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!