Wednesday in Ethiopia our team is experiencing some challenges. Several of the men are having some stomach issues (nothing major) with enough discomfort that they didn’t go out to do ministry today but stayed close to the hotel for rest & the toilet. The weather is also giving us some challenges as the last 2 mornings it has been raining which makes it very difficult for us to drive on the dirt roads & get out to the mission sites. If you are wondering how we can update the blog from Ethiopia, we are able to do it through the miracle of satellite technology as we have a satellite router that connects to my netbook computer. The response from the Ethiopian people has been amazing. The people in the area we are working this year are much more open than last year. Many times we are sharing with a small group of people & they say things like, “I have never heard this story” or “I believe what you are saying is true”.
Here is what our daily schedule looks like:
• Breakfast in our small hotel at 7:00 am
• Group devotion at 7:45
• Get in vans & drive 30 minutes to mission site at 8:15
• Build relationships & share Christ all morning
• Break for lunch around noon at our mission sites
• Head back to hotel around 4:00 PM
• Dinner at 6:00
• Group worship, daily debrief & team time from 8:00-9:30
Today we continued to witness what the Ethiopians call the “rainy season”. However—amongst the mud, muck, and puddles—God still amazed us with His presence. The day started off with a wonderful and lively worship service at the church in Etaya, a neighboring village to Assela; I think I can speak for all of us when I say that this is the perfect way to start our day. We get to worship as the disciple- makers praise God in their language, and they get to worship as we praise God in ours. After the worship service, my team was able to walk (well, more like slosh) to a village off of the main road. We were then welcomed into a local Christian’s home. I am amazed at how these people can make such a solid, dry, 8x8 one-room house out of mere mud and straw. As we sat down on bags of hay, the teenagers and kids of this village came piling in. We probably had at one point 30 people crammed in this house. My group had an amazing experience getting to know these villagers and their culture. Chris and I, with the help of Erin and Julie, were able to share the gospel with about 15 kids and they immediately trusted in Christ as their Savior. It was truly the best feeling in the world. Wes was able to plant some strong seeds in some of the other villagers. It’s still very challenging for us to evangelize in this area as their Orthodox and Muslim beliefs are much different from Christian beliefs. Some of them can be very stubborn.
I was also able to love on a little three year-old named Yeshi. At the end of the morning she wanted to “come to America” with us, and believe me, I would’ve taken her had that not be frowned upon. After our lunch of granola bars and packaged tuna at the church, we got to play soccer (aka football) and some type of volleyball game with the local kids. It’s really neat to see how we can have organized games with a huge language barrier (during lunch we are
without translators).
The afternoon brought more rain but we were still able to share the gospel under a porch of a random run-down medical clinic in the village. During our time there, 13 more teenagers and men came to know Christ. We are truly amazed here every day. We are what we like to call “the bait” because we are white people that they’ve never seen before. We then present the gospel through our translators and our disciple makers. It’s amazing how God is orchestrating all of this work right now. Unfathomable.
Story by Morgan Blaik
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