Hi friends!
Blessings to you! I hope this letter finds you all well and enjoying life!
We are enjoying a lovely November morning in Soddo. Soddo is a mountain city in Southern Ethiopia. Lush and equatorial, there are many, many plants in bloom and making things like papaya, avocado, oranges, etc. Soddo is a sprawling, heavily populated (about 3 million or so populated!)
Today we are going to participate in a food distribution and check out the orphanage that New Covenant Foundation is involved in supporting! We haven't toured the entire hospital compound but we have toured the gardens and eaten some amazing, mostly garden grown food. Our hosts here are delightful and we're happy for the home-like sense we have here -- it really helps soften the culture shock one encounters.
To say Ethiopia is "on the other side of the world" is a statement that packs many meanings. It is difficult to describe, even with photo-journaling, and difficult to convey the spectrum of emotions. Filtering everything through an American mindset does not work, our culture, sense of human rights, etc. can's process it all, and like a computer operating system loaded with programs it's not designed to handle, your mind and heart can crash. I believe that filtering everything through the timeless Word of God and praying for discernment is the best way to process the sights, sounds, smells that are Ethiopia.
We spent a couple of days in Addis Ababa and stayed at the SIM guesthouse. Blessedly, the accommodations were spartan but comfortable and the food (American style) was fabulous! We've had a great time getting to know our new friends on the team and other new friends. Our first full day in Addis we took a walk down to Churchill Square. The urban need is inexplicable. The devastating poverty of the masses would be impossible to grasp, except in the midst of it all are Ethiopians that are responding to the multifaceted needs. We saw victory and change and a lifting up even while we saw women suffering from "the virus" and children begging. A beautiful woman, seriously ill with AIDs lives in conditions we wouldn't allow our pets to live in, had the bravery and dignity to let us visit and share in the only hope any of us truly have - Jesus. As I shared the only thing that God allowed to come to my mind, Psalm 27:1, I had to admit that I may know the verse by heart, but she lives it in her daily life. Humbling, to be sure (understatement). What I've learned is that pity is ineffective, and that compassion without action isn't compassion at all. It's pity. Walking hand in hand with my new friend (an Ethiopian American who has returned here to work with Lifewind and support and advocate women) taught me that going along hand in hand is the only way to engage a very, very complex problem. There are amazing people committed to helping up, not helping out, their neighbors --Ethiopians radically stepping out of their cultural norms affecting great change.
Yes, there is abject poverty, yes there are millions of children, shoeless and dressed in rags, that live in conditions we can't imagine. Yes the coffee is amazing. Yes, it is beautiful, odd and surreal. Yes it is exactly where I am to be today. What I've learned is where I am today, where you are today, is gift. An opportunity to be Christ, to be less consumed with my own ideas. I have learned that I have tremendous respect for these people that live with nothing.
This is all for now. I love you all -- especially my kids. Miss you. And Sarah Marken, your email before we left was exactly what I needed, thank you. Annalia, my new friend Sharon is going to find a family for one of your packages and write to you about who received you little gift of faith (like loaves and fishes) - she says you have a beautiful heart.
Please pray for safety (no hitting goats or skinny cows! with the bus) and for God's eyes to see the true need and the answers to the many questions. Pray for the people making a difference in the lives of child slaves and hurting people, there are many. Pray for a response in your own heart that might help you take hands with Christ and go walking along the streets of humanity looking for places and ways that you can participate.
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