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 …

When I left Texas, two weeks in a country utterly foreign to my own seemed like just enough time. Now, facing only three more days here, I find myself wanting to stretch time and make each minute a day unto itself. It is so exciting to cross an ocean (was it only one?) and find on the other side, people whose love for Christ and the gospel empowers them to serve sacrificially in a way that puts me to shame because I have been given so much in comparison. The people who are the nuts and bolts of this project …

Dear Friends,

In January I made a trip back to Ethiopia to check on the project and our co-workers. So many things are happening that it is difficult to keep up from 10,000 miles away.

Th e biggest change is launching treatment support programs in 7 governmenthealth centers. We hired and trained 7 new Case Managers (treatment counselors) and 14 Expert Patients (HIV+ peer counselors) and set up computerized patient record systems in each of the health centers. This is only about half of what we plan to do. Over the next few months we will hire staff …

Our schedule is very full and time for writing updates is limited. I am planning on having other team members share some thoughts as soon as possible. Perhaps tonight I can convince a couple of them to write an update and we will post it tomorrow.

Let me give you a brief overview of what has been happening with the team . . .

Last week finished up extremely well. We were able to minister in a number of different contexts. The main part of our work consisted of doing clinics at the project office for project beneficiaries. It is always so …

Monday, February 25, 2008 the start of our second week. It started out like every other day here. If you slept well as I have, the alarm goes off at 6:30am, breakfast at 7am. We had devotions and boarded our bus at 8am. The project staff has devotions and prayer every Monday and we have had the privilege to share this time with them.

After devotions we were divided into home visit teams. Home visits are my favorite part of this project. We feel honored to be welcomed into the homes of those we are serving. Today my team members were …

The work of our team today reflects the array of service that the Project in Addis Ababa carries out for the sake of Christ. The staff and interns have laid a deep foundation that allows a short-term team like ours to share in the privilege of serving others.

We began the morning by dividing into four teams who then went on home visits to beneficiaries of the Project. What is a “beneficiary”? A beneficiary is a person with HIV/AIDS who is being cared for by the Project in a holistic way: medical care is provided, housing is subsidized, …

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