Sunday, January 30

Sunday morning we split into five cars and went to different churches to morning worship. Back at the hotel after church, we had lunch with several missionaries from the Presbyterian Church, USA and from the Dutch Reformed Church. In the evening, the team met before dinner and compared experiences at the local churches. Most members of the team were at large African Pentecostal services who worship in Amharic. Members of our team had someone sitting next to them translating. (JD’s Ethiopian friend from Seattle, Berhanu, is here with us to help guide us. He gave the team pointers about how to interact with the Ethiopians we meet.)

Ethiopians are proud to be unique in all of Africa in their very early (4th century) relationship to Christianity and also the absence of a history of colonization by European nations. The country’s political history includes a very successful imperial kingdom that became sadly out-dated feudalism during the long rule of Emperor Haile Selassie. He is generally seen as very good as a young king and then so stubborn in his old age that an angry uprising supported by Eastern block countries during the cold war led to a Marxist state. Under communism, all religion was banned. Now, there is a democracy that has been in place for 12 years and the previously persecuted church is remarkable in its strength and influence on daily life. Islam has also taken a strong hold in Ethiopia since the end of communism.

We had dinner Sunday night at an Ethiopian restaurant, complete with live music and Ethiopian cultural dancers. Some members of the team who were invited to dance went to the dance floor and did the best they could. Ethiopian dancing involves a lot of shoulder movements.