Ethiopia Blog

Hello all! Welcome to my Ethiopia update blog! In this blog I will be going over all of the ministry opportunities we have here, and what we actually have been doing here in Ethiopia. So first off, my team and I have been in Ethiopia for about 5 weeks now (it will be 5 weeks on Friday), and so we have only 1 week left in this country! The lord has been moving in miraculous ways while we’ve been here, but with that, the enemy has been attacking us almost nonstop. So there have been a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but we are only going to talk about the ups here, no downs allowed lol. My team and I are currently in the mountains with an organization called Hopethiopa (Hope Ethiopia). Oh, and if you stick through all of this, I have a cool story that I will be putting at the end of this blog!

So, what are all of the ministry opportunities?

Well, we have had some really cool ministries here in Ethiopia. So, lets list them out:

1. Planting Trees
2. Morning Devotionals
3. VBS with the kids
4. And Construction ministry

Thats pretty much everything we’ve been doing here, and you know what, it’s been awesome! So, now that you all know what opportunities we’ve had here, why don’t we go through each of them and I can tell you guys what we actually do and why I enjoy them!

Planting trees:

So, if we are going to be honest here, we only really did this the first or second week we were here, and we don’t really know if we are going to do it again. I do still really love this part of our ministry though! So, if you do a quick Google search on the deforestation here in Ethiopia, you will find that about a century ago forests covered about 40% of the land in Ethiopia, but since then if you look at it today, the forests don’t even cover 3% of the land anymore. So, to help get Ethiopia into a better environment, we have been planting trees.

Morning Devotionals:

We get the amazing opportunity to disciple each of the kids that live in the Children’s Village within our complex that we are in. They split us up by boys and girls, so I can only really give you the details on the devotionals that we have been doing with the boys, but that’s okay. I’m sure if you all went and checked out the blogs of some of the girls on my team you could find out what they have been doing in there lol, but so far, we have had a couple of series devos so that it’s easier to plan for. Now you’re probably like, “Well what have you been teaching these kids, I want to know more Coby!”, well you’re in luck, because I’m going to tell you. So, the first series we did was on the fruits of the spirit, you know, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control. We did a 10-day series on this one because we did an intro day and then one fruit a day. When we were getting close to finishing that series, we were trying to figure out what to do next and all of us guys agreed that that the next thing we should do is TAG… oh wait, I should probably clarify… The Armor of God. So that was a 7-day series with an intro to it, then 1 piece of the armor a day, and we went in order for the most part by what Paul writes in Ephesians 6:13-17. If you would like for me to post all of these devotionals. I can do so on my YouTube channel, but only if it is highly requested.

VBS with the kids:

So, another thing we have been doing is a VBS with all of the kids here in the complex we live in and just this week we have opened it up to the kids from churches around us. With this ministry we have been going over various stories from the Bible, a few examples are, Jonah and the whale, Jesus feeding the 5000, Jesus turning water into wine, Moses saving the Israelites / splitting the red sea, and a few others. At least for the group I have been with the whole time (6-10), we have had one craft for them based on the story and then a coloring page.

Construction:

So, we have not actually done this but, they do have a construction project going on right now. So, right now they are working on a Kindergarten (KG) building in the front of the complex to hopefully open up to parents around the area so that their kids are able to get an education before primary (elementary) school. Right now, they are laying foundation for it so there is not really much for us to do, but hopefully before we leave, we get to do something with it!

Alright, now I know you have been waiting for it, so here’s the story! So, about 3 weeks in, we had to go to Addis Ababa (the capital) to get our Visas renewed, and if you know anything about travel and visas, you know how long of a process it can be in some countries. Here in Ethiopia though, it was a pretty simple process, but when we came here, we used E-visas, so we had to print them out. My E-visa did not print out that bright and so they could not scan the code that they needed to scan. So, the guy that was trying to look at my paperwork asked me to go upstairs to get it re-printed. So, I went upstairs, and it took about 30 minutes to get this printed, because of the line. I get this printed and now there are 2 people Infront of me in line to get my paperwork checked. The way the line works is confusing by the way, so there are isles and then seats for you to sit in while you wait, in most places you’d probably stand in the isles, right? Not here, they would ask you to sit in the chairs to wait, in order of when you got there, but that was not communicated to anyone, so there are people jumping the line and it ends up being almost another hour before I get to the front of this line. The whole time I’m doing this I am remaining calm and occasionally I start praying, not knowing that anyone is watching. So, we showed up by the way, at 1:30 ish, this office closes at 5:30, I didn’t get back to the paperwork checking station until 4:50, so at this point I’m thinking in my head, “we are going to have to come back tomorrow”. But this guy checking my paperwork approves it really quickly and while the system is loading, he leans over the counter and gets really close to the glass and says, “So, do you know Jesus?”, and that caught me off guard, but still, I reply that I do in fact know Jesus. Then, he asks me if I have been sharing about Jesus while I’ve been here, and this is a partially Muslim country that believes in stoning people, SO I say no, and then he grabs a piece of paper from his printer and grabs a pen, then he writes on the piece of paper, “You NEED to talk about Jesus more!” exactly like that, and to top that part of the story, I got my Visa approved 10 minutes before they closed. So, don’t be afraid to pray in public, you never know who’s watching.

Anyways, hope you all enjoyed this blog. Remember to keep praying for me, my finances, and my ministry, keep sharing all my posts everywhere, and SHARE JESUS!