My Ethiopian Experiences (so far...)

On Wednesday night we arrived in Ethiopia. It was hard for me to leave Uganda because I had fallen in love with the place and the people. Ethiopia is so incredibly different from Uganda that I felt like I was going through culture shock when we got here. While Uganda has warm sunshine, rich red soil and rolling lush green hills, Ethiopia has mountains and wet chilly weather (at least right now because it's their rainy season). The people look completely different and the poverty here is inescapable. I don't know if it's necessarily “poorer” here but the poverty just seems more raw and in your face.

Our first couple days here were spent in Korah, an area about 2 sq. miles right on the edge of the trash dump where 130,000 outcast and shunned people live. We were working alongside Project 61 which is a sponsorship program that rescues kids from the dump and sends them to school. The name comes from Isaiah 61, which if you get a chance you should read. Being there was very overwhelming. I saw, smelled and experienced things that made me feel physically sick at times.The children were dirty and covered in flies. I picked up one little girl and she was so skinny it hardly felt like she weighed anything in my arms. The children here constantly crowd around you begging and asking you for food, money, gum, toys, anything...it's sad and frustrating; frustrating because you look into their hungry little faces and it breaks your heart to say no, yet there are SO many of them and giving them things doesn't really help them...it just teaches them to beg. Being around these children, playing with them, “nursing” them (which for me consisted of neosporin and band-aids), and talking to them was pretty overwhelming and exhausting. 

While we were there we also worked alongside some of the Ethiopian men manually hauling boulders and demolishing an old decrepit building that was made of wooden poles and mud covered in some kind of plaster with a tarp roof. In one day we took the whole thing down so that they could build a new one in its place. I was filthy afterward and had dirt coming out of my nose, eyes and ears from all the dust but it felt really good to work hard and actually see a result at the end. There was also quite a bit of laughter as we worked with those men and tried to communicate. 

One day we went to a hospital right on the edge of Korah that was started 80 years ago for lepers to meet some of the ladies. It was hard to see them because I don't think I've ever seen a disease like this before. In all honesty, it was extremely hard for me to greet them, to touch them, to take their hands that were missing fingers in my own. But I kept thinking about Jesus, touching and healing the lepers in the Bible, and I realized that this is what being the hands of Jesus really looks like. 

In the afternoon we went to the trash dump. I have never seen or smelled anything quite like it. The stench was literally suffocating and vultures swarmed over the landfill... and to think that people live there; you can see the “shelters” and people rummaging among the trash,. It's mind-numbing. But despite all the overwhelming poverty and really hard things I've been experiencing and writing about lately, today I feel hope. It doesn't mean it's less painful to see, but I can feel hope because God is in that place. He has shown me that he's not just in the clean places or places that I deem beautiful, but he is right there amidst the poverty, mud, trash, disease and filth that is everywhere and he has a plan for his people there. There are many, many things that I don't understand and I probably never will...but that's ok because God doesn't ask me to. He doesn't ask me to figure out the world and solve all of its problems. He just asks me to trust him and his plan. He asks me to remain in him and obey him; to look after his people and share his love with others. He is sovereign, he is good and he is doing his work, even in the dump. I think little Jack (who is 9 years old) said it so well when he said that he thinks God wants us to see, smell and experience these things. I think he's right; I think God does want us to see these things so that our hearts may be broken for the things that break his and so that we are motivated to take action. We may be broken but God doesn't leave us broken. He wants to fill us back up with his love, peace, joy and hope so that we can go and share those things with others. The consequences of sin are big, but someday all of this will be gone, all the filth, the disease, the pain...there is hope, and it's our calling to follow God, faithfully sharing the hope of His gospel so that someday when all of this is gone as many of these people as possible are standing with me before His throne.