Ethiopia Feb. 2023: God is Awesome

Written By: Nia Wong

With 16 of us going to visit 35 huts on every village day, we have had so many stories of God being at work in us and through us on this trip!  

Every day we spend about 1.5 hours travel time to get to these villages on the bus.  We work through city traffic picking up translators and disciple makers along the way, (imagine the bus getting more and more crowded as we make each stop) until the bus has standing room only & we get on unpaved, bumpy, dusty dirt roads for another 5-10 miles.  These are great times to get to know teammates or talk with one of the Ethiopian translators or disciple makers but it was also on these long bus rides in a moment of quiet that I felt the Holy Spirit impress on my heart how much He loved the Ethiopians.  I know He invited me to join Him in His work here.  I responded by obeying but Ethiopia was on the other side of the world, not my first priority and not on my heart and my mind. So I knew, on that stretch of the road, in the quiet of my heart as tears came that this was God showing me His heart for the lost and His heart for the people He loved. It was awesome to experience God in this way on a hot crowded bus in the middle of Africa.

After staying back to take care of Evan who was sick yesterday, it felt good to be able to rejoin the whole team on the last day. There is definitely some spiritual warfare happening as he fell ill after being in a village that had a witch doctor presence. I have experienced some days of low response to the gospel message and I am aware that there are forces against the good news being shared. I have also experienced openness and a welcoming of the messages of both God’s good news through Jesus and also about human trafficking. Today was one of those days. There were a lot of open hearts and decisions made today. Praise God. I was able to team up with Nate (my CA teammate), Hussein (our translator), Meti (our disciple maker) and our village guide ( a person who lived in the village and knew how to lead us to the right homes that had the chickens that were delivered). The most encouraging part was the father of the first hut made a decision to accept Jesus and then he followed us from hut to hut and listened intently. He and the guide were definitely our persons of peace. Our village guide knew the gospel message so well that I could hear him say it even before the translator was able to get the words out. In some ways he was being trained to share the good news while taking us from hut to hut!

I am especially impressed with the teenagers on this team. Many have Gods heart for His people and I got to see Nate’s big heart for Ethiopia. We were firmly rejected by the witch doctor who wouldn’t allow us on his property. As we walked away, I could see Nate’s vision linger back on the hut, the witch doctor and his three children. He asked if we could pray for this family. I was very encouraged by his spiritual sensitivity. So Hussein and I together with Nate had the opportunity to intercede for this witch doctor’s family, asking the Lord to break the strongholds and one day take this whole village for Himself!

As we walked along the dry fieIds on the dusty paths, I was able to hear our translator’s amazing testimony of miraculous healing. Hussein was unable to speak as a child and was often teased and hurt by other children. There were many times he wanted to end his own life because life was so painful. It wasn’t until he was 17 that he was miraculously healed at a big revival meeting. His four non Christian friends who knew him witnessed his ability to speak for the first time and they all wept and accepted Jesus as their personal savior. Since then he has led many others to Christ (in the thousands) and have even been used by God for some real modern day miracles. After hearing how powerful and relevant his testimony was, I encouraged him to share his testimony with the 3 villagers who were walking with us. So we squatted under the shade by the road and listened to his testimony. I hope they were encouraged in their newfound faith as they took in Hussein’s story. Our God is amazing and doing great work here in Africa because of us and in spite of us! God is always working around us and He is always inviting us to join Him in His work. Perhaps you may want to consider whether God is inviting you to come and see what He is doing in Ethiopia on the next trip!!