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 (Teddy, Alamou, Gizaw, Danny, Mesphen, and so on) are here not because of salaries or obligation or pride, but because they love their people in the way Christ loved us before we were His own.

Yesterday afternoon, I had the great honor to go on home visits in the kebele of Bole with Gizaw, one of the coordinators of the work here, and Meheret, a translator, as well as Dr. Joe and Mark. The second home we entered was that of an Orthodox woman and her husband—she was relatively healthy; he was not. She had a lot of spiritual interest; he had begun to be interested in faith. Ostensibly, Joe, Mark, and I were doing the talking with the aid of Gizaw and Meheret as translators. But we were privileged to watch Gizaw, sitting on the lowest seat in the house, share the gospel in Amharic (such that I was yearning for the gift of tongues) with such love and compassion that I knew the Holy Spirit’s presence and saw only Christ in a human being as flawed as myself.

Today was a clinic day for Rose, Dr. Moore, Dr. Williams, and me, but Pastor Vito led the community Bible study, a few of the women met with one of the women’s groups, and others went on home visits and helped with home renovations. (It has been really, really neat to see how the Lord has worked to give us all a spirit of humility, unity, and yes, flexibility to do whatever needs to be done.) In the morning, we were in Lideta, the original kebele (neighborhood) in which the project started. The morning seemed to be going quite smoothly when one of the staff members fainted quite unexpectedly. For the next thirty minutes, everything else came to a standstill as Dr. Williams and Sarah assessed and stabilized her for transport to the hospital. We then hurried to finish the rest of the patients in Lideta as we needed to be set up at the center in Bole by 1:30 to see the patients in that neighborhood.

We made it to Bole on time, and my first patient was Dejene, the husband from the second home we visited yesterday. It was amazing to see the transformation in him in less than twenty-four hours. He had changed from someone who seemed to be going through the motions of living to someone else entirely—he smiled genuinely on seeing me, he spoke a little English, his face had hope. I don’t know exactly what the difference was, but I do know that it was a result of the working of the Holy Spirit in his heart. His weakness and poor health, his poverty, his malnutrition were still there, but his outlook on his future had changed.

Now, lest you all think this is a time of all work and no play, I switch gears…yesterday, driving home from Bole, we hit rush hour. At one of the stops, children came up to the vehicle and tried to sell the feringe (foreigners), as we are affectionately called, some cassette tapes—The Best of Kenny Rogers (vol. 2), The Best of Tracy Chapman, and the Best of Bob Marley. Whoever was sitting closest to the window politely turned him down, and as we sped away, Pastor Vito exclaimed, “The Best of Kenny Rogers…what a surreal moment. I should have bought that.” The lack of foresight became the talk of the evening.

Therefore, on the way home today, as we approached the area where we had been waylaid yesterday, the entire bus kept their eye out for the young teen. A more observant member spotted him, traffic brought us to a stop, and Pastor Paul stuck his head out the window and was instantly mobbed (Photo 1). The enterprising young teen still had the tape and was bargained to a price of 15 birr (under $2) for it. The victorious Pastor Paul (Photo 2) handed the tape to the elated Pastor Vito (Photo 3), who then allowed the driver to place it in the bus’s cassette player where we then proceeded to belt out “The Gambler” along with Kenny.

Tonight, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant called Hebir Ethiopia. The interior is set up with architecture from different time periods in the country’s long history, and cultural music and dance performances complete the atmosphere (Photo 4). It was a great evening of food, talk, and laughter, and it made me realize how hard it was going to be to leave the family that twelve different people from different churches and backgrounds had formed in less than two weeks.

Please pray that we would continue to have a spirit of unity and to learn from one another as well as from the people we minister to. Pray that the Lord would bless the work of the project, the laborers here, and that more would be raised up to harvest.

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