Trafficked

I remember watching the movie Taken for the first time and feeling absolutely HORRIFIED that these events not only HAPPEN but they are a common occurrence in our world TODAY!  Women all around the world are being tricked and trapped in situations where they at the mercy of EVIL on epidemic scales. 

:There are more slaves in the world today than at any other point in human history, with an estimated 27 million in bondage across the globe. Men, women, and children are being exploited for manual and sexual labor against their will.

In response I googled, searched, listened, SPENT hours into the early morning researching what was happening around the world and what people were doing about it.  From the sex tourism industry that is so rife in my grandparents home country of Greece, to South East Asia, Eastern Europe…monstrosities were occurring to innocent women ALL OVER THE WORLD!!

What were people doing about it?

I found a couple of organizations- one being the A21 Campaign and heard an interview with it’s founder- Australian Greek, Hillsong Church minister, Christine Caine.  She shared her journey of discovering what was happening while on a visit to Greece and how SHE decided to respond to it.  I heard her share of a story where she rescued a woman and told her she had come because she cared about her- this complete stranger!! And the woman replied with “if you cared so much, what took you so long?!”

 This information falls on my ears while my hands were in a sink of warm bubbly water, 

washing my designer dishes 

in my beautiful home

 in New Zealand.  

Tears started running down my face as the urgency of the calling hit me and I remembered the stories I had just recently heard while I was in Ethiopia at Women at Risk.

But the stories I had heard didn’t seem so brutal.  The stories I heard were covered in cultural nuances and traditionally accepted practices.  

"Bride snatching...it's common here in some parts of Ethiopia with twelve year old girls especially."

Yet their lives seemed just as trapped.  Maybe God would use me again to find and help women like this one day I thought- MAYBE there is a woman just WAITING for someone to rescue her.  One who might even say to me “What took YOU so long?”

I sat next to a trafficker once.  He made my skin crawl as he arrogantly admitted he was an “employment agent” here to help women attain jobs in Saudi Arabia- his home country.  These were the women who lined the streets outside the immigration office that we sat in and filled it with their young, rural, innocent lives.  4000 a day, they were in number.  Believing for a better life.  Believing that THEY would be the ones to help their families from afar.  Yet this man who was helping them to get there, was dreaming of coming to New Zealand to study English.  He had a translator with him from Somalia who filled the gaps for me during our short conversation in the immigration line.  Somewhere in that conversation he had the balls to ask me if I wanted a job too! His motives were purely selfish and his heart deathly cold.  I guess that's the way it needs to be when you are sacrificing human lives.

Recently I came across a study of human trafficking in Ethiopia.  While I knew that we wanted to help these women out of prostitution, I had read an article someone had posted once about the difference between prostitution and trafficking.  Prostitution was definitely where the heart of our ministry was.  The author talked about how everyone is trying to jump on the Trafficking "band wagon" to get more sympathy, more attention, perhaps even more FUNDING! 

Trafficking is not a band wagon I ever wanted to jump on.  Why would I want the situations of these women to be any worse than they already were.  But after learning more about Trafficking, what it means and how it is disguised, I realized that this IS indeed the work we are getting ourselves into. 

This, not because these women are being locked up and raped as we have seen in movies such as Taken.  But because the definition of Trafficking is:

Human trafficking is the movement of someone by deception or coercion by another person for the purposes of exploitation such as forced prostitution, forced labour or other forms of slavery. It is an organized criminal activity in which human beings are treated as possessions to be controlled and exploited.

Domestic trafficking in Ethiopia, in my opinion, is endemic.  

"A large number of women and children suffer from different types of inhuman abuses and exploitation as a result of trafficking within Ethiopia. Existing studies indicate that trafficking in women and children from rural areas to urban areas is a prevalent and steadily increasing practice in the country." Reads this study on domestic trafficking."

Trafficking here extends far into the fabric of society.  It rips up the potential of the women and children it targets and throws them into the deep pit of hopelessness.  There is a heart cry from the corners of eternity that call US to do something about it. It's found in Isaiah 58:6-7 and goes like this...

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to SET THE OPPRESSED FREE

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?"

It's talking about fasting...and maybe that fast is from food...or maybe it's from the comfortable life you live, the safety of your own country...to extend into the dark corners of the world to bring rescue.

Someone has to....

The Gift Which Keeps On Giving

.

They’re the BEST kind.  

The gifts that go beyond the expiry date. 

The kind that cyclically provide. 

The ones that you remember far beyond the initial receipt.  

Those that, in some way, continue to show up just when you need them.

We have spent two Christmas seasons here in Ethiopia now and have come to terms with the fact that here the “season” as we know it, doesn’t exist.  On December 25, life goes on here.  We have to TELL OR REMIND people that it’s our Christmas time and are often mocked for that fact that our Christmas season lasts a couple of months, where here it lasts a couple of days. 

While part of me misses the Christmas season and festivities, I am already readying myself for what I am about to be smashed in the face with when I return to the Western world- Fanatical consumerism!  Like extreme terrorist attacks, insurgences take place on our bank accounts where everything explodes and one day later, the mess has to be cleaned up.  Then for months, the debts have to be paid.

Am I wrong? I don’t know.  Maybe things have changed in the last two years.  I remember consumer spending around Christmas had slowed during the financial crisis.  Maybe it’s remained the same. *sigh

Anyway what this whole experience has taught us is that there are things and days and gifts in life that matter and some that, well, don’t matter so much.  There used to be an advertising campaign by the Warehouse in New Zealand (a big red warehouse that is equivalent to maybe Kmart or Target for all those non-Kiwi’s reading my blog.)  It would always say, “The greatest thing you can give your children is TIME!”  This is SO true. 

Time is one love language that almost encapsulates all others. It takes time to deliver LOVE.

Last Christmas we were given a gift that helped us to give this gift of time to our children.  Actually, the gift was financial and it was at our discretion about how we would spend it.  It was right around the amount we needed to get an annuu membership at a local resort.  One of the nicest in Ethiopia and it resides in our town.  It included a free nights accommodation for our whole family in the Presidential suite, free access to the resort which you normally have to pay a lot for, then free access to the swimming pool, kayaks, WiFi, gym, Pool table and discounts on the Spa Treatments. 

Asaua and Matthias at Kuriftu for Matthias' birthday breakfast

All year round we have had the enjoyment of this resort.  It was our get away when we needed our space.  It was our good internet access portal that we could use.  It is our family retreat where TIME with the kids is inevitable.  It was our place to hang out and have cheap buffet breakfasts. And of late, our destination for Saturday morning walks where we could get our weekly hot shower. This is our gift that keeps on giving.  I am thankful every time I walk into that place for my Aunty and Uncle who gave us money last Christmas for this pleasure.  We have used it beyond the price that was paid.

Again this Christmas, some other people are wanting to give us a gift.  It is a gift they are willing to pay a price for- THEY want to give us $5000 but they are rallying around their friends and family to help them put together this money.  Their names are Aysha and Emilou and the gift they give is one of a kind.  Maybe in the future more appeals like this will happen but this is the first of it’s kind on such a large scale.  And the price that they are willing to pay goes far beyond what we could have ever imagined.  Both of these beautiful girls are willing to sacrifice their HAIR!! 

Long, beautiful, wavy, shiny hair.  The kind that won’t happen over night, but WILL happen. 

And as they give their hair, people are giving their money.

And as people give their money, we can give children scholarships and women rehabilitation from commercial street work.

And as more women are rehabilitated from prostitution, more mothers become available to look after orphaned children.

And as more orphaned children are cared for in Ethiopia and raised as leaders, the stronger society becomes for the next generation.

The stronger society becomes if the 3 million orphans are looked after and raised in healthy environments (not that we aim to target them all…but let’s just SAY!), the less dependency will exist, the crime rates will go down, there will be less slavery that will damage peoples’ potential, less corruption will exist in government, the more the country will thrive!!  Huh, and the gift just keeps on giving!!

But before you jump to conclusions and assume that I am crazy for even BEING so AMBITIOUS!  I have a little piece of information I want to share.

The thing is that if all of this were a result of giving, then actually the greatest recipients are not the communities or societies out there, but the communities of givers themselves.  And if You respond, then this is the proof of the benefits that belong to YOU.

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Jesus Christ

I read this the other day in a NZ NEXT magazine published last year. 

"Giving and receiving is the flow of life.  The brain registers the act of giving as a primary human function and you will thrive when you give!! [Emphasis added]

A medical research centre in the US set up support groups for people suffering from MS (Multiple Sclerosis).  The group leaders were people who had suffered MS for many years.  While there was marked improvement in those attending the group to be supported, the most remarkable improvement was in that of the person helping the group.  As a result of these findings, further studies were conducted to measure brain activity while engaging in giving and philanthropic acts.  The results again were two-fold.  Well-known feel-good chemicals were released in the brains as a result of giving.  Furthermore the brain area activated was that which satisfies our basic needs; food, ses and emotional security.  So it would be fair to say the act of giving is as fundamental as our need for food, water and procreation."

SO

It is fair to say, that you NEED to GIVE.  And Yes, I know that everyone has someone to give to and there are always people in need needing your money- a few million in the Phillipines right now.  But you can never give to much. 

So what I suggest you do is donate now. 

Here are the bank details for the Bald and Beautiful campaign.  They have nine days left.  Nine is my favourite number.  Will you just give even $9, or $99 or even $999 :)

38 9003 0792278 01
Kiwibank

Help us, help them to Dare to Dream

Most of us in the western world take even our dreams for granted. Our ability to have big visions and dreams for our future often stem from the opportunities that surround us and the people who have inspired us to take advantage of them.  We see people realize their dreams and in forgetting their initial struggle in attaining their dreams, we think that if they can do it, well so can I.

We have a dream. Its a dream I am going to share when I get to New Zealand and pray that people will catch it and support it. Its a dream I believe was Divinely inspired.

I have so many dreams that I find myself having to control them. I have to filter which ones are worth chasing and which just need to be swept into the dust pan in my mind.

But today I sat with a room full of women who struggle to dream.  I have   lived in a country where people struggle to dream for the last two years. They struggle because of lack of opportunity, lack of inspiration, lack of resources and presence of political and economical obstacles. Yet some still dare to DREAM.

Yet these women face a greater struggle. Their struggle is against their own worth. Their own value. Their own shame. The greatest enemy of their dreams are themselves.  Yet we live in societies where the greatest enemies of our dreams are the ones closest to us! We struggle against the Tall Poppy syndrome where we are so insecure about ourselves that we need to chop the heads off of those around us who dare to rise above their circumstances and chase their dreams!

But these brave women openly shared their minute dreams. They were limited by their desire for survival and their visions were blurred by their desperation. Desperation for the immediate can alter our patience for the eternal.

We want immediate change when God wants eternal. "For our light affliction which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and ETERNAL weight of Glory. While we look not at the things which are SEEN, but at the things which are NOT SEEN: for the things that are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Cor 4:17-18

"How can I dream when I am like this?" One girl asks as she points to her 39 week pregnant belly. And the others dreams weren't far off her mark. Dreams of change. Dreams of deliverance. Dreams of a home with no pressure of a landlord who expects you to pay your rent with your body. Dreams of a home where the focus is on their children. Even if that means eating less, earning less, exposing less.

They see what more they can gain: their dignity, relationships with their families, their FREEDOM!

So today I want to ask you, yes you, big dreamer, to dream FOR these women.  This week I was in a development training with our church and we learnt about going into the community and establishing relationships with community leaders BUT we also learnt the importance of going in with a vision. People want to know that you have a vision. And when

I told these ladies that I had a vision for them today, I saw the reality of that lesson in action. As they right now find it hard to dream for themselves, we need to dream for them.

They have dreams. They are locked away along with their potential. But what we want to do is give them the keys to help them unlock this treasure chest that has been hidden to keep them safe.  And its going to be a process that will take a few months - maybe a year.  And we have a plan. We have  put our dream on paper and we need others to run with it, to advocate for it, to financially get behind and support it. For the sake of these women and the next generation.

So right now, we need sponsors.  We need you to give, to share, to ask, to sacrifice, to reach down into your treasure chest and give us a hand up. We want these women to be able to help themselves but first we need you to help us help them.  There is a ship load of treasure just waiting to be found.  Here is how you can help:

Sponsor one lady to get off the street for one year for  $50 a month. This will enable her to be rehabilitated and self sufficient after the first year. We will give you a name, her story, her photo and help you follow her journey.

Sponsor a Social worker to work with these ladies through the program @ $100 a month.

Buy a loom for $150. This will help these women train in scarf making and hopefully earn themselves a good living off the street.

Buy a spinning wheel for $100 for the same reason!

Plant a seed. As start up costs are often high, we need people to help plant a seed.  We currently have these set up costs needing some assistance:

Rent of some land: $5000 for the first six months.  This land has buildings for accommodation for the women, warehouse space for cotton weaving, classroom space for addiction rehabilitation and life skills training, office space, child care space and agricultural potential.  For more info, contact me.

We also need to buy beds, mattresses, desks, chairs, tables, ovens, kitchen utensils, cupboards, couches, linen, mats. All of these can be made locally and aren't too expensive. 

Your seed of anywhere between $10-$1000 can help us purchase one item. Depending on how much you give, we will let you know what the fruit of your seed is!

This is us dreaming again but also having a bit of faith in what God is able to do.  Please, give generously.

You can give to Redeeming Love World Missions Fund in America or through PayPal to Michelle.tiatia@gmail.com and we will make sure 100% of your money will go towards what it was gifted for with full reports.

Merry Christmas everyone. Now go buy something that will last for eternity!

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moths and rust can corrupt and where thieves can break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matt 6:19-21

Project: Rescue

It’s been a long time coming.  Four years to be exact, since this dream, this vision; this need was identified and planted in my heart.  Four years ago since I woke to the sound of the Muslim Call to Prayer at 5am and called out to MY God in silent prayer.  Silent because I lay a metre away from another girl on a mission.  Called out because this girl on a mission (me) was being missioned herself.  The mission that went on outside of me reflected the mission that God was trying to accomplish inside of me and that July morning in Nazaret, Ethiopia, the mission was accomplished.

The childhood pain, the adulthood shame; all culminated into a place of purpose.  Unforgiveness I held against my father, my foes, myself; at that point seemed futile.  It paled in comparison to the stories I had just heard. Here I was trying to piece together my story to share.  In trying to figure out what parts I should expose, I navigated through my dirt and my perceptions and reflected them back off the lives of these women.  Nothing that I had ever experienced seemed wasted.  I thanked God for carrying me through.  For “what you [they] meant to harm me, God meant for my good.” But not just my good, the good of others. 

For the time my father told me he would pay me $2 when I ended up on the street.

For the women who had taken away the security of my relationships.

For the friends who turned against me when I needed them the most.

I finally saw the purpose in my pain.

These women I had encountered in Nazaret, their stories broke the floodgates of my tear ducts.  Their testimonies penetrated the defense walls of my heart.  Their children tore down the ideologies I upheld in my mind of what life should look like.  My life was at the mercy of their pain.

Fast forward three years and I find myself walking to church through a hallway of brothels.  This street lined with women and children in the same situation as the women I had met in Nazaret.  Except they lived on the opposite side of the wall of hope.  Hope was not in sight for these women as it was in the Women in Nazaret who were on their way to recovery. 

But one woman found it.  Her redemption had come.  Her grace had been found or GRACE had found her.  I helped to move her off the street and into a new place and received the blessings from onlookers that I didn’t deserve.  I was just a straggler in a bajaj who just happened to be in the right place at the right time to help this woman make the best move she had ever made.  The move first began in her heart though. 

I had been a part of this ministry of Hope in Nazaret and knew that there was more that this woman needed than a conversion and relocation.  She needed rehabilitation. 

Not long after another woman died.  A woman who had cried out for help but failed to receive it before her lifestyle took this mother from her children.  From HIV to alcoholism to prostitution; the legacy she left behind was not one worthy of any accolades. 

Women on the street witnessed two events that MUST have shaken their worlds.  They saw Life and Death pass before them.  Life given and life taken as a result of choices made.  SURELY, I thought, this must have made them question their own decisions to be where they are and doing what they were doing. 

Now that I have seen, I am responsible… There goes that line again..

So I find myself again this year receiving GRACE = undeserved, unwarranted, unexplainable, outlandish UNMERITED FAVOUR.  By this grace, I overcame the temptations that faced me again.  And the Bible says that we are more than conquerors.  I heard it once said that we are MORE than CONQUERORS when WE ourselves CONQUER and then HELP OTHERS to do so!!

So in His time, and by His Grace I set out to connect with these women who God had placed on my heart. 

Last Sunday night my friend and I went out to meet these women where they are at- in their workplace. 

We walked into one house, bar, brothel- whatever you like to call it.  It’s getting dark and the kids are still playing outside.  They take us in to see their families. There’s coffee being poured and a customer is waiting on the bed in the room adjacent to the room we enter.  We sit on one bed which takes up more than half the space in the room.   I can’t help but think of the activity that has taken place on this bed.  My heart revolts.  The nerves soon dissipate into the coffee cup that is always accompanied by conversation; otherwise a spurring on of one is instigated. 

So we talk, play, break the ice with introductions and exchanging of names and glances that signify peace.  Selam new.  It is peaceful on this bed of desperation.  I ask how work is and the young pregnant one says it is good.  The other disagrees and says, No, it’s not good.  "It’s bad." 

She has just been deported back into the country because she had been found illegally working in Dubai.  She was desperate for a way out and we had come with a large signpost showing her which way to go.  So we leave them with a decision and a time and place to let us know what they decide.

Four days later, the word had spread and 18 women come to sign up for the program that was about to take place the next day.  Unsure of whether or not they would all come, we welcome them with open arms and big smiles and sign up their names on a piece of paper.

So Thursday comes and the lunch is prepared by two amazing ladies who, at the last minute had prepared for the unexpected response.  We are waiting for the call and it comes.  First one woman and her baby and then seventeen more and three more babies.  All boys.  All fatherless and yet full of smiles when given a simple toy to play with.

Trust was displayed as they shared their stories.  Short versions to break the ice and to make them reflect, as I did when asked to share my story, about whether or not they were ready to change their lives.  Tears were shed and defences were lowered as they made the first step into the journey that could possibly set them free. 

We heard stories of slavery and bravery...stories of abandonment and desperation...stories of love lost and dead ends that led them to this place they would never have chosen before. Two hours later and we had names to the faces I had walked past so many times before.  Hope made an appearance and ultimatums were given. 

Their stories were familiar yet again so heart breaking.  I have heard them before and I can understand their dilemma in a society where streams of income are not readily available to the uneducated and rejected. 

So we have job to do.  The relationships we have built with people working in the same field will hopefully make it easier for us to do so. This is them...

Yesterday on my way to church, I walked past these women again.  I am no longer a stranger to them nor they to me and they ask if we will meet again this week and I say YES!  They are all planning to come again this week.  Even without promises of money or an allowance or even a description of what our rehabilitation journey will look like.  They come in faith and in hope to receive Love; and the greatest of thing we can show them right now is Love.  Love will Rescue these women.  It’s the only Thing that can.

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Cor 13:1-7;13

This song has been ringing in my ear this week  It’s a song that was written by an amazing girl who came here last year in January with a team from SBU in Missouri.  The lyrics go like this:

Because she wakes up every morning, walks down to the corner, turning every head as she goes; she makes a living with her body, let’s somebody own her, coz that’s the only life that she knows. She doesn’t know what Love is…

So we will sing about ...

(Song by Madi Walker)

LOVE is something worth sharing.  

Soddo

Alarm screams at me to break dead silence.  Amharic music plays signifying the beginning of our adventure.  We wake, we walk, we fill the van of sixteen and we drive to collect two more.  It’s 4am by the time we exit the city gates that is lined by Ethiopian Air force fences.  It doesn’t take long and I am back to sleep along the steady roads between here and there.  Here being DebreZeit, there; Soddo, Wolayta.  

My sis squashes behind me, fourth on a three seated row.  She laughs as the girl next to me asks me something and I reply with a request for a repeat.  No repeat, just a shocked look and a turning head.  An obvious sign that her English vocabulary is entirely limited.  And she’s in University? I think.  Does she not even understand “Did you say something?”.  No she doesn’t.  So my sister giggles to herself in lone observation.  

Four and a half hours later and we drive down into the city which sits in the valley all wet and dirty.  It’s dressed in beautiful green mountains and far away lakes: Arba Minch.  It’s soil is red and It’s roads are hilly. 

We pull into the University grounds to unload the baggage mountain that steeples high on top of the van.  Seventeen students disembark and head to the buildings that lay ahead of the cobblestoned drive way we are parked upon..  My sis leaves me with her suitcase as she combs dormitory lists to find her name and her new home for the coming nine months.  She finds, we leave.  Suitcase and bags in tow and an excitement that is the product of knowing that there is a space that exists securing her place in her third year of study.  

The study though, is not what SHE would have chosen.  The University neither.  But the government has chosen this career for her out of lack of other places in areas of study that might have brought her joy, in a city that may have brought her comfort.  Instead she endures and she suffers.  She is strong though and I admire her deeply for that. 

Smelly hallways with dirty walls usher us into her new dormitory which houses six girls on three bunk beds with little room for anything else other than one small desk and a chair.  There are six cupboards that enclose one bunk against a wall and mattresses and pillows are additional condiments in this disastrous recipe.  I ask how she can sleep on these dirty pillows and she tells me of a fungal infection she had on the back of her neck the year before.  A new pillow is a critical necessity we buy. 

Once settled we board unfamiliar bajajs.  Theirs much wider than ours.  Able to fit four rather than the three “our” bajajs can hold.  I tease about the second hand bajajs being sent to this city.  But we climb a hill and reach the top for only two birr.  She teaches me about Quanta meat and the drying and salting process that preserves the meat we now eat mixed in with injera and spicy wot.  It’s totally agreeing with my taste buds and gets washed down with my first macchiato for the day.  It is already 11:30am.  

Walking through landscaped footpaths that lead into the next tourist town, I already notice the difference from here and there.  Or rather, they notice the difference in me.  Am I a foreigner? An Ethiopian?  Mixed blood? or Chinese?  Long straightened hair confuses India in the mix to which my public denial sends teenage girls into a cackling applause.  For two days, the attention is manageable.   A lifetime of curious gestures and stares would have me begging for anonymity.

As planned we arrive at the Soddo Christian hospital around lunch time.  Led down a rocky path through beautifully landscaped gardens, we arrive at the doorway to the beautiful home that belongs to the Doctor, his wife and their two beautiful children; one blond and blue eyed, one with gorgeous dark curly hair.  Furnishings which contend with American homes and well established home school routines.  They offer us lunch in true Ethiopian style to which we decline for a retreat to our bedrooms.  Back up the path and adjacent to the entrance of the hospital lies the place we call home for the night.  The bedroom crying for our company; tired bodies desiring still to be horizontal.This relationship has to wait.  

With power outages at home, this generator backed up power supply with kitchen and shower in tow, begged for some attention.  With permission to use the facilities and ability to do so, I bake in the company of my sis.  Wifi opens up the greatest recipe book that has ever existed for mankind and I scale it’s recipes for the lemon meringue pie we will share for our desert with the Doctors family.  To start the process I make the pastry and we head out the door for additional ingredients for the baking I will do later in the night. 

On our return, I meet Dr “Ears, Nose and Throat” who sits on the board for the Pan African Association for Christian Medical Centres (or something to that affect.) He tells me of the Mission medical centres they are responsible for and one sounds familiar.  The Kenyan one our friends visited before they visited us eighteen months ago.  Frustrated yet impacted they had arrived at our airport.  We played games and shared stories.  They brought us shopping and left us with news of ongoing supporting.  One day, we know they will return.

So we talk and he admires my baking and me and sis head off to dinner with the family.  Enchiladas, Mexican rice, tortilla chips with three different dips all lay upon the hardwood table.  Aquas and reds splash through the house and hug the coffee into the cup we hold to compliment the dessert.  This beautiful and patient wife saves her husband some dinner for when he arrives from his last minute call out that left dinner in his dust as he dashed out the door on our arrival.  My curious nature calls for question asking and ever learning the stories of those who come to serve the people we have come to love- the people of Ethiopia.  A Muslim man converting to Christianity because of an arm being bitten off by a lion and him receiving surgical miracles through this ministry.  Mission organization stories and furlough trips home. 

We indulged in good conversation simultaneously while indulging in good food.  The cute child conversations always taking precedence though before they headed off to bed.  We head off too.  Thankful for good company and delicious food, a place to rest and the offer of unlimited wifi. To which I take advantage of to make necessary skype calls to my boy.  He is staying with my mum.  We talk of plans to reunite, undisclosed information is shared and love is exchanged.  He’s growing up my boy.  Freedom is calling us apart and the approach of manhood drawing him away.  What to do with our separate lives and desired connection, we decide every day.  It’s a daily journey which is made easier by instant access in our hands yet made difficult by the limited waking hours that we share.

After skype calls and facebook crawls, we pack away two dozen freshly baked muffins and head to bed.  Finally, my body screams as I suddenly become aware of it’s tiredness and the lack of stillness it had experienced over the last twenty hours.  Not as normal, my eyes close and instantaneously sleep begins.  Not even woken by Muslim man crying at the five am call to prayer.  I sleep through to 6:30 and arise to make fruit salad for breakfast.  

So we eat and we shower and I read half an hour.  My eyes drawn to this book about the Holy Spirit that sits upon the bookshelf in the dining room. Chapter one talks of the journey of a man through the desert in a seven year growth of none in his ministry with thousands waiting for his prophecy to be fulfilled.  He is prepared in the desert and I am akin to the place in which he had learnt- the desert place where humility is gained and heart motivations are changed.  He later shares an important season in the harvest of his prophecy fulfilment where family are neglected and church leaders left holding down his fort.  It shook me and opened my eyes to something I had never read before.  I let it take root deep in my heart and have locked that pearl of wisdom away for when my harvest will come.  Ready though, to apply it today. 

Wailing starts wafting through the room like a wind through trees.  The sound of a woman in heart pain fixates with my heart and we lean towards the window sill to see what lies behind her cry.  “He” is in pain.  We find out who he is during our hospital tour.  In fact, we see him in the emergency room, covered with blood stained sheets, surrounded by doctors and nurses.  They roll him past me intercepting my procedure to the new CATscan building where our three tour guides await; so I stand and wait and they try to navigate his bed around the corner on which I stand.  He is old and grey and lacking life but she doesn’t know that yet.  We walk over his blood further down the ramp and as we cross into the cafeteria we hear screams of mourning.  “Abaye!Abaye!” requiring of us tears not just from me and sis but by many onlookers who are working at or visiting the hospital.  It is the resounding cry as we walk the next few blocks through.  “Many doctors come from the States and Europe and can’t stay for more than a year because of the emotional impact they experience.” “Abaye!” means “My father” in the most affectionate way you could say it.  Not just said with words but with the beating down of her body upon her legs.  I wouldn’t be able to handle it either.  Oh, you strong woman, I think.

We meet other doctors and hear the story of how this institution began.  We hear the vision to expand and the amount they need to expand it.  Three million dollars is a lot of money in Ethiopia but it is not a lot to the God who resources what He requires.  The paediatric ward was filled with babies suffering from Measles to epidemic proportions.  The emergency area was lined with unseen patients and the orthopaedic waiting room was not unlike the one I had visited in Addis earlier in the year- FULL of people with something broken.  This in the small town of Soddo.  A city surrounded by rural villages and neighbouring tourist towns.  A city whose streets are lined with homeless orphans with no shoes and monumental statues with classic cultural attire.  Oh, my heart ached for the city of Soddo.  This is where God requires His light to shine.  So we pray for his resources to flow and fill like the lake that furnishe. 

After a final girl talk over tibs and injera washed down with chlorine tasting Ambo water, my sis helps me get on a bus in the crowded bus stop.  The reality of being in the middle of nowhere hits you when faced with the realization that if I didn’t get on a bus at this time, I may not get on the road at all that day.  So we push and she asks the first man on the bus to save a seat for me to be the last girl on the bus.  The seat is saved and the way is paved for me to get on the road.  

We set off back along the road that I saw many people collect water from on the way down.  Puddles of water created by the night before’s rain, allowed people to drink that day- to wash their clothes, to cook their vegetables and lentils.  I saw people beating piles of corn and wondered if the popcorn I ate on many coffee ceremony occasions was sourced from the sides of these roads.

I listen in to the sound of Israel Houghton and switch over to Brooke Fraser.  Blessed to be a blessing is the theme that runs through my playlist and I am thankful for the blessed life I live.  Blessed to be around family and to have mine still intact.  Missing my husband more than ever, I wonder if I can be separated from him again to be reunited with my son.  Maybe its okay if I don’t go, I think.  Other alternatives are contemplated.  Something to talk over with the hubby when we reunite.  However, another reunion is awaiting.  I have three hours behind me and I arrive in Shashamene- the home of Rastafarianism and I jump off one bus and onto another.  Three hours later, I arrive in Koka.  It’s eight o’clock at night and I find myself walking in the dark again.  Boy, two days go by fast.  Instead of getting into a van full of strangers this time though, I jump into the back of a Ute filled with friends.

Comfort Eyes

This past March my mother celebrated her 60^th birthday.  A woman who’s eyes I sought comfort in so many times in my life.  From visits to the doctor as a child, counselling sessions as a teenager and labour pains as an adult.  Within the depths of her pupils, I found solace.  Whatever circumstances I faced, if I could eyeball my mother I knew there was peace.  In that place was lack of judgment because out of every one in the world, mum knew me best. 

When I would feel unhappy or depressed, my mum would be the one who would lift my spirits and tell me that I WASN'T FAT OR ugly or uselss!  She would defend my self-worth and pick it back up again.  Everyone loves my mum and it's not hard to understand why once you get to know her.  

On her own, she raised five of us children, even when she was married to my father.  She worked long and hard to give us the best life she knew how to give.  Yet she wasn’t perfect.  But she was there.  Her eyes never failed to meet the expectations I had of them; to melt away the problems of the world.

So in knowing this love, I wonder what it’s like for those who don’t have those eyes to sink into-those eyes that bring comfort, that heart that brings love.  Are they the ones who seek comfort food, or who expend themselves on work or exercise?  Are they the ones who abuse their bodies to try and satisfy that need for comfort?  If our children don’t have those eyes to look into and know that everything is going to be okay, then how will they survive?

This is the plight of the orphan, the cry of the boy who stopped me on the street a couple of weeks ago to tell me has no mum or dad.  To ask me to help him.  Will I be the one that will fill the gap, the wide-aching, gut wrenching gap that's been left by the death of his mother and father?

A few months ago, I spent a couple of days in Addis with friends.  Over two days, we attended a concert and a church service.  On both occasions we as an audience were challenged to help meet the needs of the orphan epidemic that exists here in Ethiopia.  The challenge was expressed in many ways but one of those was through a poem entitled, Whose Children are They?  It was all in Amharic but I got the gist of it. 

THOSE children who walk the streets and beg for food and make you feel uncomfortable with their stench…whose children are they?  They are YOURS (the words sent goose bumps down my spine.)  They are MINE.  They are our responsibility.  They are the responsibility of the church.  They are the responsibility of God's children who see them and are able to give to them. 

Even this morning I spoke passionately to my daughter about US (her...I...the six of us that are left) and why we are in Ethiopia.  "God wants to impact this world" I said..."And HE [the Great Almighty God] does THAT by using PEOPLE [small, incompetent, sinful US] to do that!  He places them strategically in places [and spheres of influence] so that ultimately HE can accomplish what He wants to accomplish.  We can either live selfishly and accomplish what WE want to accomplish, or do what HE has asked us to do.  And for us right now, THIS is where He has strategically placed US."...a bit harsh, I know.  BUT she gets it...I know she does.  God is using her in this place EVEN at 12 years of age.

WE are responsible to give THEM [the 4 million orphaned children] comfort and LOVE and nurture and CARE.  Eyes that look into the depths of their souls and say, it’s going to be okay…I don’t judge you but I love you- unconditionally. 

I read an interesting blog recently about a woman in South America who had adopted kids from one particular country.  Her revelation was that in the thousands of dollars she had spent on adopting these children, was the potential for those children, or children of that country, whose parents were so desperate to give their children a better life that they would put them up for adoption, to keep their families together. 

The statistics that were shared in the service we went to were that around 22,000 Ethiopian children had been adopted out overseas over a 5-10 year period.  While I don’t disagree with the adoption of children, I think how much money had gone into that and what would change for those children if they were able to be supported in their own family, in their own country. 

Our friends from BringLoveIn have a program called Keep One Home...this addresses that exact need.  And THEY are looking for sponsors right now.  Check out their website if you can.  We will have similar programs running in the future.  

I am passionate about this.  

This is a need that needs to be addressed.  

There is a way, a solution.  All we need to help solve this program is for good people to strategically place themselves, their spare cash, their arms where God wants them to be.  

"All it takes for evil to exist in the world is for good men and women to do nothing"