Day 8!!

“Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.”

Psalms 82:3 NIV

After wonderful introductions the past several days to Ethiopia’s culture, people, and beauty, today we began implementing the teaching, songs, and games we’ve been planning the past several months. 

The morning began with a visit to Elevate Ethiopia (www.elevateethiopia.com), a ministry serving children and their families in Addis through education, mentorship, and economic empowerment programs. Elevate seeks to preserve vulnerable families, keeping them intact so that the children do not become orphaned. Their programs include after-school tutoring, English classes, a class computer lab, life skills training, small business micro-loans for moms, counseling, and medical care. 

In Ethiopia, more than 5.6 million children are missing one or both parents. Hope for the Fatherless believes orphaned and vulnerable children should be placed in a family—not institutional care—through reunification, kinship placement, foster care, domestic adoption, and/or small group homes. Elevate Ethiopia is an important partner, working with at-risk families to avoid children becoming orphaned at all. 

With over thirty kids at Elevate Ethiopia, Rachel shared an inspiring testimony about education and endurance; Jenny and the teens presented an entertaining lesson on the parable of the Good Samaritan; I met with Elevate’s math tutors to share ideas and games for developing students’ mastery in math; and everyone enjoyed playing games together - it was the first colorful parachute the kids had seen and they loved it!

Our next stop was lunch at a farm-to-table restaurant that is part of the life training program at a Swiss orphan ministry where our friend Hewan grew up. Hewan is a translator for Compassion International and recently joined the staff of HFTF. After lunch, we headed to Hope House to finally meet the HFTF kids and begin VBS. 

We have three days of VBS planned—all centered around the parable of the Good Samaritan. The skit was once again well-received 😂 and we also taught them some songs, painted, and played lots of games. Everyone is excited to work and play with these kids over the next week!

If that wasn’t a full enough day, we topped it off by going to a cultural dinner. This is quite an experience! Dancers in traditional dress perform in the style of different regions across Ethiopia—for over three hours! Lively music filled the room as musician played stringed instruments and blew horns the likes of which we’d never seen before. As the night drew to a close, Alysa jumped on stage and joined in with the dancer, soon followed by Ty and then Emily to the applause of the crowd. 

Tomorrow we get to sleep in a bit before heading to church at 10:45–that’s some extra rest we need after today’s full day!

- Parker