Today our team visited the HOPE Enterprises food kitchen. This soup kitchen would be makeshift by American standards (with its corrugated tin roof held up on poles), but it has been serving the street children of Addis Ababa since 1975. Today, it feeds approximately 660 people per day – 200 children in the morning, who are fed and given some biblical instruction before they go to school, and hundreds of people at lunch, including street mothers and children, people suffering severe disabilities and others who live on the street or are “destitute” (to use the HOPE phrase). Looking at the children and talking to HOPE’s president helps me understand what HOPE does –finding children off the streets or in homes where they are orphans or half orphans, feeding them breakfast, teaching them the Word of God, and making them go back to their homes (off the street), if they want to stay in the program, where they must stay in school, where HOPE pays for school, uniforms and helps with medical care.

Our trip to the ceramics shop was even more encouraging. This shop was originally established by HOPE, but has been turned over to the employees as their own micro-enterprise and today is self-sustaining. Having worked with “for-benefit” corporations in the United States, I offered up a prayer that the ceramics shop would not experience mission creep – the reaction to the force of fostering profitability over being a beacon for Christ’s love to the world.

The return to the food kitchen was the hardest thing I’ve done yet. Watching as the people came in waves to eat, broke my heart, especially knowing that not all would be able to eat today. Typically, HOPE makes enough food to feed 660 people at lunch. Each person must present a meal ticket (which can be purchased for 1/2 a BIR (or approximately $0.12 US. That represents 1/4 of the cost of the meal, the rest being underwritten by donations. Today, even the $0.12 was underwritten, so hundreds of people lined up outside as the word spread that they didn’t need meal tickets. Obviously, they wouldn’t all eat.

Although my heart broke at the idea that hungry people would go hungry again today, I experienced great joy at what I called the “Jessie effect.” Jessica and I went upstairs to greet the people who were waiting for a meal. My heart danced to see the smiles on the face of the children and old men as Jessica greeted and touched each one. I’m sure she had mixed emotions – questions of whether she should really touch these people and of whether she should really be feeling like a “rock star,” but all I saw were the hands of Jesus, as her love became infectious – mothers smiled as Jessica knelt down to shake hands with their children, old men showed their missing teeth in huge grins, as she reached out and touched their shoulders or took their hands.

When we returned to the hotel, Emily (at 12 years old, the youngest member of our team) read a poem she wrote that had been inspired by the day:

HOPE
I am a place where “it is possible.”
I am a place where everyone holds me in their arms.
I am a place in your heart.
I am HOPE School.

Our team is struggling. We all want to do something. On the day that it rained so hard while the children were waiting for school, Bonnie thought, “I’m going home and shipping back 750 of those $1.00 ponchos for these kids.” Later, she realized that one dollar would also buy the medication that would keep one of the many children born each day with HIV/AIDS from being infected from their mother or mother’s milk. Sara met a little boy – Wondemaggen (7 years old) – who had lost both of his parents to HIV/AIDS and was being raised by his 14-year-old sister (Selam) and his 11-year-old sister (Helen). She wanted to adopt him. Later she realized that taking Wondemaggen from his sisters and friends was not the answer. We saw the children without shoes and we wanted to get them shoes. We saw the children, the mothers with children, the destitute and the lame being fed in the HOPE food kitchen for approximately $0.25 per day and we wanted to start raising funds so that some wouldn’t be turned away. We saw people drinking from filthy water and we wanted to help bring clean water to this country. We saw needs and we wanted simply to get to work and fill the needs.

But this would require a permanent ministry in Africa? What does he want us to do with these experiences? Is this just about a one-week mission? Are we supposed to help a few hundred children for a week and then leave? What about the resources at our disposal? Is God just introducing a piece of sand into our spiritual lives so that, like the oyster, we will work on the irritant in our lives until we are able to turn it into a pearl? What’s up, God?