Here are the final numbers for the ET17D trip.
- People who heard – 863
- People who accepted – 468
- People trained (with Evangecard) – 359
29OCT2017
Thursday, 10/5.
So… our last village day. What’s going to happen today?
Today Jessica and I are paired together. Even though it’s Jess’s first trip, it’s our fifth day, so we should be good to go – she’s now a seasoned missionary. After yesterday, we’re not sure what to expect. It turns out that our day as a team is probably the most “successful” I’ve had. We saw 45 people come to faith today. We had one of those days where the people are just ready – God has prepared their hearts to receive, and all we needed to do was show up. In fact, because of time constraints, after the first home Jessica and I did almost nothing. We had our translator and disciple maker do the cube presentations directly, rather than taking the time for translation from English. It was a beautiful thing to see the locals doing this work entirely by themselves. Our contribution (as we have been told and we remind ourselves) was to be the key to get the locals in the door.
If yesterday we plowed some spiritually hard dirt, today we definitely reaped the harvest. In the entire village today, our teams saw 145 out of 161 people come to Christ. (After we got back, Rachel and Suzanne considered if our spiritual battle and struggle on Wednesday was not even for that village, but to discourage us from going out on this last day, or to make us so fearful that we would be ineffective. Hmm….)
05OCT2017
Wednesday, 10/4.
“If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you…”
(49 new believers today. Even on this “bad” day. We thank God for keeping us safe, giving us courage as needed, and just all around being God. Today He reminded me that He is never surprised, there is nothing that “He didn’t see coming”, and to trust and obey is more important than “knowing”.)
Thursday had the makings of a great day. Jax, Bill, and I were teamed up. I’ve gone with Jax before, and he’s nearly always reporting a large percentage of conversions. Bill is a retired pastor. And I, well, I’m in the middle of my sixth trip, so what could go wrong?
And yes, lots went “wrong” today. In our first house, no one accepted. That was a bit surprising, but it happens. At our second house, we had a very large crowd. Literally, kids were climbing the exterior wall so they could see over others standing in the doorway. We met an Orthodox man (priest?) and the mother of the house is Muslim. Again no one accepted, but I thought we were having very good discussion, and the Orthodox fellow seemed to agree with everything we said. He agreed that only Jesus and his blood is what saves us.
That’s when things went sideways for us. Another man came by, very upset. I’m still not sure precisely why. Regardless, suddenly the Muslim woman wanted us to leave, the Orthodox man is also arguing with us, and chaos is starting to break out. So we leave and head for the next house.
Now there is a mob following us. A literal mob. Some 20-40 people walking with us, well behind (after?) us. Some are shouting, many are irritated. Unfortunately, our translator got caught up in the moment and argued with a couple of the agitated villagers. Then, our 3rd home refuses to let us on to the property, throws the chickens at us, and we hear that they do not want to hear anything we say and will not accept anything from us.
Bill and I (and others with us) are trying to get our translator to move on. The crowd is getting more upset (maybe even incensed?). We all recognize this is now formally an unsafe situation. Jax is a trooper and is sure to stay close with us – he doesn’t seem particularly alarmed. Bill and I both sense a certain excitement, as we recognize this is some serious spiritual activity happening. At the time, we assume that Satan has a stranglehold on this village, and doesn’t want to lose it. We pray. We walk. We rebuke Satan. We pray. We coax our translator along. There are some kids walking with us who seem to like us, while other kids are almost snarling. It is quite surreal. As I look back, I definitely see the crowd is beating someone, but I can’t see whom. My instinct is go back and try to make peace, but that time seems to have come and gone. We keep going to our fourth house.
And for a time, things calm down. Our fourth house is our guide’s house. He is a believer. Our team make some calls to let our team leaders know what’s happened. Our disciple maker returns with a rifle. (I didn’t know it would be a rifle day!) We later learn he is part of the village security team. Since the entire house are believers, we do training rather than evangelism. Jax does a Bible story (we call them “I Am Second” stories). We are just minutes from leaving….
We hear what sounds like commotion, and some of the family runs outside. The commotion gets louder, and just as I come to understand it is people yelling, two of our team come running into the home. Visibly shaken, they tell us they had to run from an angry mob (sorry about that you two, I think that was likely our angry mob still wandering about), and the mob threw stones at them. Maybe sticks as well. One of them was actually hit with a stone. There’s a mark, but no bleeding. Shortly after this, we hear three gunshots. Okay, now we really pray. More phone calls. We wait. We pray. We plan.
Maybe 30 minutes later, we have an escort of 6-12 armed security people and a group of another 10 or so locals escort us back to our bus. After a time all the team makes it back, in similar fashion. After a brief but interesting diversion to the local police station (where some of the mob participants are already in jail), we leave the village. The village leaders express their shock and sorrow that this happened.
04OCT2017
Rachel and I were teammates today. And for those who might be confused, I mean “my” Rachel (as we have 2 Rachels on this trip).
(Totally off topic, but we had a massive rainstorm yesterday.)
In our visits today, every single person in each home was a believer. So that is both great and not good. It’s great that we met so many believers – not good in that we had no opportunity to share the gospel today, with unbelievers. In our first home, Rachel did share the gospel, only we found out that the one person we explicitly were sharing for was already a believer. She was very sure that her salvation was based only on Jesus’ death and blood as payment for her sins.
In one of the homes (the 3rd), as we were ready to leave and asked if they had any prayer requests, they told us that their oldest son (I’ll call him Garry) is mute. The disciple maker (who lives in this village) told us that the boy has an evil spirit. When we inquired how he knows this, he told us that the boy is “afraid of Christians”. Sure enough, when the family brought in Garry, he was pulling hard to get away. After he was essentially dragged into the room, he forced himself into a “corner” (round huts don’t really have corners) as far away from us as possible. Garry was clearly scared and wanted nothing to do with us. So, we tried to encourage him not to be afraid. And then we prayed. Rachel, me, the disciple maker, and translator. We prayer of course both that the evil sprirt would depart, and that Garry would be able to speak. I can’t say with certainty that Garry has/had an evil spirit, but I can say with certainty that Garry was no longer afraid of us. In fact, quite the opposite. He wanted to be around me, and held my hand from one house to the next. We also saw Garry as we made our way back to the bus, and again Garry was there and motioned for me to take his hand. Each time I held his hand, he smiled, laughed a little, and his face lit up.
We also encountered some amazing hospitality today. One man, who was not on our list of home visits, was with us in two or three different homes. He invited us to stop at his home for a rest, and a glass of milk. This was pretty amazing, as milk is quite expensive here. Unfortunately, neither Rachel nor I are able to drink the milk here, so we had to decline. However, both our disciple maker and our translator enjoyed some milk.
Our second example was a young girl Rachel’s age. She is actually the person we preached to in the first home. She followed us to each home today. And, completely on her own volition, she carried my back pack the rest of the day. And for anyone who knows how much I carry in my pack on these trips, that’s no small feat. I was quite humbled that she would do that for me.
03OCT2017
Second village day.
Today Marie and I were teammates. While we saw just one conversion today, we have great hope (and faith) that a dozen or more others will shortly profess faith in Christ from the people we visited. Many of the villagers we spoke to today said they want to accept Jesus, but they first needed to talk with family members who weren’t present at the time. They plan to report back to the disciple maker when he comes to visit them.
The highlight for me today was in fact the young man who accepted today. He arrived midway in our visiit, and God had prepared his heart in advance. He said he wanted to accept before we even presented the Evangecube!
On a very different matter…. Today we heard from a woman in the village who works in Sudan (we are fairly near the Sudan border). She told us of how traffickers are in fact at work in this area, only not for slavery. Traffickers are taking children into Sudan, and then sent to other places, where they are “harvested for their organs”. I’ve read about this, but this is the first time coming into direct contact with occurring. This woman told us that conductors get $10000 US for each child.
So, please pray that our trafficking prevention presentations are well-received.
02OCT2017
First village day.
I went with Matt today into the village. Incidentally, Matt and I colead a high school small group. So it was quite enjoyable to have the privilege to be with Matt on his first village day. We saw many people receive Christ today, 21 in total from our 5 homes. As we had been told the area is considered pagan, we encountered a number of believers as well as other religions. Several of us had expected to have some challenging or even confrontational visits, but Matt and I experienced people either ready to receive, or believers.
We did hear at the team meeting that some teams did encounter some resistance.
01OCT2017
Today we met Africa. The first two days we had excellent hotel rooms, and everything went fairly smoothly.
We had a 4 hour bus ride, which is not uncommon. When we arrived at the hotel in Gumuz, our rooms were not quite ready, as they needed to purchase beds for the rooms. In this case, the hotel needed to convert single rooms into twin rooms, so they had to purchase small beds to fit into the rooms. The wifi was active, but not functional. We had connection but no internet. There is no hot water anywhere in the hotel. Nor will there be anytime soon. It seems the hotel is not equipped for hot water. We do have showers, though.
Much to Rachel’s chagrin, this hotel has no Mirinda, the world’s best Orange soda. And, let me explain – it probably sounds like I’m complaining, I’m not. At least I don’t think so. The last few trips we’ve taken we’ve been “spoiled” in some sense with nearly constant power, good wifi, even a working fridge in some of our rooms. And while we have definitely enjoyed some of these nice little luxuries, we’re here for something much more important than to be dejected by not having them. And I’m happy to say that’s exactly how things are going. The team in general is taking this all in stride. Rachel in particular has not complained at all.
Speaking of Rachel, she did our team devotion tonight. She surprised me (in a very good way) with just how good it was, and timely. She told me it’s the first one she did on her own, rather than finding one on the internet pre-made. She spoke about keeping our team unity, and not griping, complaining, nor being grouchy with each other.
30SEP2017
Another flight today – this one only 1 hour though, to Bahir Dar. Bahir Dar is largely west of Addis. It’s easy to find on an Ethiopia map, if you look for Lake Tana, in Northwest quadrant of Ethiopia.
Anyway, we had another packed today of “visitation ministry”. We went to 3 places. First, we went to Cherry’s of Bahir Dar. This is a satellite location of the Cherry’s ministry in Addis. Again, we met with the ladies and had the privilege to encourage them, and to share. As before, they encouraged us as much if not more than we did them. And, I found it convicting to see how God is transforming them, and their intense desire to live for God now.
We then visited a new ministry to many of us, The Breakfast Club. A young lady from Temecula started this just a couple years ago, and TBC is a ministry to feed breakfast to children who otherwise would not eat. Not just breakfast, but all day. Any day. And from that beginning it has now grown to include afterschool time with tutoring. And most significantly, these acts of love are now providing an opportunity to share the love of God with the parents (mostly single moms).
Finally we went to the Hamlin Fistula Clinic here in Bahir Dar. We were able to spend a few minutes with the ladies there, currently in treatment. We purchased a scarf for each one, and in a few short minutes saw faces turn from stoic to joyful.
Tomorrow we have a ~5 hour bus ride to Gumuz.
29SEP2017
We landed Thursday morning without incident. However, we did have one team member not make the trip due to illness. Nick took ill and had to go to the hospital. Our prayers go up for you, Nick.
Our first day in Ethiopia we jam packed with visiting various places. We went to Cherry’s, the Derg Museum, and an Ethiopian Orthodox church. Those three are mainstays on virtually every trip. We also went to “the Lucy Museum”, home of the bones of the famous Lucy historical find.
For most everyone, me included, the day’s highlight was visiting Cherry’s. Allison had the opportunity to do an “I Am Second” story for the ladies, and she chose to tell the Feeding of the Five Thousand account. The women were very engaged, and gave very deep answers to the questions. I, and many others, were very impressed by their answers.
Friday we’ll fly to Bahir Dar, do some more visitation, and get ready to travel by van to Gumuz.
Later today we’ll head off to Ethiopia, starting with the unenviable plane ride. While we don’t know what all we’ll encounter (that’s just how these trips are), we do know we’re not going to our scheduled location. We’ve been rerouted from our planned location of Bahir Dar to a region about 5 hours away from there. This new location for us is a generally unreached (i.e., pagan) area. I take comfort in knowing while this was a surprise to me, this did not surprise God in the least. Looking forward to sharing with you all the amazing things God does.
26SEP2017
I wrote this last week, to help show what human trafficking does. It had been roaming in my head for awhile, and finally came out.
STILL HERE
When I was young I had dreams
but that’s not how life goes it seems
Tell me how i should feel
each morning I when wake up
and find the nightmare is real
The same day after day
There’s no place to hide, not even death inside
They’ve trapped me and I can not get away
At first I told myself I just need to be strong
This torment can only last for so long
But every time the darkness proves that I’m wrong
So when night comes, I’m still here
Daddy you used to make me smile,
do you remember how?
So many men make me call them daddy now
Do you ever think of me,
or wonder how I might be
If you found me now what would you have to say?
There’s no place to hide, not even death inside
They’ve trapped me and I can not get away
At first I told myself I just need to be strong
This torment can only last for so long
But every time the darkness proves that I’m wrong
So when night comes, I’m still here
I try and fail to turn my heart into stone
No matter what I do, each night they won’t leave me alone
It’s no use to pretend to be strong
This torment has gone on for far too long
And every time the darkness proves that I am wrong
So when night comes, I’m still here
Why am I still here
still here
-Dave
25SEP2017
Trip coming soon, Sep 26. We are starting to get “serious” about the trip at this time. We’ve had our 2nd team meeting, and Rachel and I pulled down the luggage today, For me, that’s the real signal that the trip is nearly here.
Please continue to pray for our team, as we (someone on the team) have had a death in the family, some physical things to deal with, and some general “life falling apart”. It is almost inevitable that some of us experience multiple crises concurrently.
For me, I had the pleasure to do the devotion at the last team meeting. I spoke on how God so often does more than we even ask or imagine. God bless you all for your support, both financial and through prayer.
-Dave (27AUG2017)
D Helfrick 