Hope for Ethiopia

There is hope.  We keep seeing it, in different places and with different faces.  Different hands working, but the same love.  Today we saw Hope for Korah, an organization that focuses on the area in Addis Ababa called Korah.  This part of the city is centered around a leprosy hospital and around a trash dump where many people try to survive by sorting through the garbage to find anything salvageable.  Hope for Korah runs a feeding program that gives breakfast to 60 children.  They also have a program that teaches women to make hand crafted items to sell.  The women work each day, and as payment they get rent and food for their families. They also have childcare on site for their children who are not yet school-aged.  The goal is for the ladies to learn a skill that they can eventually use to sustain their families. 

Messaye is one of the ladies in the program.  She is 40 years old.  Hope has come for her, starting with treatment for her son who had a terrible case of scabies.  Shemelis, who was interpreting, remembers that the boy had sores everywhere and that he was constantly moving because he was so itchy.  Messaye had scabies also.  They had come from their home in the countryside to look for help.  She was begging to provide for her 3 sons.  They were living in a tiny one room home with only a bed.  Mom and one son slept on the bed and the other 2 sons slept under the bed.  She told us that now she has work and food and even a mattress!  Her boys are in school.  Mark, who is here from Canada with his wife and 2 sons for 8 months working with this mission, mentioned that Messaye is friendly and a peacemaker among the 43 women in the program.  She had the idea to dye some of the reeds that they weave into baskets.  The baskets with some color have been very popular.  There is hope for Messaye and her sons.

It was more difficult to see the hope when we visited the government orphanage this morning.  There are about 150 children there - from newborn to 8 years of age.  The resources are quite limited.  We brought lots of formula for the babies and lots of cloth diapers, wipes, some clothes for older children, diaper rash ointment and antifungal creams, dental supplies, a few soft blankets.  We held babies and hugged children.  We sang and played and prayed.  Even though we tried not to, we cried.  We felt that our gifts and our presence there was too little to be hope or make a difference, but we asked the One who multiplied loaves and fishes to feed hungry people to multiply what we have given.  

"But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish."  

Psalm 9:18