Celebrating two Holy Weeks

We are cruising through April and time for another update. I can't believe it has been more than two weeks since the last one, especially because there was so much happening in March that a weekly entry could barely keep up. With less travel, the overall pace of this month has been considerably slower, despite the fact that the past two weeks have been filled with reporting coming from partners which we must review, respond to, and eventually put into our database. In addition, our annual report to the Govt. of Ethiopia was due at the beginning of the month. With regard to the latter, I spent about two weeks completing the many pages of tables they want regarding our partners and projects. When our logistics officer delivered it where the Charities office informed us that they now had a new format. So I have had to start over from scratch as it is not really similar to the previous one. 

I should come up for air here, but suffice it to say, office life has been incredibly full, even without the addition of field visits. In addition to all of the reports we must process, we are also trying to sell one of our vehicles. (A 1983 corolla) I am amazed at how long people keep cars running around here! The truth is, the import tax on a new vehicle is 3 times the price. So a $ 25,000 vehicle would cost $100,000 here. MCC needs a new pick-up for our field visits but I don't see that in the cards any time soon.

The process for selling a vehicle here is incredibly elaborate requiring many letters to and from the govt. (who set the price) then an open bidding process over several weeks with a sealed chest for offers to be submitted and then opened on a specified day. Potential buyers may look at, but may NOT start or test drive the vehicle. Effectively they must purchase 'as is' without any information on its history. That is how valuable vehicles are here. You buy and then do whatever repairs are necessary.

Along with our office work, we continue to slog along in Amharic language class. We are at a stage where noticeable progress is difficult to see. Grammar is very difficult and some of the initial vocab. begins to fade. But I do feel I can communicate on a basic level to our non-English speaking staff, which is evidence of progress. 

The last two weeks have been Holy Week. This is because the Ethiopian calendar is behind ours with regard to Easter (I might add that they are currently in the year 2014.) Our Holy Week involved a lot of preparation for services Rebecca and I agreed to be responsible for. The big one was Good Friday. 

Planning the service took more time than usual because I had a special event in mind. A number of years ago, I wrote a dramatic reading through 7 meditations based on the last words of Jesus. I have been wanting to use it again. the opportunity to lead the service came when a sheet was circulated to lead upcoming services. 

The service I envisioned was a Tenebrae (service of darkness) with candles being extinguished as the words of Jesus are read. I also had a list of Taizé songs I wanted to have sung between the meditations. Rebecca agreed to lead music and she was able to recruit 2 other musicians (a flutist and trombone player), who supported the cantor parts. 

The service was very moving with Oren, reading the part of John, Pete (our neighbor who is a trained actor) reading the part of James, and Mary was read by our friend Frida. Jesus' words were read by our Zambian friend Moses. We actually did some rehearsals to get it solid. I also built a life-size cross for the front of the sanctuary and put the pews in a box around it. 

The service was very meaningful and attended by over 40 people. Particularly memorable moments occurred when the congregation was invited to put a votive candle at the foot of the cross while singing "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom" following Jesus'invitation to the thief on the cross next to him to be with him in paradise. Also, at the end, the lights were all out and Moses walked up to the single candle and blew it out as he said "It is finished", then we sat in a discipline of silence in darkness for several minutes, before the musicians started singing: "Within our darkest night you kindle the fire that never dies away." The evening felt like a sacrifice of creative adoration in preparing it and seeing it come together. 

Easter Saturday was interesting in that a bull arrived at our house. Actually, it was quite dramatic. Our staff usually share a bull (an Ethiopian tradition) for Christmas and Easter. About 10 of us buy a share then the bull is purchased and slaughtered and divided up by a traveling butcher of sorts. 

This bull, however, was quite savage and several of our staff came in with it in a truck looking shaken and one was injured. Apparently right after purchase, the bull escaped in the market, charged and nearly gored one of our guards, then rammed a taxi motorcycle driver, before running away into a nearby field. With the help of some local youth nearby they were able to get it into the truck and to our house where they put it tied in the pen at the bottom of the yard where the chicken coop is. 

I was a bit worried because, by popular request, our house was chosen to host an Easter sunrise service at 6am (because we have a lawn). I was hoping the bull would not freak out and escape and start charging around. It seemed to calm down a bit in the afternoon. 

In the afternoon, our next-door neighbor's kids came by in the afternoon to dye some eggs. Eggs are really not a part of Easter anywhere but the US it seems, but the Brits were happy to participate. 

We got up at 5am, and with the help of early arrivals, set up our lawn for a sunrise service, followed by a breakfast potluck. It was well attended! We had over 70 people, I believe--the weather was perfect, and the bull was quite calm! I was actually surprised to see so many kids at that hour. Breakfast was an impressive international affair with many dishes from all over the world, including Scandanavian devilled eggs with smoked salmon and caviar on them. (Lots of chocolate as well!)

I don't remember much about the rest of the day, except taking a long mid-morning nap. 

The following week was the beginning of Orthodox Holy Week so it felt like we were starting over, albeit we were not involved in any of the events. 

Other highlights of the last two weeks included some activities for the kids: Oren went to a formal dinner dance for the high school. He looked pretty good dressed up and was very happy to be going. It is good to see him fitting in well considering he was one of the new kids at Bingham this year. 

Oren has been very involved in doing mock exams in preparation for his first set of A levels this year. Levels are the British (Cambridge) curriculum and as I look at the syllabus, quite a bit more challenging than what I did in high school. He has really excelled in math, history, and chem this year. 

In the office, the biggest highlight was the successful renewal of both my work permit and our family residence permits. Many have had trouble doing this, but Wonde our logistics officer is really gifted at cutting through the challenges. 

The workweek felt very full of pressing deadlines and meetings. We have been having a lot of calls to headquarters about new projects, and recently launched a large new food security project funded by the Norwegian Govt. It is really helpful to be getting larger grants to enable our partners to do more, but they require a lot more administration on our end as well. 

When Good Friday #2 came around, we did not have any responsibilities for church and the kids had a school holiday, so we went out to Bishoftu where there are cabins for rent near a lake owned by a mission org. called SIM. We were there for our church retreat and it is only an hour from Addis. It was nice to relax there and stand up paddleboard. Some other families were there as well so David had some friends to play with. Oren actually studied a lot of maths.

Rebecca and I decided to take a long swim across the lake so we took turns, one on the paddleboard and the other swimming< swam across, she swam back. The lake is over a kilometer long but very manageable for us as swimmers. It was really nice to take a long open water swim like that. 

One cool thing we found out is if you drive outside the compound where the cabins are after 8:30 pm, you can see many, many hyenas along the side of the road looking for carrion. We tried it, and it was true. Since it was night, we needed our flashlights out while we passed them, but they were there in droves, nearly 100 all told ambling along right next to the road. I have never seen so many hyenas together in one place in my life. It was like a night safari. Photos were hard to do, but here is a photo of one.

We returned early Sunday morning (Orthodox Easter or Fasika), The bull had been slaughtered at around 5am, so when we pulled into our house at 8:30 it was pretty much completely butchered and divided. All of our staff were there to get their share. They were looking forward to Kitfo (raw beef) for Easter celebrations. We put our share in the fridge and freezer, and will probably have enough beef to last us until Christmas. 

Dividing the meat

The dogs were thrilled to be able to scavenge a number of large rib bones. (They looked like Dino the Dinosaur on The Flintstones, carrying huge bones around in their mouths --for those who get the reference!)

Fasika Sunday afternoon, we were invited by our colleague Solomon to his house for a traditional Ethiopian meal with his family. We went there for lunch and brought some games for the kids. He has two daughters that are close in age to David and Oren. They speak excellent English which is helpful since Oren and David do not speak Amharic. 

We had a lovely meal with just about every type of dish one could imagine, but featuring doro wet, a traditional spicy chicken stew, with enjera bread. We had a nice visit, they all wore traditional Easter outfits, and the girls enjoyed learning some games like Dutch Blitz which they are likely to use when they go to the US at some point soon for study. Our family returned home and ended the extended Holy Week period by watching the new Spider-Man movie. (Monday is a school holiday.)

Team photo we took this week

A Flurry of Fiscal Year Finales

I was hoping that 4 posts in March would keep us caught up for at least 2 weeks, but I was mistaken. March is a particularly busy month for our MCC program because the 31st is the end of our fiscal year. As a non-profit, we have to spend certain allocated funds which we cannot rollover. This puts a lot of pressure on us to complete certain activities, like a professional staff retreat, an all partners meeting, and a few smaller home and office projects for which we have some funds. 

The fact that we had to evacuate in December, and were not able to move around the country between October and the end of January had meant that we had delayed a number of these activities and have now had to cram them into the end of the year while things are relatively stable here. (Note: we still need to do some advance intelligence before we travel far out of Addis as there have been pockets of attacks (not by the TPLF), primarily by extremist Oromo separatists that create some anxiety around travel. 

Despite this, we did take several trips out of town for retreats and had people come to Addis to meet us from around the country for our partners' meeting. Here is a brief synopsis of the 5 events that have happened in the past two weeks. 

1) Staff Retreat: Part of keeping up team morale among our office staff, is participating in an annual retreat. We have not had one since we officially took our role last February and were looking forward to having one in November before the war heated up. It was a bit of a squeeze but we did find a weekend when everyone was free and scheduled a two-day trip to Lake Langano, about 3 hours south of Addis in Oromo region. There are a number of resorts along the lake as it is a destination for local tourism, as well as some international tourists as well. We headed out in 3 vehicles on a Friday. We had altogether, our accountant Eyerusalem and her husband Moses, our logistics officer Wondeweson, whose wife, unfortunately, could not travel that weekend so he came alone, our food security officer Mesfin with his two daughters, both younger than David, and Solomon our senior program officer with his wife and two daughters (both in high school). Our whole family came along as well, of course. 

We arrived, in staggered groups in the late afternoon. The Sabana Resort was nice with a main dining area and a number of independent bungalows. It sat on a bluff about 200 feet over the lake, so there was a brief walk down to it. The lake is a bit unusual in that it looks kind of reddish-brown for most of the day. The color is not caused by soil erosion, though, but rather a high amount of minerals shed by the volcanic rock all around it. The beach was very pebbly, so you needed water shoes to walk around, and most of the rock was volcanic, some pieces even floated on top of the water. The temperature and in the first part of the day the water was very still and nice for wading and swimming. The exception to that was sticking one's head underwater, about one foot down the water got cold quickly and eerily became pitch black. The mineral content is so heavy that it completely blocks out the sun, like you are doing deep sea diving. We found it unnerving to swim under the water, and generally kept our heads above. 

I also brought our inflatable stand-up paddleboard and David brought his fishing rods. Everyone enjoyed the paddleboard and other inflatables we brought, particularly Mesfin's girls. David did not have any luck fishing though. I enjoyed taking the paddleboard out quite far in the morning as the water was very calm. The lake was far too big to get anywhere near the middle. There was also a playground by the lake which had some swings and a giant chess board that kept Oren occupied. 

On Saturday morning our team had breakfast together with families, then took an hour to reflect on 'sabbath', and what rest looks like in our lives. We then spent a good part of the rest of the day by the beach swimming and even played some volleyball. In the evening we had dinner together again before bed. 

On Sunday morning, Solomon's wife Seble, preached for us, as she is quite the evangelist. Rebecca and I were happy to learn some Amharic worship songs as well, as we are continuing to try to improve our conversational abilities. We again spent part of the day at the beach. Unfortunately, our family had to leave on Sunday as Oren had 'mock A level' exams all the next week starting on Monday. We drove back with Mesfin and his daughters who also had to be back for school. 

The following week Oren had exams most days, and when he did not, he was home 'studying'. Despite the fact that it looked like there were alot of videogames played during study time, he aced all of his mock A levels (we found out this week).

2) Prophetic Peace Plenary: Rebecca and I spent our days in the office trying to catch up on work and prepare for the events of the week ahead. We did have one interesting in-town field visit to see a small project that MCC had supported. Several weeks ago, we were approached by the head of an Evangelical Church Network about providing some funding as well as a keynote speaker who could bring a peace lens to the Gospel and galvanize evangelical church leaders to be active peacebuilders in their communities. Having worked in a number of post-conflict countries, we do have a lot of contacts, especially in Rwanda and Burundi where we worked with a number of amazing genocide survivors. We recommended a pastor named Celestin Museka, a Rwandese hutu whose family was murdered after the genocide. His journey to forgive the murderers, and even eventually finance the education of the imprisoned children of the perpetrators is a shattering story of divine grace.

The fact that they were able to get Celestin, within a matter of weeks to agree to the invitation and travel from Texas, where he now lives, to Addis, was a miracle in itself. Rebecca and I attended the plenary where he spoke to nearly 2000 evangelical church leaders from around the country. For him, the gospel of reconciliation in Christ requires us to be reconciled to our enemies--at great personal sacrifice. He challenged the leaders here saying how bad ethnic hatred was, even among Christians just prior to the genocide. I was shocked when he said bluntly--"And here, I think, at this moment, you may be worse!". 

He went on to say, "but the difference between Ethiopia and Rwanda is, the genocide has not happened here yet. That means you still have the chance to repent and stop it." He pulled no punches and challenged them, as church leaders, to give ethnic hatred and division no quarter. 

After the powerful testimony, the room was silent. Rebeca and I had a chance to talk with Celestin and the President of the Evangelical Fellowship. It was clear that they were moved by his word. We will see if prophetic voices rise up from the church against the simmering cauldron of ethnic division here. 

3) Church Retreat Weekend: I think we might need a retreat from retreating soon. The fact was, the weekend after our staff retreat, we had a retreat with our church. It also was on a lake, in roughly the same direction, but not quite as far as the one we went to for our staff retreat. The SIM compound on Bishoftu Lake is a place we have come a few times before and is really quite nice. The lake is deep, but the water is clear (although you can't see the bottom.) This is no resort. The bungalows are quite run down and were built to frugal missionary standards even when they were new, 40-50 years ago. Our family shared a pretty tiny room with a public bathroom. But we did enjoy bringing our stand-up paddleboard and fishing equipment again. David had more luck this time, catching over a dozen tilapia. 

We had a nice time with our church community doing sports and hiking by day, then singing, and playing games by night. On Saturday evening, Rebecca and I were asked to lead a set of folk and line dances. We did some favorites of ours including Pata Pata, Yerusalema,  and the Virginia Reel. Everyone participated and it was a great time!! (sorry no photos as I was calling).  We had church by the lake on Sunday morning, then our Annual General Metting in the afternoon. Rebecca is now officially on the pastoral team. 

We returned in the afternoon Sunday, just in time to join our small group. We slept well Sunday night after a very active weekend. 

4) All Partners Meeting: The following week was no less hectic than any of the previous ones. Again, the reason for cramming so much into March is to spend our budget for certain annual activities before the end of the fiscal year. The All Partners Meeting is an annual gathering of our partners for the purpose of capacity building as well as networking. It is usually held over several days at a conference location, where people from out of town can stay overnight. Because of COVID, MCC Ethiopia has not had one in 2 years. It is a blessing that COVID incidence is way down here at the moment. 

The meeting was on a Tuesday and Wednesday with most of our staff presenting something. Rebecca did a longer presentation on 'Safeguarding' (against sexual exploitation), a partner of ours, Food for the Hungry did a presentation on Complaint Mechanism in emergency interventions. It is a challenge to find ways to allow vulnerable people to report back situations where they may be exploited or unjustly treated, especially in an emergency situation, like an IDP camp intervention. 

Solomon, Mesfin, and I presented on the more mundane topic of reporting for MCC, especially updates to our protocols and report templates. It was actually a good time despite having to leave the house at 6:45 am both mornings to get there on time. It always felt like a long, but rewarding day. We had about 24 in attendance on both days, and many reported back how much they appreciated the discussions. 

5) Rebecca Preaching: The last two days of the week, were still filled with frantic administrative work as the fiscal year-end approached before the weekend. Rebecca and I spent all day Thursday and Friday working in the office even though we usually try to take time off for at least half the day on Friday. 

The weekend remained busy with Rebecca preparing a sermon on Saturday morning, then us hosting our next-door neighbors' Birthday in our yard. They are good friends so that was fine and we had a nice evening with two other families. 

Rebecca preached on Sunday and in one person's opinion "Knocked it out of the park." Her message was on Mary anointing Jesus' feet at Bethany, but she did it in the persona of Mary's sister Martha. It was quite clever and creative! Link to audio here.

I need to come up for air at this point. We are hoping April is less eventful than March, but we will see.