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One thing I am immensely thankful for is the staff of the project; they are truly amazing. I am humbled and enlightened by their dedication and love for Christ and their ability to genuinely share and reflect that love to the beneficiaries, team members, and fellow staff.

I’m thankful for the beneficiaries. For their strength and support of one another. For their graciousness and willingness to allow us into their homes and lives. Thankful how the joy and love of Christ can be heard in their words, seen in their eyes, and felt in their touch despite all their worldly hardships.
I’m also thankful for this team and each individual member. I’m thankful for the different gifts each person has brought. How watching, living, and working so closely together has allowed us to see attributes of God that we would not have seen on our own and how we have learned more about the nature and love of Christ.

I’m thankful for the supporters, families, and friends in the states. Knowing that so many are praying for us, the Project, and the beneficiaries has strengthened and comforted us all.
Most of all, I am thankful to God. Thankful for the opportunity to serve Him through serving his children. Thankful for the knowledge of his love and for the gift of being called a child of God. Thankful that he has promised that he will make all things new. That as we serve in His name we know that ultimately it will be his hands not ours that will bring salvation, justice, and comfort to His kingdom.

Please note: Today’s update, the last one from this trip, was written by Pige Schuette, a pediatric occupational therapist from Park Slope Church in Brooklyn, NY. This is Pige’s second medical team to Addis.

Henry: Our work has been a rich experience. Besides getting to know a wonderful team here in Addis, we have enjoyed our assignments. Mine have been primarily participating in clinics and going on home visits. The latter have had a particular impact on me. Suffice it to describe one visit, to a Muslim family (most are orthodox Christian) today. Here in small home of sticks and plastic were a husband, wife, and two children, who had moved here from a rural area and found a lifeline with the project. M. had worked as a bus driver, but he had been sick with a cough recently and had been unable to work. Now he was worried that the government might take his home, and that he would have nowhere to go; he worried about the future of his family. Since he was HIV positive he had been referred to the Project and was benefiting from its services; he had even joined a support group, despite holding on for now to his Muslim tradition. If he lost his home he would possibly lose access to the Project that he now had. After hearing out some of his physical needs and recommending a visit back to the clinic tomorrow, we prayed with M. and his wife. He seemed willing, even grateful to hear us share the gospel and some scripture with him in the course of our prayer with him. We pray, and trust that others will, that M. and his whole family will soon receive the whole truth and salvation that Jesus Christ can offer him.

Wendy: I have had a wonderful time conducting Bible studies with support groups at the clinics, while others carry out medical work. These ladies and teenagers are eager to talk together, share needs, and hear some encouraging words from Scripture. We looked up verses on prayer today, and on how Daniel had prayed in reliance on the Lord for his deliverance from the lion’s den and in standing firm for God in a foreign culture. Many of the girls had not heard of Daniel, so I got to tell more of the story, and Henry joined me in singing “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” (we’re trying to introduce bluegrass to Ethiopia!). I have also enjoyed subbing in the pharmacy, and getting to know some of the delightful Project staff. God has truly blessed us in allowing us to be part of such a strategic and effective ministry.

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 is“ Tesfa “. It is also used in various forms in the names of children, both male and female. On the surface, with the myriad of ills that threaten the average Ethiopian, it would seem that “ Tesfa “ is the last word that would ever be used, in context, to describe their lives or situation.

Addis is a city overflowing. Its problems are magnified by its inability to keep pace with the throngs of people who have gravitated, perhaps out of desperation, to what often smoke from the many cooking fires. The water is darkened by sewage and laundry soap. The streets are littered with mountains of garbage and the decaying skulls of slaughtered animals. Masses compete for ramshackle “ homes “; often no more than hastily thrown together scraps of tin and cardboard. Unemployment is staggering, and less than 2 percent of the working population have a pension, however meager.

But there is lovely news to report. Here, even in the darkest of conditions, the light of the gospel is making an impact. The project is growing, expanding into new regions of the city, and in a very tangible way, bringing “ tesfa “ to those who otherwise would have no occasion to utter the word. There is never a way to formulate the beauty of the gospel. However, when lived out and applied in simple love, in a comprehensive and consistent manner, the results are undeniable.

It is with deep gratitude that we can report that your prayers and giving have made it possible to offer hope and life, the fragrant flower of Christ to Addis Ababa.

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.

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 and buy equipment for another 6 health centers.

We don¹t know how many patients will come for treatment at each health center, but potentially 1,000 patients a year could come for care at each center. We will probably serve close to 10,000 patients in 2008. Why are we doing this? If not us, who? No one else was doing it, or planned to do it and it is critically important. If AIDS patients don’t take their medicines properly they don¹t get healthy and they also develop resistant HIV that they can pass on to others. Good care takes a lot more than just handing out pills.

Second, the government of Ethiopia asked us to do this. In fact, they asked us to take on all 26 health centers in the city, but we knew that was too big a bite to take. Building a strong partnership with local officials makes life better in many ways. We have tried from the beginning to go to the appropriate officials before we did anything and ask for their input, and then as much as possible respond positively. We recently received a government award for our contribution to one of the communities where we work.

Third, the Gospel is being shared in word and deed. Everyone, government officials, health center staff and patients, know that we are Christians. We are free to ask patients about their spiritual needs and free to share the Gospel if patients are open. Patients experience Christ’s love through our staff and the loving care they give. We reach not just 10,000 patients but their family members that bring them and sit with them and we reach the government officials that monitor our work and the health center doctors and nurses that work alongside us.

It takes a lot of money to set up and run this, but a lot of the cost is the initial set up and we received a one-year grant to cover this. The government also told us that after one year they will take responsibility for the program and all its costs. We hope that within a year and a half we will have turned over all this work and that it will carry on without our help.

What will we do then? More of the community work that is the foundation of the project. None of our work in Lideta or Bole has been put on hold. In fact, we have grown to where we are helping almost 400 AIDS-affected families, and we have made small steps towards opening up work in a third community, Kolfe Keranjo.

We also want to build partnerships between churches in America and churches in Addis Ababa. Our network of local churches that we help with their mercy ministry programs is growing and we hope that this year we will pair some of these churches with US churches. We have formal agreements with two Addis Ababa churches and two US churches have taken the first steps towards establishing partnerships. We want to share with our partners from both continents what we have learned about caring for the sick and poor and about having a biblical foundation for mercy ministry.

Another area where we plan to grow is by expanding beyond HIV/AIDS. While helping people with AIDS is a good way to serve our communities it also set limits on our impact. We want to plant new churches, but don’t want to plant churches limited to people affected by AIDS. It is easy for people in the community to see us as only caring for people with AIDS and only doing this work because it is the issue of the day and lots of money is being given for AIDS work. We want to see churches reaching and transforming the whole community. We are praying for a church-planter to come and join us.

Dr. Jon White and his wife Jessica and their three children have joined our team. Jon and Jessica are in the middle of Amharic language school, but when they finish Jon will dive into project work. One of Jon¹s jobs will be to explore serving more of the needy in our communities. This may be through palliative care for people dying from any cause, not just AIDS. It may be something focused on Tuberculosis or other diseases, but the goal will be to bring the gospel in word and action to our whole community and begin to transform the whole community.

Two interns, Derek Armstrong and Sara Philips, organized a research project in cooperation with the Ethiopian Health, Nutrition Research Institute (formerly Pasteur Institute) on drug-resistant Tb and HIV co-infection. We hope this will give us a picture of some of the broader health issues in the city and also create opportunities for broader ministry.

Another goal for this year is the development of a mercy ministry internship program. We want to have a place young people come for up to a year and work with the poor and study. Missions is changing and we need young people coming along with both the vision and skills to serve in places like Ethiopia. We are looking for a building that could house a large number of people and also have space for new project activities. We are praying for someone (preferably a couple) to come and help make all of this happen.

Finally, we want to continue, and possibly expand, our short-term medical teams. In 2008 we will have eight teams come for up to two weeks to serve with us. Teams have been a key part of the project¹s development and we want to make sure that we continue to use them effectively.

Family news:
It looks like our twins, Hannah and Cooper are both going to be doctors! Hannah graduates from East Tennessee State University Medical college in May. She plans to do her residency in general surgery. She spent the last few months interviewing and will know where she has matched next month. Cooper will start medical school at East Tennessee State this July. He hopes to work overseas when he finishes. His time with the Peace Corp in Morocco helped confirm this call.

Asher is a junior at Covenant college, studying art and hopes to become a film maker. This semester he is in Los Angeles doing a film-studies internship with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.

Kit is the only one left at home and he is a junior at Chattanooga Christian School. One thing he wanted to do during his year in America was hunt. When we got back last summer he bought a deer rifle, took his hunter safety course and got his license. He shot two deer, one an eight-point buck (for those of you who know about and care about these things). He also wanted to be involved in sports and in the fall ran on the CCS cross country team. For the spring he tried out to play soccer for CCS and made the varsity team. Bev is taking accounting courses at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. She took one course in the fall and is taking two courses this spring.

We plan to return to Ethiopia in June. Kit is looking forward to finishing high school in Ethiopia at Bingham Academy where he has attended since kindergarten.

Blessings,

Andy Warren

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 encouraging to see how each team member finds their niche.
For example, my son, Carpenter, became the chief pill cutter and counter for the pharmacy. Cathy Wingate was able to use her skills as a mental health counselor to counsel some beneficiaries who are struggling with depression and other mental health issues. Pastor Vito lead a home pastoral counseling group as well as the project Bible study and really ministered effectively in both contexts. Mark is the gatherer, comforter, entertainer of all. He is the pied piper of Lideta and Lalibela. Of course, everyone has been effective in their work and God has been at work in and through us.

I was able to go out with Mesfin, one of the project staff members to do renovations in the home of Habtam, one of the older beneficiaries. Habtam lives in the direst of circumstances. Her home literally sits astride the community sewer. During raining season her home often
floods with sewage. We were able to go and build a concrete retaining wall between her back door and the main flow of the sewer and also to pour concrete floors in her home. While I was in her home mixing cement on the floor where a few minutes before she had been laying on a mat, a tiny little boy from the neighborhood came running in the house and when he saw me, a huge ferenge (white person), he exclaimed (in Amheric, of course), “How did you come to Habtam’s house?” I don’t know if he understood, but certainly others in the neighborhood
could see first hand God’s goodness to Habtam through the work of the project and through the team being there.

Time to go. I have more to share but must leave for now.

Blessings to all, thanks for your prayers.

For the team . . .

-Paul

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 Vito, Carpenter, Brian (the new intern who arrived yesterday) Aynalem (an expert patient) and Betty (the staff member). We walked twenty minutes, through the kebele, across two busy streets and arrived at Gebeyenesh’s home.

As we started to climb the rock steps to her home we heard a baby crying. It turned out to be Gebeyenesh’s granddaughter, Hiwot. When asked what happened Gebeyenesh said the baby had pulled a pot of hot water off the table. We undressed the baby and saw a large, blistering wound on the baby’s stomach and left wrist. We rinsed the wounds with cool, clean water and were able to use a cell phone to call the office to make sure the pharmacy was unlocked. Not only was the pharmacy unlocked but Teddy also sent Gizow in a car to pick us up. Within 15 minutes of the burn we were able to clean the wounds and apply silvadene cream and wrap the wounds. Not too bad for a third world country! We will see the baby on Tuesday morning and change her bandages.

Please pray as we continue to serve alongside an amazing team of Ethiopians.

Rose

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, children are provided with food and clothing, instruction is given on how to get and remain healthy. Each beneficiary is also provided with the opportunity to be in a support group of other beneficiaries. These groups are the locus for a variety of activities: Bible study, pastoral counseling, connection to local churches, mutual encouragement, in addition to opportunities for work: the support groups often come together to produce coffee, popcorn, local trinkets and other popular Ethiopian souvenirs that are sold to help provide income for the group. It is essential to note that without the Project, most, if not all, of the beneficiaries would be in an almost unimaginably dire situation: most of the beneficiaries are women, many of whom are widows. It is not uncommon that their families have largely abandoned them. To say that without the Project many of these people would be without hope is sadly true.

So: One of the tasks of a short-term medical missions team is to visit the homes of these beneficiaries. A typical team consists of 1 or 2 medical professionals, a pastor or counselor, a translator, and an “expert patient”—a former beneficiary of the Project who has since graduated to the role of working at the Project. The purpose of a home visit is to check in with the beneficiary, find out how they are doing and assess any needs they may have. Part of the privilege the teams have in these home visits is the simple act of getting to know the beneficiaries and enjoying their hospitality. During these visits we let the beneficiaries know of our love and care for them, tell them we are praying for them in our churches in the United States, and to ask that they pray for us. It is a joy to know that as brothers and sisters in Christ, we can together call on our heavenly Father to provide us with all we need.

Another purpose of the home visit is to remind beneficiaries of any upcoming clinics, and this afternoon a clinic was held at the Project. This is a time when doctors, nurses, physical therapists and other medical personnel provide beneficiaries with diagnosis and care. Beneficiaries (and their children) receive everything from important medicine to multivitamins to hygiene products. The scene at a clinic is hectic and happy, difficult and discouraging: old friends are seen and treated, new friends are met and provided with a quality of care they have never experienced —but the realities of disease and poverty are always present. It is difficult not be overwhelmed by the scope of suffering of people who are residing in the deepest depths of sickness, hunger, loneliness and need.

During the clinic, one of the support groups met at the Project. These meeting always begin with Bible study, and one of the pastors from the team was able to lead them. The beneficiaries vary in religious practice and belief: Muslims, nominal Orthodox Christians and Protestants can all be found at a typical meeting. The Project joyfully serves anyone no matter what their faith may be, but they just as joyfully proclaim that the Lord Jesus Christ is the center of all they do, and that his Good News is the power of salvation for all who believe.

Tomorrow it will be more of the same. This is a good thing and a bad thing: it is good because this work is rewarding in ways that are impossible to describe. The old cliché that the one who serves receives more than the one who is served rings true here, as we get to see God’s grace, human sin and the need for the Kingdom of God to come in new light. But it is bad, of course, because again tomorrow there will be more people made in God’s image who will be in need, who will be suffering, who will have very little hope to cling to. We pray that God will give us the strength to serve Him so that those people will come to know the hope of Christ which is for today, and for the life to come.

Please note: Today’s update was written by Vito Aiuto, pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, NY.