* This is a personal blog series about a trip I recently was a part of with Soles for Jesus in Ethiopia. If you are looking for posts of newborn, baby or family sessions, please see the search bar above or the ‘Galleries’ drop down tab in the upper menu. Thank you!

Day 4 and our first stop today will be Mother Theresa Orphanage. Before we head out this morning, I found myself enjoying the warm sunshine and gentle breeze on the back balcony on the third floor of our guest home. Just me and my camera enjoying the morning and trying to capture memories. A couple cats roaming around the area. People walking down the alleyway. The guest home maids taking our sheets and towels out the back to wash them. After a while I had this thought, “They know I’m out here, right? They wouldn’t leave without me?”. Overly confident in thinking they would know I was up there, I kept enjoying the view. After a bit longer I went back into the room. Empty. As I went down the stairs it was awfully quiet. They did leave! ha! Even though I knew I was safe and they would come back, you still get this sort of mild panicky feeling. The sweet girl downstairs assured me that they had just left a few minutes ago and she called Aki on his cell phone. It was understandable that they missed me because we get into 2 different vans. Thankfully they were back within a few minutes. ha!

The first stop was at Mother Theresa Orphanage. The woman who has the title as ‘Ethiopia’s Mother Theresa’, Abebech Gobena, shares an amazing story of how this orphanage started…

The sight of a baby girl suckling on the breast of her dead mother changed the course of Abebech Gobena’s life forever.

The year was 1980 and Ethiopia lay in the grip of what would become one of the most devastating famines in its history.

Gobena, a devout Catholic, was on a pilgrimage to a holy site in the north-east region of the country when she came across the dead mother and her baby, lying amid a sea of people who were starving to death. 

“When I was returning, there were so many of these hungry people sprawled all over, you could not even walk,” Gobena told CNN.
“I had some bread on me, so I tried to feed them. I fed two men. When I reached this woman, she was dead, but the child was still suckling at her breast,” she continued.

“One of the chauffeurs charged with picking up the corpses said to me, ‘I am waiting for the child to die so I can pick up both bodies. I just can’t bear to take the child as well while she is still alive,’” Gobena said. 

Without a second thought, Gobena bundled the tiny girl into her arms and smuggled her to the country’s capital, Addis Ababa. In that instant, she transformed both the baby’s future and her own.

Haunted by the images of the dying people, it wasn’t long before Gobena headed back to the countryside in an effort to source water for the destitute locals. She came across another child in the arms of his dying father.

Gobena told CNN: “At the end of the day, as we were going home we came upon five people, three of them dead, two alive. One of the men dying by the side of the road said to me, ‘This is my child. She is dying. I am dying. Please save my child.’” 

“It was a terrible famine. There were no authorities. The government at that time did not want the famine to be public knowledge. So I had to pretend the children were mine and smuggle them out.”

By the end of 1980, Gobena had taken in 21 children. But her desire to save the young children caused friction in her family.

Read more of her story along with video, here. 

 

So this amazing orphanage that we were able to visit is wonderful. The children are thriving. Currently the orphanage is not taking any more children or teenagers. They do have a medical clinic that helps others though, it appears. We were not able to take pictures or video of this place for protection of the children. We spent some time with the boys in the soccer field. I sat down with one twelve-year old. He explained that he had been there since he was 2 years old (or perhaps for 2 years, but the later seemed more likely).

“Do you have a brother or sister here?” I asked

He replied, “No. My mother, father and brother were killed” as he motioned a machine gun shooting into the air.

He is a very intelligent and kind 12 year old. He explained that his village is near the Ethiopian border near Somalia. I explained that I have 3 children and where I live we have snow. He knew of snow and tried to teach me how to say ‘snow’ in Amharic. I asked him if the kids ever fight and he smiled and quickly shook his head ‘No’ and said that there were consequences for fighting. He explained that the boy’s dorm has a cat and the girl’s dorm has a dog as pets. He wants to be a doctor when he grows up. His peaceful, kind presence was so pleasant.

This is something that is very strikingly powerful about these orphaned children – and even those living in extreme poverty like the street children or those in Korah. They have aspirations and dreams. How many explained to me that they want to grow up to be doctors, pilots, business men… These are not throw-away children. They are children . . . just born in a different part of the world. They are priceless.

 

For lunch, Aki (our interpreter, friend and guide) invited us to visit his home and have our box lunch there. He even stopped at a roadside market and bought us a bunch of bananas. We love Aki. He is an amazing man of God. If you’re ever in Addis Ababa, please consider meeting him, staying at his new guest house (beautiful!) or hiring him as your interpreter. He’s left a powerful impression on all of our hearts.

 

Our last visit for the day is a place called, Sports Bridge. This place offers street children a place to learn teamwork through sports and a place to be safe and out of trouble. This organization is not a christian group, so they did not allow us to pass out any gifts we had planned to give them. That was fine. We have to trust that God placed our team in meeting with Sports Bridge. Perhaps a relationship will begin through this first time together. We noticed that these boys were playing soccer in barefeet, broken shoes, socks or even just one shoe. Aki took some shoes to them before we left for home to pass out to the boys.

 

* Our vans we rode in while we were in Ethiopia.

We had some extra time since we had an extra day in Ethiopia, so Diane had asked Aki if there was a place that we could ride Donkeys in the countryside. So that early evening we drove to the donkey rides. As Aki explained that we were here, we questioned why we were still in the city. ha! Aki explained that it was really difficult to be able to ride in the country, so he found a man with some donkeys that would let us ride in the city. Most of us flashed to the future… local Ethiopians laughing as Americans ride donkeys in the city (We hadn’t seen anyone riding donkeys yet). Aki could sense our worry so he found us a school courtyard that gave us permission. As the donkeys came in they rolled in the red dirt…

Now that they were nice and dirtier 1/2 of the team figured out how to mount the donkeys. This was hilarious. Some of the ladies are tall so their legs were almost touching the ground. The men were encouraging the donkeys to run as well.

Children and local people came out to watch us try to ride donkeys….

 

While I can say this could have been really embarassing, it was probably one of the hardest times I’ve laughed in a long time. The children and the locals watching us were laughing so hard too. They were even taking video of us on their cell phones! After the 1st group went I wasn’t thinking I would go, but I did. Donkeys are bony and cumbersome to ride – especially when they were running! It was really funny though. We were definitely sore the next day. 😉

This isn’t a video of me, but once I get ahold of one from the other girls I’ll have to share it…

This day we did struggle a bit with feeling like we hadn’t ‘done’ much this day. We weren’t able to DO much at the orphanage and we didn’t DO much at the Sports Bridge. However, we did learn that God places us in circumstances that oftentimes we don’t know why. We don’t know what his plan is. Perhaps it was hugging a child that desperately needed time with someone. Or maybe it was developing a relationship with another group, that may lead to more opportunities in the future. One of our teammates shared how this happened on a past trip to Ethiopia. She was going to be giving shoes and teaching women how to make necklaces with Mission Ethiopia. Neither of those things happened, but she happened upon a home in Korah of a women who had premature twins. His story is here on the Baby Juddah blog.

This mother was so malnourished that her breastmilk never came in so she was feeding her premature twins cow’s milk. One twin was weaker and something was different about him. Over time it was determined that his fontanels (soft spots on the skull) were prematurely fused. Plans were made to get him to America (and God worked amazingly to get him here) for surgery. It’s an amazing God-filled story that is worth the time to read.

 

It is safe to say we never fully know God’s plan. And that is true on mission/mercy trips and also in every-day life. And you know what… I really like that.