Begin with the End

Our trip really began in Uganda. Uganda is a breathtakingly beautiful country made up of lush green hills and colorful flowers. The people have dark chocolate skin and shiny white smiles. The children and adults are warm and loving and welcome you eagerly. I wanted to love Uganda.


But Ethiopia stole my heart, and so I have to write about it first.


Ethiopia has its own calendar (it is only 2002 there), and they actually celebrate Christmas on January 7th. And we had the honor of spending Christmas with the children who live in the dump.


Of all of the places that we were to visit on the trip, the dump was the one I dreaded the most. The thought of going there made me anxious and sick. It seemed like such a hopeless place, and I just kept wondering how I would be able to walk away from a child who dug through the trash to find food.

And then the night before, God gave me the opportunity to talk to Sammy. He is a guide at the Ethiopia Guest Home where we were staying, and he used to live at the dump. I will write another post just about him and his village, but listening to him changed my heart and made me actually excited to go. He reminded me that there was hope for those children.


God is funny like that. The one place that I did not want to go, became the one place where I felt like I did not want to leave. Because He was there.


Before we left, I had pictured the dump in my mind as a small area with a few dumpsters and a pile of trash that the children scavenged around. But as our bus drove down the road that day, I started to see the mountain of trash accumulating on the side of the road and realized how very wrong I was. There were dumpsters there, lots of them, and the children slept underneath them. There were also dump trucks that were able to drive along the tops of the mountains of trash and dump out fresh piles. There were carcasses, flies, pigs, dogs, gnats, rotting food, mounds of animal hair, and dirty smelly trash as far as I could see. There were fires burning and the smoke and ash hung over everything.


And there were children. Probably around 100 or so in the area where we were. Children who lived and ate in the trash dump.



To celebrate Christmas we took two sheep with us. They were tied up and brought along in the trunk of the bus. And then they were slaughtered, skinned, and cooked along with some onions and peppers while we were there. We gave out plates of meat and bread, party hats, noisemakers, shoes, clothes, and some sodas. And we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus.

It was a good Christmas, and my favorite part was Bible story time with a flannel graph. It was this moment, hearing the story of Jesus appearing to his disciples after the crucifixion that I knew there was nowhere else that God wanted me to be but there. Because He was there.


This is Yednekachew, Fitsum, and Imuta. I love Yednekachew. He is so smart. He speaks pretty decent English and can even write all his friends names in English. I hope to be able to send him and a couple of his friends to boarding school. There was so much potential in that place, it is scary to think of it all being wasted.
This is Tagase. He accepted Christ on this Christmas day. He was courageous enough to let himself hope in something bigger than the only way of life he has ever known. Our team leader gave him a new shirt after this picture, but I love that his old one said "Freedom". It is for Freedom that Christ has set us free.
And this is Fruit. Tabby had a strong connection with her, and also hopes to get her out of that place. She is so beautiful. I still look at these pictures and cannot believe that this is life for these children.


When we got back to our room and started making a pile of our clothes to send back to those kids, I thought of these verses...



The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor. Isaiah 61:1-3


That is my prayer for all of them. And that God would use me, and my family, and friends, and church to make it happen.