After church this afternoon I flipped through Twitter to
catch up on the news of the day and ran across something that made my heart
ache. The subject line was “ISIS behead
and shoot Ethiopian Christians in sickening new video.” A few years ago, as much as it pains me to admit
it, I may have kept scrolling through my newsfeed. Today was different, though. It’s personal now.
You see sitting next to me in the passenger’s seat next to
me was this handsome young man named Sofani.
He is my son. He calls me
dad. He’s an Ethiopian. The awesome thing about adopting an older
child is that they have vivid memories of their childhood. We are always fascinated and surprised when
Sofani opens up and tells us stories of the first decade of his life in
Mekelle, Ethiopia. Most of his stories
are between us as a family but we do talk very openly about religion in his
birth city.
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| A map of Islam in Africa with Mekelle, Ethiopia highlighted |
Mekelle is a stronghold of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. Most of the statistics you will see claim
that Mekelle is 96% Orthodox, 4% Muslim and less than 0.1%
Protestant/Evangelical. Sofani tells us
of how the Orthodox treated the Muslims better than the Evangelicals. According to him, the Muslims in Mekelle didn’t
mean any harm. If the number of mosques in Mekelle is any indication as to the
way Muslims are viewed, this makes even more sense. There was one mosque in Mekelle six years
ago. Now there are 10 in this rapidly
growing city. Evangelicals, while slowly
gaining ground, have been forced to worship in private places behind the
protection of armed guards - out of the view and away from the harassment of the
Orthodox.
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| An ISIS map showing Ethiopia as part of the Caliphate |
Earlier this week I heard from Dr. John, my
missionary friend in Mekelle. Over the
past 15 months through our fundraising efforts we have raised nearly $210,000
and started the first Evangelical Bible Training Center in Northern Ethiopia
with more than 80 students in our first two classes. We moved from the temporary school into our
permanent home last month. We only have
to raise another $65,000 between now and the end of the year to be paid in full
with the property which will be self-sustaining at that time.
We’re getting ready to start our third group of students
next week in the new facility. In
September ‘15, the first group of students will reach their first milestone and
receive their certificates for completing the first three trimesters. This is so cool.
It is exciting to know that this school is going to continue
to develop church leaders that will plant churches across Northern
Ethiopia. It is important to know that
there are evangelicals from neighboring cities that want to begin satellite campuses
of our Bible Training Center.
So many times you read the news and feel helpless. “What can I do?” “That’s terrible but there’s nothing I can do
about it.” While my heart aches for the
families of the 28 Ethiopians that were savagely murdered by ISIS in Libya, I
do feel some peace in knowing that we are doing something about spreading the
truth about Jesus Christ in a part of the world right on the front lines of
this Holy War. I say “we” are doing
something about it because the vast majority of the funds donated over the past
year have come from people that I know – church family, Facebook friends,
doctors, local business people, family members, etc. We have done something. We still need to do more but we have done
something.
To learn more about what you can do to help the cause of
Christ by contributing to the Bible Training Center, log onto www.harvestinethiopia.com to learn
more.
