Seven years ago, while serving with DHI as the Ethiopia In-Country Representative, I shared our last blog post with you. I am so excited to share that a month ago I accepted the invitation from our board of directors to serve as Executive Director for DHI. It is so good to be back!
Since leaving Ethiopia in 2017 I have had the privilege of staying very connected to our Ethiopian team through phone calls, texts and multiple trips to visit our program. We have shared joys and sorrows, tears and laughter, as we continue to trust God together. Things change and yet some things never change. The deep commitment and faith demonstrated by our doulas and team – Medi, Geni, Beti, Enat, Rahel, Ruth – these have remained steady. I have consistently witnessed our team lean into God’s goodness through trials and pain.
It is extraordinary to me that we have only had one change in staff over these many years. Our dear nurse manager, Ephrata, sensed God calling her to serve with another local ministry and Tihitinat, a newly graduated nurse, stepped in to fill her big shoes. Ruth Gadissa, our first Ethiopia DHI Director, now serves as our In-Country Representative, and we are back serving with the partner organization who we first piloted our program together with – Glimmer – led by founder, Dr. Abera Legesse.
Much has changed and much stays the same. New faces, new life, new griefs to bear. A struggling economy, the birr continues to depreciate and the price of teff – the protein rich grain needed to make the national bread, injera – continues to rise. New migrants from the countryside, displaced by war and socioeconomic hardship and hopelessness, continue to make their way to Koshe (Korah). What does it say about a person’s situation when they leave all they know to journey to a trash mountain because that is where hope resides?
Yet where there is darkness, there is also light. Women, many with child because of exploitation and abuse, are looking for light. They are seeking hope. And over these ten years I have witnessed this local team be the bearers of light, the hands of Christ, their hearts filled with love. Recently Ruth shared with me, “The needs are so great. The needs have never been this great. What is hardest each day is seeing the desperation and not having the material resources to help with all these needs. And yet, what we have we give. We have knowledge. We give these women education about their bodies, about the child growing inside of them, and about how and where they can access the medical help they need. And we give them care – spiritual and emotional and social care. We pray with them and share with them God’s love. And the women say – when we come to the center, we feel hope.”
It is so good to be back. It was here, in this broken place, where I saw so much light. Where I found hope. These women who come to Korah looking for hope, it is here where hope can be found. Because Jesus resides not in the castle on the hill, but in the decaying refuse hill there in Addis Ababa. “When did we see you hungry and naked and thirsty and alone…. when did we feed you and clothe you and visit you” we ask. “When you are there, doing these things for the least of these, you are doing them for me.”
Thank you for ten years of entering into his presence by giving to allow these dear women- Medi and Geni and Beti, Rahel and Ruth and Enat and Tihitinat – to minister to the precious women of Korah. My hope is that through this blog we can come to better understand the mysteries of what those words Jesus spoke mean and that we can see “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done”, in these broken and beautiful places.