Our home visits yesterday, took us primarily to the homes of the project’s most recent beneficiaries. The small, rugged living quarters are mostly government allocated shanties—cardboard, mud–plastered and insulated with little more than newspaper and discarded grain sacks. The narrow stone paths between each door were soiled and littered with the filth of the failing attempts of daily survival. The visits ended at the small, crumbling chamber of Zalalem, a young woman allocated a dimly lit supply room in exchange for gate keeping duties.

Often the tiny snapshots tacked on the weathered walls of the beneficiaries’ homes offer small glimpses of …

For those looking for a second Ethiopia update – Paul called Phyllis today saying the internet is down so he can’t send an update. However, he wanted to let everyone know that the team is well (Jamison Galt from NY is on the mend), and they were able to do clinic.

Look for more from the team soon…

Greetings from Ethiopia, the land of thirteen months of sunshine! Yes, the Ethiopian calendar actually has thirteen months (it is also the year 2001 on their calendar) but not all of them are sunny. Fortunately for us it is beautiful here right now – clear-blue skies and about 75 degrees. We arrived in Addis Saturday evening around 9:00pm local time and sailed through immigration and customs without any problems. The airline did lose one bag (it got left in Washington, D.C. somehow) but it has been found and will be here tomorrow.

We had a good first day. …

Dear Friends,In January I made a trip back to Ethiopia to check on the project and our co-workers. So many things are happening that it is difficult to keep up from 10,000 miles away.Th e biggest change is launching treatment support programs in 7 governmenthealth centers. We hired and trained 7 new Case Managers (treatment counselors) and 14 Expert Patients (HIV+ peer counselors) and set up computerized patient record systems in each of the health centers. This is only about half of what we plan to do. Over the next few months we will hire staff …

Our schedule is very full and time for writing updates is limited. I am planning on having other team members share some thoughts as soon as possible. Perhaps tonight I can convince a couple of them to write an update and we will post it tomorrow.Let me give you a brief overview of what has been happening with the team . . .Last week finished up extremely well. We were able to minister in a number of different contexts. The main part of our work consisted of doing clinics at the project office for project beneficiaries. It is always so …

Monday, February 25, 2008 the start of our second week. It started out like every other day here. If you slept well as I have, the alarm goes off at 6:30am, breakfast at 7am. We had devotions and boarded our bus at 8am. The project staff has devotions and prayer every Monday and we have had the privilege to share this time with them.After devotions we were divided into home visit teams. Home visits are my favorite part of this project. We feel honored to be welcomed into the homes of those we are serving. Today my team members were …

The work of our team today reflects the array of service that the Project in Addis Ababa carries out for the sake of Christ. The staff and interns have laid a deep foundation that allows a short-term team like ours to share in the privilege of serving others.We began the morning by dividing into four teams who then went on home visits to beneficiaries of the Project. What is a “beneficiary”? A beneficiary is a person with HIV/AIDS who is being cared for by the Project in a holistic way: medical care is provided, housing is subsidized, …

We are pleased to be able to provide a few images from our Ethiopia missions trip (despite the sometimes rather slow internet connection).

The members of this medical team have experienced a combined total of 28 past medical trips to Addis. And everyone agrees that each trip is unique and different from any of the ones we have been a part of before. The project changes, the beneficiaries change, the city changesToday was unique among “first day” experiences for medical teams that I have been part of. Our day began with staff devotions at the project office in Lideta. One thing that was different for me was the fact that my brother, Andy, the project director, was not there. …

On Friday, February 15th, 2008, eleven members of the MTW medical team left their homes and families to begin the long journey to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where they will spend the next two weeks serving the staff and beneficiaries of the MTW HIV/AIDS project. For some, the journey took a bit longer. Drs. Bobby Bain and Joe Moore from Zion Presbyterian Church in Columbia, Tennessee left a little earlier than most of us, but after an almost three hour delay getting out of Nashville, they missed our flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to Frankfort, Germany by about …

« go back — keep looking »