Visit to Gore

The Bethel Home for Children in Gore where the Ethiopian Pentecost took place is still an important ministry of the Illubabor Bethel Synod that is supported by our partnership. The iCARE program of Shenandoah Presbytery seeks the needed sponsors for 50 of the 71 children who are there, most of whom are orphans.  We took a day away from Mettu to visit the Home and the 32 hectare coffee plantation nearby which has been donated to the Home, and which they hope will be able to help them move toward self sufficiency.

The only way to get into the coffee plantation is to drive through a sprawling 850 hectare tea plantation.  The operation is run by the Synod through its Development and Social Services Commission (DASSC).  IBS’ Director for DASSC, a man named Terfassa traveled with us and was able to explain many things about this and other social projects of the Synod.

 

Millie, Randy and Terfassa at the Coffee Plantation

 Terfassa told us that they have just hired a new agronomist who is helping them to make the plantation more productive.  In addition to growing the coffee, they also harvest honey and cardamom and they have a few banana trees.  They are hoping to cultivate ginger and avocado and possibly other fruit trees as well.  They hope for the first time to have a small profit at the end of this year that can help to support the ministry of the Home.

Because Ethiopians traditionally eat with their fingers,
handwashing is an important cultural ritual.

 After visiting the plantation we went to the Home where Kes Amana, the director welcomed us to lunch at his house.  After lunch he showed us around the compound visiting the dining room, classrooms, wood working shop and the library.  All the children attend school in Gore but the home provides additional tutoring to help them succeed, and vocational training such as woodworking, sewing, and computer skills. 

Endalkachew Kidanewald (Endy for short) was another of the Ethiopian high school students who was at the Gore Home when the revival took place.  He remembers the Home as providing a sanctuary for the homeless, the destitute, and the orphans.  It was a place for children who had no future, who had no place to go.  It was a place where they were accepted and cared for, a place that offered hope to many people. 

Endy now lives in the States but visited Gore eight years ago.  He was remembering how twenty years before that, during a time of great famine when many people were starving in Ethiopia, he and other students from Gore were helping out at the relief site.  At that time he said they found many babies left to die by the roadside.  Either their parents were dead or their starving mothers could not stand to watch them die, so they were just left at the side of the road.  Endy and the other Christian youth would pick up these babies and take them to the Gore Home to be cared for.

As he was telling this story of their rescue efforts to a group at the Gore church, the man who was pastor of the Gore Church at that time sat down and started to cry.  “Why are you crying?” Endy asked him.  “Because I am one of those kids that you and your group found who was left to die by the side of the road.” was his reply. 

Young people at the Gore Home

The pastor had been born into a Muslim family, and during the great famine was one of those small children who was left to die at the roadside.  Saved from starvation by committed Christian young people, he was raised in the caring environment to the Gore Home, and in gratitude is living his life as a leader of the Christian church.

 There are still children and young people who need the caring environment and the new hope that is offered by the Gore Home.  It is one of the blessings of our partnership that people in Shenandoah Presbytery, through our iCARE program, can be a part of this important life-giving ministry.

A Ministry of Reconciliation

Kes Iteffa is one of the most highly respected of all the Ethiopian church leaders.  He retired in 2010 after serving eight years as the President of the five million member  Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY).  He remembers working as an evangelist at the Bethel Home for Children in Gore back in 1973 when an event occurred which has since been referred to as the “Ethiopian Pentecost.”

The Old Chapel at the Gore Home

Iteffa and several high school students felt that they wanted to pray and went into the chapel at the Gore Home.  There they said that they felt the strong presence of the Holy Spirit.  They began speaking prayers in words that they could not understand.  Others on the compound heard a lot of noise and wondered what was happening.  They remembered that they had been studying the book of Acts and they had asked the missionary if those kinds of things still happened in their day.  Does the Holy Spirit still come?  Are people still given gifts to proclaim the Gospel in other tongues?  As they look back on it they felt that their Bible study had prepared them for what they experienced.

Those high school students spent the next several days going from door to door in Gore proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.  They said they could not help themselves.  They just had to tell the good news.  That was the beginning of the young indigenous church that took off and grew like wildfire.  But then other things happened that would both test and multiply the young church. 

A communist government came to power in 1975 which expelled all the foreign missionaries and began severe persecution of religious people in Ethiopia.  For the next 17 years, the Marxist government imprisoned, tortured and killed both Christians and Muslims alike.

Iteffa was one of several Christian church leaders who was imprisoned and tortured for his faith.  Fortunately he was not one of the many who were killed.  He still carries on his wrists the marks of where he was chained and hung from the ceiling while he was beaten for hours at a time.

Through this experience of violent persecution, these young Ethiopian Christians remained steadfast in their faith, and miraculously during that dark time the young church grew strong.  When the communist regime was finally overthrown, Iteffa and other leaders who had survived provided strong spiritual leadership to the church and it continued to grow rapidly.

After serving the maximum of two terms (eight years) as president of the national church.EECMY, Iteffa was not really ready to fully retire.  Consistent with his lifetime of service to God as a leader in the church, Iteffa began another project which may be even more inspiring than the other features of his amazing life.  He got together with the Roman Catholic Archbishop and approached the Prime Minister of Ethiopia with a request that they be allowed to begin a Reconciliation Project to heal relationships with the now imprisoned communist leaders who had beaten and tortured them, and who had done the killing of their fellow Christians.  The Reconciliation Project as they envisioned it would also include, if possible, the release from prison of their former tormentors.  Many of them were still in prison having received either the death penalty or life imprisonment for their crimes.

Kes Iteffa

Iteffa told me that Reconciliation Project has grown and gathered religious leaders from other churches and from the Muslim community as well, and that they are beginning to see results from their efforts.  He said that beginning in September 2011, seventeen of the top communist leaders, who had been among those who tortured and beat him, have been pardoned.

The ones who have been pardoned know the reason why those whom they tortured now seek their release.  It is because of their faith in Jesus Christ.  They take literally Jesus’ teaching to pray for your enemies and for those who persecute you.  And they are living out the words of 2 Corinthians 5:19  “…in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,…and trusting the message of reconciliation to us.” 

Because of their witness to the power of Christ in this particular way, those former communist oppressors who have been pardoned, are now also followers of Jesus.  In a truly profound way, they have received more than their lives back, they have received a whole new life in Jesus Christ.  I cannot imagine a more dramatic way to apply the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ to the horrible specifics of people’s real life sins and situations. 

Once after he had been tortured Iteffa was taken to the office of a guard who had witnessed the torture.  The guard told him that when he started at the prison there was an inmate who had been imprisoned because of his role in a failed attempt to overthrow Emperor Haile Salassie.  That prisoner had prayed for this guard, quoting Jesus’ words from the cross “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

“What do you have to say about that?” the official asked Iteffa.  “I say the same thing.” was his reply.  The guard spat on him and walked out of the room.

On a visit last fall to the prison, Iteffa was looking for that particular guard among the prisoners but had not been able to find him.  Then, he said, just as he was leaving, that prisoner came up to him from a group of prisoners, fell at his feet and said “Forgive me, I was ignorant.  I didn’t know what I was doing.”

A Spirituality of Travel

Throughout the Bible the people of God are always on the move.  Even when they came to settle down in the promised land, they were to affirm every year as part of their identity that “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…”  Deuteronomy 26:5 

When God chose a people to help carry out the plan of salvation, God’s first word to Abram was Go.  “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’…So Abram went,…”  Genesis 12:1, 4a 

I guess you could call that the first mission trip of all time, and it was God’s idea.  Perhaps God wanted Abram to leave everything familiar behind and go to an unknown place, so that he would have to listen more carefully to God for direction.  The reason he was to go was to serve God’s purpose, regardless of whether he fully understood the plan.   Apparently, part of God’s purpose was also to test and strengthen the faith of Abram. 

Traveling to unknown places, away from usual routines, familiar surroundings and our comfort zones opens us up to see and hear things differently.  It is like living in an ever-changing equation where the only constants are God and you.  I believe that is a major reason why mission trips can be such spiritually rich life-changing experiences.

Apparently God thought Abram would be a better servant to God’s purpose if he was away from home and relatives and familiar ways of doing things.  Jesus seems to have had the same idea when he called Peter, Andrew, James and John to leave their fishing boats, Matthew to leave his tax office, and Nathaniel to give up sitting around under a fig tree.  Even after he called them, Jesus didn’t settle down in one place to teach his disciples.  He was constantly traveling around all over Judea.

Maybe it’s because the surroundings, the people and the expectations are unfamiliar that people on mission trips are a little more open to new things happening.  Maybe they rely more on God to get them through uncertain situations.  Maybe it is easier for God to get our attention and to work on changing things in us when everything else is unfamiliar. 

Whatever the reasons, there is much biblical evidence pointing to a kind of  “spirituality of travel.”  Many times in the Bible significant revelations from God take place after people have been called away from their usual surroundings and routines, as when Moses turned aside to see the burning bush more closely. 

Responding to the call to serve God’s purpose is what matters most.  It is important to put ourselves and our gifts at the service of God’s mission.  After that, it doesn’t much matter whether we are sent across the globe or across the street.  Both local and global mission efforts serve God’s purpose.

So today, as we sat in the Mettu Church in Ethiopia, eight time zones and two continents away from Shenandoah, enjoying a three and a half hour ordination service, we prayed for two other mission teams from our Presbytery that are beginning their travel and service this weekend to help rebuild storm damaged homes.  Winchester First and churches of the Mountain Valley Mission Community are headed for New Orleans, and Mossy Creek and churches of the Central Valley Mission Community are headed for North Carolina. 

We are including some pictures from Ethiopia.  We know that even at this great distance we are still united in the mission that we share, because Jesus chose to use God’s first word to Abram as the first word of his Great Commission:  “Go… and make disciples of all nations,…”  Matthew 28:19a:

Fireside Conversations

After our visit to the Woodstock Church and a break for coffee at the café, Tariku and I traveled to Front Royal for a soup supper and conversation with the people at Nineveh.  The threads of earlier conversations throughout the day came together in unexpected ways during this evening visit.

I explained to Tariku that Shenandoah Presbytery has many small churches, and that Nineveh is one of them.  The membership (at 50) is much smaller than either of the churches we had visited earlier in the day.  Still, we are growing in our sense of mission and in our openness to what God may have in mind for us. 

We arrived early and began our visit in the sanctuary.  Kes Tariku recognized that our pulpit and communion table are covered with linens that were embroidered by the Lydia Center for women’s work on the IBS campus in Mettu, Ethiopia.  There is also a wooden Ethiopian cross on the wall of the sanctuary.  But it was when I told him that Nineveh prays for him by name and for our partners in IBS every Sunday, that he turned to me and said, “Randy, THIS IS a partner church.”

Tariku’s answer earlier in the day to David Howard’s question about the best thing we could do as a partner presbytery, was “More church-to-church partnerships.”  Several of our congregations, like Opequon, Shepherdstown, Smyrna, Massanutten and others have been very involved in this partnership over the years.  But only three congregations have become official church-to-church partners with congregations in Ethiopia: First Harrisonburg, First Winchester, and Covenant in Staunton.  Each of these congregations has dedicated major resources and has sent and received delegates to build and maintain relationships with their partner church over the years.

To hear Kes Tariku affirm that a small church like Nineveh which cannot commit major mission funds, IS a partner church because of our commitment to pray for our partners every Sunday, opened up a whole new area for discussion of the meaning and expectations associated with church to church partnerships.  It is an ongoing conversation that may open doors for many of our smaller churches to new kinds of relationships with our Ethiopian partners.

Nineveh is blessed to have a large stone fireplace in our basement fellowship hall, which lends itself to fellowship and to conversation as the warm glow of the fire took the chill out of that November evening.

During the supper conversation Tariku heard about Nineveh’s efforts to balance local and global mission outreach, and how we have begun a weekly prayer support relationship with a church that shares our name:  Ninewah Presbyterian Church in Iraq.  Their pastors have been driven off, and elders who were leading the church have been ambushed and killed.  We pray weekly for those who are left and for those who now live in refugee camps for the safety of their families.  I also shared with those present, the story of the Shoe Box Time Capsule, and how it brought a needed word at the right time to Woodstock church.

When it was Tariku’s time to talk, he spoke about how the visits to each of the churches that day had touched his heart in a different way, and how moved he was to see the different ways that God is working in the congregations of Shenandoah Presbytery.  (Again, I invite you to share with the rest of our presbytery and our partners, the things that God is doing in your congregation.)   Tariku also spoke about the ways that God was working in Illubabor Bethel Synod, about the tremendous growth they have experienced and about the new ways they are seeking to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is good to hear each other’s stories about what God is doing because it reminds us that God is bigger than any one understanding of God.  Often when we share, we hear each other say “God is at work in what you have just told me.” even though what we have shared may seem to us to be just part of the routine of the way we do things.

Every church in every place shares the great commission that Jesus gave to “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  Jesus also promised to go with us, and so every different expression of each particular congregation’s mission can reveal to us a different way that God is at work with us and through us.  To share those stories strengthens our faith and broadens our awareness of the loving God who though hidden, is right there with us; cheering us on and leading us on.

The Word to Woodstock

From Strasburg I took Tariku to Woodstock.  This seemed like swinging from one end of the congregational spectrum to the other:  from a church whose calling was to rise up from the ashes, to a church that was working to complete a 1.3 million dollar addition to their facility.  The project stretched over three years but pledges to the capital campaign were met in about two and a half years.  Groundbreaking happened in March 2011 and the construction continued for 225 days.

Because it was still under construction, we had to put on hard hats to take our tour, and in each part of the building we could imagine several different uses that would support and resource the congregation's ministry and outreach into the community.

One factor that gave impetus to this building project was the need to have a totally accessible fellowship hall for use by the congregation and also by the community.  Several stories that reveal God at work in Woodstock have arisen throughout the course of this building project.  (Those who are interested can access Pastor Lisa Webb's blog at http://growingandbuilding.blogspot.com)  The presbytery will get to experience this new facility for themselves when Woodstock hosts our Presbytery meeting on November 13, 2012.

Of all the stories that are part of this history in the making, my favorite is this one.  There was a time before the groundbreaking, before any construction bids were received, when some people at Woodstock were beginning to have second thoughts about going ahead with this project.  The capital campaign was well under way, and people had been paying on their pledges and the balance in the building fund was growing steadily.  But as everyone knows, the economy was not in a good place, and except for the architects plans, there was nothing else to show for all their efforts.  Some began to wonder if the project should be scrapped, or at least delayed.  Some did not want to do anything until all of the money that was needed had been collected.  By all accounts that I have heard, this was an uncertain and uneasy time.

At about this same time people were cleaning out closets in the old Sunday school rooms.  Among the things  they discovered was a sealed shoe box that was a "time capsule" project of a Sunday school class twenty five years ago.  Pastor Lisa Webb decided it would be fun to unseal and open the shoe box time capsule at worship one Sunday.  When they opened it they found some Sunday school materials, a photograph of the Sunday school class participants, and an amazing poster that the children had colored.  The poster contained what seemed to be a definite word to Woodstock

Amazing, don't you think?  A direct word (in English and in writing no less) that remains sealed and hidden and forgotten for 25 years in a dusty Sunday school closet, and then finds the light of day and speaks at exactly the time when that word is needed.  (I still get emotional thinking about it.)  Such a clear word to move ahead.  Build the Church!  God was in this and everyone else who was in this felt God's presence and leading.

My observation as one who stood somewhat on the fringes of this unfolding faith journey is that those who had ears to hear did indeed hear this word from God.  From that point on there was no looking back and now the building that God led them to construct is complete.

This is certainly one of the stories that shows God at work in the churches of Shenandoah Presbytery.  This story touched Tariku's heart and through him will touch many other churches in Ethiopia.  I know there are more stories like this in our congregations.  Perhaps some are still sealed in shoe boxes, hidden in forgotten closets.  It's time to dig them out.  Time to remember.  Time to share those stories with each other.  Because in every story we share where God is at work, there is power to Build the Church.

Fire and Faithfulness

The first church in our presbytery that I visited last November with Kes Tariku was Strasburg.  They had suffered from a disastrous fire on July 2, 2011 that reduced their education building to basically just a shell, and left their sanctuary unusable.  They continue to be grateful to God that they were meeting outside when the fire happened and that no one was trapped inside the destroyed building.

Tariku has had experience with fires in churches.  Beginning on March 2, 2011 international news reported systematic attacks against Christian homes and churches in the Jimma zone of Ethiopia, which is part of the territory of Illubabor Bethel Synod (IBS).  First Church Harrisonburg has a church-to-church partnership with the Jimma church, so we felt that friends of our presbytery were being directly effected by these events.  When it was all over, 13 churches in our partner synod had been destroyed by fire, as well as the homes of 39 IBS families.  (An additional 53 churches of other Christian denominations were also destroyed, as well as other private Christian homes.)

Immediately, as our partners made us aware of what had happened, they asked for our prayers, not only for the victims, but also for their enemies, for those who had inflicted the damage.  This was a powerful Christ-like witness:  to pray even in the midst of their own loss "for those who have done this violence."

Under Tariku's leadership the cause of the fires were thoroughly investigated and the detailed reports indicate that it was an extremist group with its own radical agenda that had incited the local Muslims to violence two days after a Christian allegedly desecrated pages from the Koran.  Because they refrained from blaming their Muslim neighbors and instead prayed for their enemies, thereby refusing to escalate the conflict, many of the Muslims who had participated in the violence against the Christians, repented of what they had done, expressed remorse and then joined in side by side with Christians to begin rebuilding the homes and churches they had destroyed.  To me this seems like a great victory for the Gospel, and a great frustration for those who were trying to turn Muslim and Christian neighbors against each other.

So Strasburg was not the first charred remains of a church that Tariku had walked through.  It was all too familiar.  He listened intently as Pastor David Howard described what had happened and the overwhelming sense of loss that people at Strasburg were feeling.  The grief of such a loss can be immobilizing and the way into the future as clouded as the dark smoke that had filled the sanctuary.

There is a predictable epic struggle that follows such a catastrophe and presents a crisis all its own.  Should we put everything back the way it was?  Should we start from scratch and envision new possibilities for mission and ministry?  Should we seek a path somewhere in between those two options?  Yet even in the midst of Strasburg's own struggles, David Howard was interested in what was happening in the churches in our partner synod and the conversation moved freely back and forth across the ocean to mission and ministry opportunities that might be opening up.  

At one point in the conversation David asked Tariku, "What would be the best thing we could do as your partners?"  Tariku thought for a moment and then said, "More church-to-church partnerships."  As our time for this visit was running out, we could not explore that idea very much, but we closed our time together in prayer for Strasburg, and for sister churches in Jimma, and for the witness of faithful Christians, whose congregational and personal history has been marked by a time of being tried by fire.

Seeing With New Eyes

Kes Tariku is the President of the Illubabor Bethel Synod and a wonderful Christian leader.  In Ethiopia the title "Kes" (pronounced like "case") means "Pastor."  When he was visiting our presbytery last November, I had the opportunity to spend a few days with him.  On the first day we were together he had lunch with the Mountain Valley Mission Community (MVMC) pastors, and that afternoon and evening I took him to visit three of our  mission community churches:  Strasburg, Woodstock and Nineveh.

The situation in each of these churches was very different:  Strasburg was recovering from a devastating fire; Woodstock was working on completing its new addition, and Nineveh was involved in a congregational discernment process to envision its future.  Yet in each case, after visiting each church and learning some of the specifics of what was happening in each different situation, Tariku came to the same conclusion:  "God is working here."

It was an insight that sometimes surprised us.  In dealing with the tremendous loss caused by a church fire, for example, we might be more likely to feel that God has abandoned us rather than that God is at work in the midst of this.  Or for a small church that is without a major crisis or a major project at the moment, it might be more tempting to think that God is paying attention to some other situation, not ours.  But in each case Tariku was able to see and to sense that God was at work in ways that he said "touched his heart."  Sometimes it takes "new eyes" to see things in new ways:  things that we might not have paid attention to, or that perhaps were so familiar that we began to take them for granted.

One of the benefits of our Ethiopian partnership through the years is that both we and our partners get to see things through "new eyes". In the next three posts to this blog I will tell you each of the stories of what happened in each of those three churches on that day in November.  I know that Tariku visited other churches in our Presbytery during his visit, and I am curious to know what stories others of you have to share about your time together with him and what his "new eyes" helped you to see in your church.