Top of the month (and what's below the surface)

Tacazze Sunbird and hibiscus at the Sheraton

Since we returned from Uganda, we have had some fairly quiet weeks back in Addis Ababa – at least quiet on the surface. We’re on a plane again, on our way to Mek’ele for a work monitoring visit and we will have stories to tell about this trip in a blog of its own. So, I need to at least publish a place-holder blog post about the last few weeks.

Orienting Gulma

On the first Monday of March, Paul and I were able to take a day off. That’s because a national holiday fell on Saturday, and we typically close the office the following Monday in order to give our staff the time off they need. I was very thankful to have a day of solitude at the Sheraton, with a great swim, a nap, a time to admire the garden birds, especially the little beeeater I don’t usually see in the city.

Unknown flowering tree
and pool in the background

The next day, we welcomed our new Food Security Programs Manager Gulma Tekeste. When we sadly accepted the letter of resignation from Mesfin, we had to mount a rapid recruitment for his replacement in January. We were very happy that Gulma applied for the position, moving over from his past work with one of our MCC partner organizations, the Meserete Kristos Church Development Commission. Gulma has a background in Plant Science and more than 15 years of project management experience with World Vision and MKCDC.

There’s a lot of work in orienting a new staff member, and each one of us had a role to play, from discussing financial procedures to going through every project and every line of the national staff policy handbook. Mesfin came for a visit to “the family” and helped Gulma with background he will need on each of the partners and projects. It was nice to include him in teatime and lunch that day as well.

Ordinary evening playing HORSE

Solomon and Wondwesen were actually away for the whole week, accompanying a local photographer and journalist who is on contract with MCC to collect stories. This month, we are doing some cautious travel, only in the middle of the day, to nearby cities where our partners work. In January and February, things were very tense as one of the armed groups in the country declared a moratorium on all travel outside of Addis, threatening murder and mayhem if one tried. But that moratorium seems to be over – nothing is ever officially declared, which does not make for a very relaxed situation. And it also matters who you are. Our Ethiopian staff feel more secure to travel short distances, but don’t want to have any foreigners in the car. Thus, the necessity of contracting a local photographer instead of bringing someone in from North America.

Times with good friends

Wednesday get-together

So, while we are penned up in Addis, we remain so thankful for some great friends we’ve made here in Ethiopia. David gets together weekly with his group of buddies at one place or another. Last month, they were working on sawing up bamboo and lashing it together. This month, I got out the clay from Ash Wednesday and gave it to the kids to work with. They love playing spikeball and other outside running, yelling games. Peter has been host of several very fun Minecraft parties, which gives us parents time to talk as well.

We’ve had a couple of really nice weekend evenings around a firepit. Granted there is too much very serious conversation about the state of the nation, what will happen here, possibilities of sudden, disruptive transitions, concern over our kids’ education, etc. I don’t have photos of most of the occasions, but there have been several evenings with Polks and Kempens. We had a lovely time with the Kontra family following our last youth group gathering in March. Paul and Yemi are so fascinating to talk with as they bring a unique perspective, very integrated into Ethipian culture, and also having many years of living in China. David really loved hanging out with their son, too.

Saturday night cookout

And we were very happy to welcome Lukas and Hana back to Ethiopia after a year away to complete their studies. We got some of our old bible study members back together one Sunday afternoon to share with each other and pray. And then Hana and Lukas were able to stay a bit longer to play a game with us.

Activities week

After two weeks of exams, And then a 1.5 day break, David’s class went off to Activities week in the nearby by town of Bishoftu. This year, they really scaled back the program because of the many security issues we are dealing with. No one went to the ordinary far-flung locations, and each grade spent just 3 days in two shifts. We had some questions about security going out of Addis, but were reassured from various sources that it was reasonably safe for our kids to stay at the mission compound on Lake Babogaya. 

Homemade sushi before activities
week

We have no photos to show for it. But we know that David’s grade 9’s joined Grade 11 in staffing a kids’ camp for children from the Government school just next to Bingham. The Bingham girls and all the Birhan Ber kids stayed in the cabins. The Bingham boys slept in tents. David expressed how glad he was to finally have learned to set up a tent by himself, and he enjoyed staying in the big tent by himself. He also really enjoyed the time with his classmates. He had more of a challenge enjoying the service aspects of the 3 days. But he could tell that the younger Ethiopian kids had a great time. Everyone returned home exhausted.

While David was gone, Paul and I snatched 24 hours for a very brief required renewal leave. We dropped him off at school (having forgotten to remind him to pack about 12 essential things! It’s hard to be working and also to parent well) 

And then we drove downtown to the Hilton hotel – we had just signed a corporate agreement with them and got a pretty good rate. Immediately we needed a nap. Other highlights included some good laughs playing minigolf at the ridiculous little golf challenge, viewing the art gallery,  a drink on the terrace at sunset, a good dinner with no dishes afterwards, a night swim in the wonderfully hot geothermal pool. The gym there is fantastic, and a good morning workout also was refreshing, along with the amazing breakfast buffet that includes cheese, dried fruit and nuts. We finished up with some time to reflect and pray and then went back to work by lunchtime. It was short, but much needed.

The other 2 evenings of  David’s absence were not so restful or romantic. On Wednesday afternoon, shortly after getting back to the office, I took our housekeeper Yeshi for her final follow- up visit with the surgeon. We are grateful that she has healed up so well after knee surgery. Now she has to do the hard work of rebuilding strength and stability. She started physical therapy yesterday, and may be able to return to work in April.

Church movements

Teens playing spikeball in the compound outside
the NLM Chapel where we had our
Annual General meeting

On Thursday after work, I headed into town for a church meeting. And that is actually a subject for great Thanksgiving, but it requires a brief history first. In the late 1950’s the English-speaking International Lutheran Church (ILC) was planted, and in May 1963, the congregation completed and inaugurated a sanctuary in the Lideta neighborhood. Shortly after, they began to invest in planting an Amharic-speaking congregation, supporting an evangelist and then a pastor for many years. ILC developed the church buildings and built a home for the Amharic speaking pastor, and it was their prayer for many years that this church plant would grow and be a self-sustaining congregation. Over the years, that prayer has truly been answered.

In the past months, our church leadership has been dealing with more and more questions having to do with sharing space with the Amharic-speaking Lideta congregation. They are huge and vibrant and use every space on the compound all week long. It would really help them if they could start their services earlier, but our congregation can’t meet any earlier than 8:45 and we need until 10:15 am.

Farewell to Kai and Kristiina in the NLM chapel

Finally, we woke up to reality in January: we must decrease so they can increase. We had two very significant congregational meetings to talk about how the growth of Lideta congregation is an answer to the mission and prayers of our spiritual forbears; to encourage their further growth, we should look for a new space in which to meet. This kind of decision will put us in a place of being renters somewhere, rather than owners, with less security. The NLM space is a bit small for us and not perfect for Sunday school, but good enough. Yet the move will give us more of a sense of sharing in the work of God’s kingdom by making room. At the very same time, we were able to meet in an underutilized, small, cozy chapel at the Norwegian Lutheran Mission compound for those congregational meetings. And this space has been made available to us at just the right moment. The congregation decided that we would be ready to move, as long as the Lideta congregation would give us their blessing to do so.

So we had 2 very sensitive meetings. In the first we shared the above history and our observations about Lideta’s growth, our thanksgiving to God for that, and then our sense that the Holy Spirit was calling us to go. The mood in the room went from warm and earnest to palpable shock in the room of Lideta elders as we broke that news. But immediately, a few of them were able to thank God that we were listening when the Spirit was speaking. Often, churches part ways over conflict; we assured them that they had not wronged us in any way. Other elders were too surprised to know what to say. We anticipated this, and asked to meet again after they had a chance to process and think it over on their own.

Meeting with Lideta elders

And so we hosted a second meeting this past Thursday evening, and it was such an answer to prayer to hear their response. They understood our motivation, warmly gave their blessing, requested that we have a joint celebration as part of our closure of this chapter of our shared history (something we were hoping for but hadn’t yet suggested), accepted the same day that we had already thought of, and finally, expressed a deep desire to come to our new place of worship on our first official day there at NLM to pray for us. God has been so good to us in the process. This decision was announced in our service this morning, so I think I am free to share it here. It has been such a satisfying part of ministry to be part of a big decision in our church and we are excited about what the future holds.

Women's bible study farewell for Hannele

Sadness and Rage

The final realities of our life here are two-fold. The first is sadness at the transience of everything. That is always the case for those of us on the mission field. But this season, many, many long-time missionaries are departing from Ethiopia. One of the most significant to us is the Secchia family, who have been amazing community builders, attended our congregation often in the last two years, and with whom we have enjoyed joyfully making music at choir and on the worship team. Hannele was one of the co-leaders of the women’s bible study I attend. Another significant loss is an ordained Lutheran priest and his family; Rev. Kai helped us often with Holy Communion, with preparation for baptism in the Lutheran tradition, and Kristiina is someone who really knows how to pray and minister. Many others are also departing and I can’t name them all. Teachers from school are leaving; other families from our youth group are leaving; I’m sure there are people leaving and we don’t even realize it yet.

Many of these decisions are indirectly related to the state of the country. And that leads me to the deep anger we are living with all the time. How many times have I mentioned the security situation above? It’s so frustrating that we can’t visit our partners; that they can’t do their work.

Expensive mustard

And then there’s the economy. One of our partners has been working the past 3.5 years, trying to address the massive hygiene problems at government schools in the town of Ziway. Schools with almost 2000 students had NO latrines built for girls. ZERO. Imagine open-defecation at that population level.  This church-based local NGO decided to work on building adequate latrines for students. Their intervention has really decreased illness, increased school attendance and improved morale at the schools. But between 2021 and 2024, the cost of building an improved latrine has increased by 400%. The plans that we made together last year for a new phase are impossible now, because of the high cost of imported goods. All this is related to a lack of foreign currency in the country and a distorted bank exchange rate on the dollar (about 1/3 now of the actual free market value). We can’t get any more dollars to help our partner fulfill their agreement with the government. The only choice is to scale back or stop. It’s the same story with our partner that drills wells for communities in Amhara, communities where women currently spend 4-5 hours a day walking to fetch water. Imported well building materials are too expensive; but actually that’s a moot point because there is active war happening in the communities where the well-drilling was planned. No wells any time soon.

Fleeing to the hammock

The economic woes of Ethiopia filter down to us personally in trivial ways, like a bottle of normal yellow mustard costing $30 USD. Or the Chinese lawnmower we finally had to break down and buy: $79 USD on Amazon and $800 in Addis. But our gardener was developing real back problems trying to use the manual push mower.

How about our car? Every was properly paid and processed, even duty was paid, it was cleared in November, and then blocked again suddenly. It’s been sitting in Djibouti ever since. It has cost our office at least 3-5 person days a week, as we have tried every possible avenue to get a waiver for the car and get it imported. Meanwhile, I am not allowed to own binoculars, with which I might have experienced the joy of bird-watching in the Horn of Africa. They are too dangerous as optical instruments.

These are all just annoyances, compared with the impossibly high price of staple foods like teff, or the thousands of displaced people flooding into Addis to just live on the streets and beg at traffic intersections. They have come from horrible situations to be willing to live this way. On the causes of the above problems: suffice it to say that there is a lot of sin and depravity in this world.

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I keep being challenged this Lent season to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, to remember to be content with what is, to see the small mercies that are new every morning. We work out hard to get the cortisol out of our bodies at the start of the day. When I have a moment in the evening, I flee to the hammock in the back yard to breathe. We pray a lot, morning, evening and in between. But we live in a place where there is no escaping the outrage for very long. I guess that lends more and more passion to the prayer, “Even so, Lord Jesus, Come!”

Please keep Ethiopia in your prayers