Menjare Teaching Trip - Gambela Orphans - March 2019

When we were there in January, what impressed me so much about these Sudanese Churches in Gamebela Region was they were extremely poor by any standards.  Suffice it to say, they may be the poorest of the poor in Ethiopia.   However, even in their poverty, the church understood they had a responsibility to care for the widows and orphans.   Because of the number of people fleeing Sudan, there are many families that are separated, some parents are caught, some loose their life and other single parent families arise.   They still look to help these orphans and other children at risk. After seeing their heart in action, we made commitments to help them in these efforts.  We have and will again provide clothes, food and a small monthly stipend for the Pastor or each church to distribute privately.  Additionally, on this trip, the Ladies Bible Study Group made over 100 Pencil Pouches filled with Toothbrush and paste, pencil, pad, toy, candy an...

There is a community of Sudanese out on the fringe of Gambela that number about 10,000.   We first visited this area last January 2019 and decided to work with this particular church in three different areas:  The Physicial Church Building, Providing Water and Working with Orphans. These were pictures of the church from January 2019. Since then, they have taken down the old building and have started construction of a newer building that will have a tin roof for the rainy season and straw sides.   These are photos of the building from this trip in late March of 2019. In January, we also provided funds for a well to be dug by the church.   They tried three different wells, each of which did not provide water. We are now meeting with the Authorities to discover how much it would cost to have a water line to this community of some 10,000 people.   As of right now, that is still a project we are consider...

We are working with 8 Sudanese Churches in the Gamebela Region.   This particular church is the most difficult of which to travel.   It is about 80 km from Gambela on a road that runs straight to the Sudan Border.   Along the road we pass through Tarpham - a settlement with a church right outside on the of Sudanese Refugee Camps which we visited in January 2019. The road is filled with travelers either walking into Ethiopia, or traveling from village to village to markets.  Here are some of the photos we took along the road as we traveled to Madeen. This is Palata - He is a Sudanese man that is on his way to market from his village.  The Royal Blue Color you see on many Sudanese is by their choice ... while it isn't a "national" color, many of the people have clothes/head scarves that feature that color. Behind me is the village of Medeen.  In this villiage there are about 300 people, but they are part of about ...