Please take a few minutes to enjoy this wonderful tribute put together by Bill Garrison Junior in loving memory of Dianna C. Garrison.

Please enjoy this slideshow from the mission trip to Ethiopia. You can view the individual pictures in the online gallery. Pray for safe travel as the team makes their way back home.

The last day in Addis. I imagine that it’s not unlikely that by the time this is posted and read we will be in the air or maybe even home. As I think over the past couple weeks it feels pretty daunting to even attempt summarizing it all. All the people, faces, stories; the unjust living conditions and struggles of so many. I could spend hours, days, weeks detailing and communicating my emotions and confusion over what I have seen and experienced and how we should respond. I believe such raw and painful thoughts are important; they keep …

We had the privilege of joining the team during the second week of ministry. After a busy last few days at home (Lookout Mountain/Chattanooga, TN) which included a send-off dinner with Andy and Bev Warren, who are there on furlough, we headed for Atlanta and boarded our flight. We arrived in Addis in time for the Lalibella trip on Saturday. Up at 5 am, we were off to the airport again for the flight to the “north country.” What a rugged and vast land of mountains and deserts this is. Lalibella was charming, both from …

It is evening, east of sunset, and we are at rest at the mission’s guesthouse after working in our respective capacities in the Kebele. This is usually a time to begin the effort to digest or contemplate the events of the day.

A third visit to Ethiopian soil, and initial observations are a coupling of frustration and incredulity, tears and dust, constrained by the notion that there must be some way of bringing change to a sodden place, (on the surface) bereft of hope.

The word for “hope” in Amharic, the native tongue here, that will occasionally arise in a common conversation …