It real, I’m finally here!! Ethiopia is very different from Cambodia but both are great in their own ways. We live on a compound here and work with a local ministry called HOPEthiopia. Everything about this origination is AMAZING!! There main focus is to ministry to the local community through agriculture, health clinics and reaching the Ethiopian youth by having a children’s village on the compound. I have had the privilege of working all of these and it’s so amazing to see all the different ways they contribute to the community.
The Children’s Village: consist of seven houses that are arranged in a circle with a garden in the middle. Each house has a house mom and about four to seven kids that live with her. The children are kids from the village that had unstable/ unhealthy living conditions and therefore they were adopted into the program and now live at HOPEthiopia. Currently there is about 30 kids in total that live here and only one children’s village but there vision and focus is to expand to have many more villages.
The Health Clinic: Our ministry host Ralph lives part time here and in Canada. While in Ethiopia he not only works on the compound but is also a dentist at the clinic up the road. Ralph does free dental work at the clinic for the local community and loves cleaning and pulling teeth. Upon arriving at the compound Ralph explained that he would be going up to the dental clinic and needed some assistance. He also explained that there was an eye doctor up there who could use some help as well and so of course I went to see what it was like! I first started out working with the eye doctor where he showed me the equipment they had and explained the common reason patients came to see him. After that patients started to come in and I could assist him in checking out the patients and I got to see some pretty cool /disgusting eyes!! After a couple times of helping him there was no more patients to help so I went to the dental clinic. There I had the opportunity to clean people teeth and watch Ralph pull out people teeth! Cleaning people teeth was truly a humbling experience. People came who had never brushed there teeth before and they came from from all over. I can’t even count how many people teeth I cleaned that day but it was A LOT, every time I turned around there was more but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Often times ur main goal in coming to these countries is to meet people spiritual needs. Teach them about Christ, to care and love on them but this time is was really cool that we could meet people physical needs and to see such a such clean teeth when we put a smile on there face!
REFORESTATION NATION: Going there on the first day all I could say was WOW! This place is literally heaven on earth. It about a 40 minute walk away from where we live and it is totally worth the walk every morning. The reforestation site is located at the bottom of a mountain with a beautiful creek that runs beside it. There are Ethiopian men who work up there that plant and water thousands (and I mean THOUSANDS) of baby tree each day. We often start by watering the baby trees that were planted the previous day and then move on to planting more trees in little pots. We all sit in a circle around a huge pile of dirt and talk and plant tress for hours. We pack tones of dirt into little plastic tubes where the men then plant the seeds in. After a while the whole community will come together and plant the trees on the mountain so they can grow and help the environment.
Getting the private to work with all of these ministries has caught me so much. I learned a lot about teeth, eyes, plants and of course JESUS. He has taught me to find joy in mundane things and to never take anything as much as a toothbrush for granted. The lord is staring great things here and I can’t to see what else he will do through us and HOPEthiopia.
