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I hope you enjoy the pictures in the slideshow below. The song is "My Own Little World" by Matthew West.

God bless you and God bless Ethiopia.

Compassion

Before our trip to Ethiopia, I had an entirely different definition of this word. Compassion. What is it? Let's start with Webster's definition: "sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it". Keep that definition in mind for later...

In America, we have so many programs, charities, and services that provide for our poor and suffering, that it is very difficult to find someone who does not truly have their basic needs taken care of. America's most poor often have more than some the majority of people in third world countries. So we have devoloped this attitude in our society that our poor do not really need our help. It is easy to dismiss them as we go through our day to day lives. Afterall, our government has what I refer to as "mandatory charity". You contribute to programs and services through your taxes whether you choose to or not.


Ethiopia has no such programs. Folks who lose their means of support who cannot beg, borrow, or steal, often waste away into nothing and die. Their hungry and homeless do not need signs to draw your sympathy. Most times it is pointless for them to beg anyway, because those their are providing for their families do not have any extra. Have you ever heard anyone say that they "are just surviving"? In Ethiopia, this could not be more true for most folks. They are not worried about being boring, how to entertain themselves, or how they are going to get their next thrill. They are just surviving.


What did Jesus have to say about the poor?

Mark 10:14b: "...Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God."


Jesus had a tender place in His heart for the poor and he an even more tender place for the children. Maybe this is why we are so drawn to the poor children with those large, innocent brown eyes.

 This man's image will be permanently etched into my mind. He met us three days in a row where we unloaded the vans each day and split up into teams. He kept asking us for money, hold a 50 cent piece in his bony outstretched hand. His feet were a horrible sight, mangled from walking through the rocks with no shoes. He was blind in one eye and looked as though he would crumble at any minute. 


We were not allowed to give out food or money, because would cause a mob scene that could injure us or the people. Any money or supplies to be distributed to the poor must be given to Dr. Frew and he distributes as he sees the needs arise. He knows who is the most needy.


On our last day in the village, we were passing out a case of cheese crackers amongst the team, because we were planning to have a late lunch. I saw this man standing in the middle of us, staring longingly at that case of crackers without saying a word. I was glad to see that the girl who was handing them out silently slipped him a pack and I was almost drawn to tears as he sat down immediately on the edge of the sidewalk and ate those crackers. I was heartbroken when I recalled an recent incident in Baltimore when I tried to give a bag of Fritos to man with a "will work for food" sign, and he rudely refused them.


Luke 4:18- "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised..."

My first day back to work, I had to go to Baltimore, and when I stopped at a traffic light downtown, a man approached me with a sign that said "homeless" and a large cup. I couldn't help but notice that his clothes were far nicer than the people of Sendafa that did have homes were wearing. As I pushed a dollar into his cup, I winced when I realized that the amount of money in that cup could feed an entire family in Ethiopia for a month. I was angry and confused... the though haunted me the rest of the day.

I have had to reanalyze my personal definition of compassion. While I feel brokenhearted for the people of Ethiopia, I cannot let this harden my heart against our own poor and hurting souls in America. Whether their signs advertising their status are legitimate or not, it only hurts me when I refuse to help. If it takes donating to ten posers to help that one person who legitimately needs help, I will be better for it, and God will judge those who take advantage of my generosity.


Any thoughts?

Day 1- The Start of a Heart Transformation

The sun rising over Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

This morning we met on the seventh floor of the hotel as a team for devotions. The view of Addis was amazing! We talked about how blessed we are and how rather than feel guilty about it, we can use our wealth and talents to help others, as God would want us to.

Soon after the meeting, we gathered our supplies and left for Sendafa. The van drivers were members of the PAAV (Project Adopt a Village) team, and some of them doubled as translators. When we arrived in Sendafa, we were immediately struck by the level of poverty that the village was steeped in. I mean, you see those things on television, but when you see it firsthand, it really hits you hard.

Two boys watching us work on the water tank

The children are what really breaks your heart. Those dark, innocent eyes staring up at you, untouched by the hardship surrounding them, as they smile at you and try to hold your hand. It is so heart-wrenching. You want so badly to help each and every one of them.

We split into five teams of five people each. Two teams distributed ionized salt in one kilo bags to the people in the village with children. This is one way of getting them the healthy minerals that they need and that we take for granted. Two more teams went to visit single Mothers with AIDS. While they were visiting, they laid vinyl on the dirt floors and stapled fabric to the mud walls. This gives them a huge improvement in quality of life. They now have a surface on the floor that they can wash, and the bright fabric patterns on the walls lift their spirits.

The first chlorination system mock-up

I was on the fifth team. We are working on a chlorination system that will make the city water supply safe to drink without boiling for the first time… ever. We dry-fitted two chlorination systems (one for each water tank) to determine the dimensions of the block building that we would build atop the tank to contain the system. We also needed to ensure that we had all of the parts that we needed. After that, we went out to purchase enough cinder blocks to get started on one of the structures. We also hired a local mason to help us (mixing concrete is a little different, since they do not have bags of ready-mix in Ethiopia) and a horse-drawn cart to deliver the blocks to the tank.

After a late lunch, we all headed back to our hotel in Addis Ababa to inventory and seperate all of our supplies that we would need for the rest of the week. (we brought a couple dozen suitcases full of vinyl and fabric from the States)

Pile of dung patties

One thing that I saw today that I will never forget is this lady that we saw working near the water tank. In Sendafa, there are a lot of cattle, and not a lot of extra to use as fuel, so people use dry dung to burn for cooking fires. On the way to the village this morning, I noticed there were nicely shaped dung patties of uniform size stacked in piles for sale along the road. I knew someone had to have formed them into patties, but I had no idea how… until I saw this lady. She had a large pile of dung to which she would add some water to small amount of it at a time and pat this dung mixture into “cakes”… with her bare hands. You read that right. Bare hands. No gloves. She had dung covering her hands and halfway up to her elbows. After the patties dried in the sun, she would stack them to sell and make another batch. This is how she made her meager living.

To think that we complain about our cushy 9-5 jobs or our long commutes, or that we shake our fist at some jerk that cut us off and delayed us by about 2 seconds…

This was day one of a painful yet cleansing heart transformation process.