side of heaven, but on the other side, the poor of this world will be heirs of the kingdom and will receive abundant blessings for the rich faith that they display.  We are now discovering how much we have to learn from our Ethiopian brothers and sisters.  They have rich faith and gratefulness to God like we have not yet experienced.  

Power!

On our way to Ethiopia, we stopped in Melbourne and dropped into the Ethiopian ambassador to apply for our children’s Visas.  Here I opened a book about Ethiopia and read how the Nile River that runs through Ethiopia has the greatest potential for power source than any other country in Africa.  How bizarre, I thought, as they are not utilizing this potential.  When I was last in Ethiopia, power outages were a common thing because of the drought.  Factories had closed down because they had no sustainable energy to keep them functioning.  People were missing out on great opportunities because they lacked this basic commodity that we have taken for granted in New Zealand.  Generators had been put in place in different hotels and businesses but this was not a long-term solution. 

Yesterday, as we sat around the foster home for New Years day lunch, we watched the Ethiopian Celebration in Addis on ETV (Ethiopia TV that is, not Equippers TV – just in case you get confused).  It was a concert that had different acts and singers on.  There came a conglomerate of items that were a display of the nine regions and cultures that exist in Ethiopia.  Goldy, one of the social workers here, explained to me that Ethiopia has 80+ languages and with each of these there are different cultures. After each region/culture did their performance, a pair from each group got their flag and put it on a board which seemed a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.  There were some amazing displays of colour and dance, song and happiness.  Each dance signified their culture and were easily identified by Goldy before their region was named or flag displayed.  She shared with me different aspects of each region that were known to her and also told me where each region was situated in relevance to Debre Zeit. 

At the end of the last dance, the last flag was placed on the board with all the other flags.  It was then turned around and it displayed a picture of a water dam that had a river flowing through it.  I asked Goldy what this was about.  She explained that Ethiopia are going to build a dam in the Nile River.  This is what the concert was for, to raise money for this dam.  It has taken this long, she explained, because Egypt has always claimed ownership of the Nile River.  The Ethiopian people have never had authority to access the River that runs right through their country because the Egyptians do not want anyone else to affect the benefits that they receive from the Nile.  How crazy!! The whole time Ethiopia has existed they have not been able to access the power source that is within their own country!  It has been taken away from them for so long and their economy has suffered as a result. 

Fortunately, however, the UN has gotten involved and they have drawn up an agreement so that Egypt, Sudan and Uganda all can access their part of the Nile River.  Egypt, apparently has not signed this agreement as they are still afraid that they will suffer at the expense of this release of authority to the other countries.  The UN has still allowed the Ethiopian government to now take control of the Nile River now and so plans are on the way for this dam to be built.  What an exciting time that we live in where the lives of Ethiopian’s are looking up!

This also has an application for our lives.  We all have a Power Source that is available to us.  Like the Egyptians have taken away the ability Ethiopia has to access this source, we are robbed of this source of Power by the Enemy who exists under the same power source.  He does not want us to access the River that can flow freely through us.  If the enemy allows us to have access this Power Source, he knows that it will jeopardize the plans that he has for us.  He doesn’t want us to prosper in life or to have greater access to this Power because this Power, in the hands of a person that realises it’s potential, can potentially destroy him.  We have the greatest potential for source than any other created being.  Why? Because we were created in the image of this Power Source.  This Power is the Power of Holy Spirit.  I have seen and experienced His power in my life and in the life of others. This power is Supernatural and able to do things that human understanding cannot explain.  You should check it out!

Our new normal

As the dogs bark outside late this first Saturday night in Ethiopia, I must say they do not phase me at all.  The kids are fast asleep (other than Jamal who’s reminding me of childhood stories), the husband soundly snoring and the mosquitos are busy at work, trying to get a kiwi feed.  We are going to sleep contented at the fact that today was a good day.  We prayed last night from Dubai that this morning’s transition into Ethiopia would go smoothly.  We had trouble getting on the plane in Malaysia with all our luggage and just getting on by the skin of our teeth.  At each stop on our trip the check in people seemed to be getting meaner.  Surely this last leg of our trip was going to be the worst as the plane was smaller and both Asaua and I had trouble in getting through immigration in Ethiopia on previous trips.  So we prayed.

We woke up to a cooler than the previous 42 degrees day in Dubai and packed our bags for our 6:30am check in.  The airport is huge in Dubai but the good thing is that with Emirates you have more options for check in counters.  Once we had discovered that we could check in at any Economy class desk, we proceeded to one where we were waved over by a young Caucasian man.  Turns out this young man likes rugby.  He immediately wanted to chat to Asaua, was impressed that we were REAL Kiwis and he turned a blind eye to the extra 6kgs of check in luggage and 2 extra carry on bags.  Even on the flight, everyone was so nice.  Jamal got the extra croissant that he requested, the girls got extra attention and the kids got their movies and music.  The flight was also an hour shorter than it was scheduled on our itinerary. 

We arrived in Ethiopia to a beautiful 16degrees Celsius.  It is rainy season in Ethiopia and as for this part of the country, the rain has clearly been falling.  All we see is green through the windows of our plane seats.  It feels like home.  We disembark for our final time a bit anxious about whether or not all our luggage will leave the airport with us.  But sure enough, as we go downstairs to immigration, fill out our forms and make our way to the counter behind a group from another African country, we are let through immigration very easily-even without the address of where we were staying (which I had thrown out somewhere on the journey).  Asaua was able to collect our luggage – ALL 13 check in bags and ALL of them went through the scanner with NO hassles at all. 

We were greeted with a white girl holding a sign reading “BLESSING THE CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL’.  Past her, we were reunited with our old friend Samson who I had met on my first trip to Ethiopia and who had guided Asaua on his trip by himself.  Our reunion was cut short with Samson and then Tadios (another former translator and friend) as it looked like rain might fall on our luggage that was stacked upon the BCI academy bus.  So we drove out into the abyss that is Ethiopia.  Streets full of diesel excreting trucks, footpaths pathed with mud and people walking EVERYWHERE.  It all seemed familiar now, not as it had been two years ago.  It all seemed okay to the kids too.  They didn’t seemed to shocked by it and quietly watched out their windows and soon fell asleep.

We arrived at our destination to a house that was unlike the guest house I had seen in the pictures.  The BCI management team had been working hard and had found us a house of their own as they wanted us to have our own privacy.  They had furnished the house with new lounge furniture, dining table and fridge as well as bunk beds for the younger kids, a double bed for ourselves and a single bed for Jamal.  Everyone seemed to be happy with our new home.  Yes OUR new HOME!! 

We went out for lunch at the local restaurant and then headed back home before we joined Mulgeta (the Principal of BCI and one of our close neighbours) and his family for their daily Coffee ceremony.  The coffee ceremony is a traditional Ethiopian ritual that helps to welcome and bring together people over freshly roasted coffee beans, popcorn and usually some bread.  For the first time, the children drank coffee.  They loved it.  It was topped with heated milk fresh from the cow.  We sat and talked about Mulugeta’s recent trip to Canada and the culture shock he experienced. 

Mulugeta is the Principal of BCI Academy.  He is very kind and friendly being very attentive to the children’s names and needs.  He also has twins only one month older than ours.  He said to me that “life is a classroom” assuring me that although it may seem to be sacrificing good education for my children, that this experience in itself was going to educate them like no classroom setting could. 

He spoke of Canada and his surprise at how old people would be detached from their family and put in a “Care Centre” when they can no longer look after themselves.  He compared that experience to Ethiopia here the children would take in their parents when they are old and feed and look after them till they die.  He also spoke of a man who he met that was in his early 60’s and had all this medicine that he was taking in front of him.  He asked the man why does he need all those medicines? He said to him “don’t you know that Jesus can heal you?” but he didn’t get a very good response. as the man was a French speaking Canadian doctor. I was reminded of the recent health gathering we had at church where the CEO of World Vision came and said that EVERY NZer over the age of 60 has at least one medication that they take daily- more often than not, more.  I told him of this and also of our high incidence of Cancer. Here, he said, the only person he knows who had cancer was one lady who had breast cancer.  She had a dream that her cancer was done and declared that to her doctor at her next check up.  When they went to find her cancerous tumour, it was gone. 

Mulugeta helped our son Wesley home by carrying him on his back and I carried Matthias on my back.  He told me of an Ethiopian saying that says  “a horn is not too heavy for a cow to carry.”  This is why you see so many mothers and children carrying around younger children.  It is not too heavy to carry when they are a part of you.

Day 5  

Today we were invited to attend a church service at Zion Church.  Our family couldn’t all go as the only available transport was a bajuj so Jamal, Kiara, Wesley and I all squeezed in the back and turned up to the service 2 hours late for what was meant to be a 4 hour service.  We were happily sitting outside in the back when we were called in to the very front of a very packed “house.”  By house I mean this picture below, FULL of people inside and out.  They have a church of 800 but fill it three times a day.  Rows of six people on each bench.

The choir sang songs of redemption and praise as it was the last service of this year and it was all about giving God thanks for things that He had done this year.  People were then invited up to give testimonies of what God had done in their lives.  Amazing testimonies of women who were trying to have babies but were diagnosed with tumours in their wombs.  One woman told God that if He would heal her then she would do something great for the House of God.  She was completely healed and was now pregnant with her second child.  Another woman was a muslim and stood up to testify her brother who was against Christianity when she became a Christian.  He ended up in a bad way and left school, started smoking drugs and ended up going “crazy”.  He ended up moving in with her and he ended up confessing that Jesus Christ was the One True God.  We heard testimony after testimony about how people were healed of their former lives in Witchcraft, Demonic possession, sickness, barrenness and this last one I am about to share just took the cup.

This one lady stood up who was so excited.  They were all just emphatic about how GREAT God is! Screams of Hallelujah, Tears of Joy.  She spoke about how she was raised believing in Witchcraft.  She was brought out of witchcraft at Zion Church and witnessed the power of healing. 
After she had her first son, he got very sick when he was 1 years old.  He went to the Hospital in Addis and ended up getting so sick that he died.  She took her son back to Debre Zeit and brought him to church, the whole way crying out to Jesus to help her.  She took him into church and felt heat and steam coming from his body.  All of a sudden, he was brought back to life!  He is now 6 years old.  She has two younger sons now and talked about how she prayed to God to help give her food. She knew God could perform miracles but her cupboards were empty and her children were asking for food.  Because of her children, she says, she now has food.  Nigest, the Social Worker and Pastors wife that was translating all of this for me, explained that this ladies children were part of BCI. 

What an amazing impact Blessing the children are having on the lives of people in Ethiopia.  They are able to help many families like this lady but there is so much more room for more.  Many people in Debre Zeit are asking God to supply for their families and God is wanting to use people like you.  Today I saw the potential in Zion Church and in Debre Zeit.  There are amazing things are happening here.  We know about so many other churches and organizations out there doing great things for God, but there are so many, like Zion Church in Debre Zeit who go unseen.  Today they meet in a building that is falling apart.  They have sticks to hold up aluminium roof slates.  They are praying and believing for a bigger building and a more stable one.  What an opportunity to do something awesome in the lives of people.  People are being set free here every week.  Do you want to be a part of it?

Letting Go

“The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.” Gen 12:1

When God commanded Abraham to Go, there were some prerequisites- leaving his country, his people and his fathers household. He doesn’t just say Go, but he says leave – and leaving implies letting go, releasing. Saying goodbye. This I am beginning to learn.

I have been thinking about Abraham a lot lately. Not that I think that our calling is anywhere near like his. But as the first man ever for God to ask this of, I wonder how hard it would have been. We have people who have gone before us and succeeded, so in some way, we have insurance that what we are doing is possible. But Abraham had none of that. Now I understand why he is called the Father of Faith. His faith was based on what he could not see – or had ever seen. His faith was born out of obedience.

And obedience is something that I thought I was good at. But now I am being reminded of my sinful nature and my actual rebelliousness that I have to fight against almost every day.

For if it were just about Going, it would seem adventurous, exciting, something I’ve been waiting to do for the last 27 years. ..but it’s now actually about LEAVING!!

It’s about letting go of everything that has been familiar to us. Letting go of our securities and insecurities. Saying goodbye to my dream home. Saying goodbye to our school system that seems so reliable right now. Letting go of any dreams we had in New Zealand and leaving our homeland.

No longer is it the excitement that is keeping me up at night – although I am still very excited. But it is the realisation that life here in New Zealand is getting shorter every day.

Letting go is never an easy thing. I am writing this in Rotorua and remembering our move here 7 years ago. This was our first mission field away from our homeland. Moving here felt so hard back then yet now it seems so easy.

We learnt a lot in Rotorua. We learnt that Auckland isn’t the greatest place on the planet. We learnt that we could survive without our family and often actually did really good without them. That “better is a neighbor that is near than a brother far off.”

We learnt that life is not all about being busy – but about enjoying our kids while we can. We learnt that people appreciate you more when you leave your homeland to benefit theirs. We also learnt that when you leave all the things that brought you security, that God becomes your security.

We left our home to rent out while we were in Auckland and in that year it increased in value by one hundred thousand dollars. We learnt that God blesses your obedience.

One day, this letting go experience will have a different shadow that will fall from it. A new light will expose it’s inferiority compared to the greatness that will be done on the other side. I’m looking forward to that day!

“Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham…So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Gal 3:7,9.

A visit to 2009

I just went back to my blog I started 2 years ago when I was venturing off to Ethiopia on my own. This was so exciting for me. It was a time in my life where I was still struggling and still unaware of so much that I know now after deciding to go to Bible College at the end of 2009.

This was a trip that I thought would tick the box for me and help me to move on with life in New Zealand. Little did I know then what God would do while I was away...

Anyway, here is what I called, "How it all began" on michellegoestoethiopia.blogspot.com:

http://michellegoestoethiopia.blogspot.com

When Jesus takes you somewhere, like a real Gentleman, He opens the doors.

I posted on FB, "When God tells you to go somewhere..." but actually, the statement should have been, "When God takes you somewhere..." because when God tells you to go, He goes with you! It's a Divine date between you and He and He's with you all the way, holding your hand, opening the doors and paying for your bill.

Yes, I have been on "missions" before where I thought that it was Divinely led-and may have ended up feeling "stood up" because I had initiated it myself and He wasn't in it AT ALL. But never before have I known like I know now, that He is the one who initiated this "date" and that He is going to be the Gentleman that He is and is going to do all these things-not just for me, but for my whole family.

So, just our date so far and what it has looked like. I talked about the 5am wake up call. This was the "initiation" - the asking of the date. He asked us all to GO OUT (out of our country, out of our comfort zone and out of our family home) - through my husband - and we respond like an excited teenage girl, being asked out by the best looking guy in school, and excitedly give a big "YES" reply!

The next thing God does (again, so gentleman-like) is let our dad (well Asaua's dad, that is) know that He is going to take us out. He does this through a dream that Asaua's dad has the night before Asaua warns him that he has some news. I love it when I hear of men who ask their girlfriends father's for their daughters hand in marriage. It's so romantic and it gives that sense of security to the father, that his daughter is going to be well looked after. It also makes it easier for the daughter to let her parents know that she will be "leaving" them and "cleaving" to her new husband. In the same way, this dream that Asaua's dad had, made it a whole lot easier for us to tell him that WE are not only going, but that we are taking his grandchildren across the other side of the world.

A true gentleman takes a girl out, giving her no obligation to pay the bill - at all. We too have that promise. He's told us to come with Him and to not worry about paying for us. As soon as we said "yes", we have found out a way that we can be supported in the internship that we are going to do for the first year. We also know that after the first year, the organisation that we are going to work with, are able to support us through funds raised in the States. We never would have known this if we had not said yes - IMMEDIATELY.

Just this past Sunday, Ps David McCracken, talked about Faith at our evening service. He said that beyond "incredible" faith, there is "another level of obedience-living in a realm where we don't have the circumstances to manipulate or rearrange-it's called UNREASONABLE FAITH!
Where we don't have a clue how it's going to happen but we know we have a WORD from GOD."

He said that "God is a CREATOR! He creates everything out of nothing! It's not our faith that creates anything but GOD spoke it, so He created it. (What a sense of relief!) But when we BELIEVE it and OBEY it, it draws it (whatever He has spoken into life) into the realm of our reality." Wow!

So, there we were- on Sunday night, thinking of how we are going to be having this big CLEAN UP and Working Bee at our house this Saturday (today as I write this actually) and how we need to put our house on the Market on Monday. I remember as I lie in bed, how originally. perhaps "heard from God," that we should sell our house for $350k. But last year when we had put our house on the market, I was told - after a failed attempt because I was trying to initiate this date- that we would be lucky to get what we paid for it 5 years ago - $310k. So, I thought, maybe we could settle for $325k, sell it privately and not have to pay anyone commission. (Just writing that word "settle", makes me cringe. Settling for the mediocre, is not the way of the Gentleman who asked us out on this date." My faith needed to be a bit more UNREASONABLE than that.

When you go out on a date with Jesus, He really does give you GRACE. Even without MY unreasonable faith, He still comes through...

Thursday afternoon, we get a phone call from our Real Estate Agent from last year. She wonders if perhaps we were interested in putting our house on the Market again. She has a buyer who are with a Government agency. "They have heaps of money", she says on the answer machine, and are needing to buy four bedroom houses in our area and only have a week to use up their budget. They are wanting to come around on MONDAY and want to settle by the end of JUNE (perfect timing for our departure in August.) Best of all, she says we should put the house on at $349k because they're not looking to undercut people, but want to pay the best price.

So we are just riding now, on this conveyabelt of Love. He says to "learn the unforced rhythms of His Grace" and so that is what He is teaching me- or us. He's overlooked our past mistakes. He's saying, come with me and watch how much I ACTUALLY love you. You look beautiful to me. You are my bride to be, and I am going to show You what I have in store for you - if you just TRUST me.

That's a Real Gentleman.

5am

5am was such a significant time in Ethiopia. It was at this time, almost every morning I was there, that I was awoken by the Muslim call to prayer- magnified by loud speakers across the city, echoed by a roosters crowing. There are 28 million Muslims in Ethiopia, I just found out, so I imagine that in any city in Ethiopia, this would be the standard alarm clock. The fact that Ethiopia is like a country that never sleeps, doesn't really allow for the need of an alarm clock, so I suppose it all makes sense.

This recent 5am wake up call, however, was a little closer to home. It was actually a wake up call preceded by a kiss. The kiss may have been a bufferer for news to come or it could have been a "thank God your still alive" kiss. It came on the morning after I had just had my graduation from Equippers College and all sign posts in MY life were pointing to the next destination. Where sermon after sermon, book after book, and devotion after devotion, screamed out to ME - "GO!"

It was something that had yet to be heard in the ears of Asaua though. So when he woke me up at 5am, on the morning of the 27th of March 2011, with the words "We need to GO to Africa! I had a dream..." I was very, very excited! So excited, that for the next week, I could barely sleep. Yes there could have been a mix of emotions, but after experiencing almost all of them - from fear, to nervousness, from doubt to anxiety, I now only had room for EXCITEMENT.

This GO-ing, means that we will be selling up, taking our children away from their grandparents, friends, schools and family, having them immunised and getting a one year visa (for now) and flying together across two continents to arrive in Ethiopia - a world apart from what they currently know.

Yes there are risks in going. But there are also risks in staying - Risking not doing the will of God, risking missing out on tremendous blessings, risking regretting for the rest of our lives what we have always felt in our hearts to do - and most of all, risking not being possibly the only people that may touch the lives of thousands of people who are still left untouched by the hand of Love.

This is a MASSIVE faith step for us. Faith that God will supply EVERY possible need that there is to fill. But we have a MASSIVE faith in a MASSIVE God who is more than able to fill those needs and to bring about the completion of what He began in our hearts to accomplish.

I'm so looking forward to reuniting with our friends there. I'm so excited about finally doing what I said I would do 27 years ago. We are so looking forward to doing it TOGETHER as a family who have been appointed for such a time as this.

Please pray for us :)

Others

Recently, I heard quoted that a good preacher articulates what the listener was already thinking but didn't know how to put it to words. If this is true, Israel Houghton preaches extremely well in his song Others. Not only in this song but in so many of his songs and in his life, he speaks about the cry of the poor and the cry of God for us to meet the needs of the poor.

To explain, here are the words of the song:

I hear the state of the world and it grieves me
I hear the cries of the broken from the rich and the poor
Smell the fear of disease all around me
I feel responsible now that I have seen
Because we all were born to live for more than this

So I wanna love like you love, Love like you love
Wanna love others the way that you love me
I wanna love like you love, Love like you love
Wanna love others the way that you love me

I've held the children unseen and they move me
I wonder what I can do to improve a thousand lives
I feel the absence of love and it scares me
I feel responsible now that I have seen
Because we all were born to live for more than this

I was that lost soul that you rescued
I was that orphan you adopted and brought into your heart
I was acquainted with the hopelessness of living in the streets
That was me

Now I'm gonna love like you love, Love like you love
Help me love others the way that you love me
I'm gonna forgive like you forgave, Rescue like you have saved
I'm gonna love others the way that you love me.

God has done so much for me. He blessed me into a beautiful country where we don't have to worry about dying from much other than our own lifestyles. He saved me from myself and sprinkled and poured his grace over my life when I was lost and when I got lost again in my own self. He has blessed me with a beautiful home and five healthy, healthy kids. I have an income that surpasses probably 50% of the worlds population.

I am blessed to be a blessing?

We say that and yet we underestimate our ability to be a blessing. If God has blessed us then we have a responsibility to be a blessing. We are surrounded with wealth, where in countries like Ethiopia, they are surrounded with the deadly reality of poverty and disease. Can I not just give beyond what I am already giving to make a change, as Israel says in his song - to improve a thousand lives.

Well, actually, yes I can. Last year, I was sent a proposal from a friend of mine in Ethiopia. An amazing man who wants to see his people's lives improved. His proposal is so thorough. It reminded me of proposals that I have put together for funding - ambitious, yet well thought through. A man who is willing to stand in the gap for his community, realising that somewhere out there, God has an answer to his prayer. He's been so proactive about it. He's already spent a year putting a water system in place in another village, received funding, then developed and educated a whole community on health while showing and speaking to them God's love.

Because of this great work, the government has given his trust board charitable status and his vision has expanded to another area, where no one has yet touched. This is the area, I have an opportunity to help. And maybe so do you.

This year, my project will be to raise money for this project. God sent me an angel to help me along. She is my daughter Lydia. Almost everyday, she reminds me that we need to do something. At the end of last year, her and her cousin put together a Charity idea. It is yet to be released, but it will be released and they will tell their story and you will have the opportunity to support. I hope you do. Watch this space!