Greetings from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!  It is Wednesday afternoon here and the team is working at full speed.  We have already had two very productive days of ministry and today is going very well.  Yesterday and today we have been divided into several different areas of ministry and have been in several different locations for work.  

As usual, our primary focus has been on medical care.  The clinic yesterday was held at the project office in Lideta and was for the beneficiaries of the project.  Our four doctors – Dr. Charles Kennedy of Rochester, Minnesota, Dr. Rob Balbis of Gainesville, Florida, Dr. Dave Fregeau of Spokane, Washington and Dr. Karen Davis of Columbia, Tennessee – all saw a steady stream of patients throughout the day.  I always tell our doctors to be prepared for anything and yesterday was no exception.  Most of the beneficiaries are women and so we were especially excited to have Dr. Davis on the team since she is an OBGYN.  However, the very first patient that Dr. Davis saw was a man and she was able to diagnose a case of testicular cancer.  Our nurses, Rose Rode and Amy Rose stayed busy all day doing triage and running the pharmacy.

We have also been focusing on doing renovations for some of the beneficiaries’ homes. Rob Taylor from Abbott and Jerod Hugghins from Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, NY have been getting very dirty fixing roofs, pouring concrete floors and anything else that is needed.

Julius Fischer and Mark Renner have been doing home visits and working with the children’s groups.  Mark is an artist and has been

teaching art and Julius has been teaching songs and giving simple piano lessons on the portable keyboard to some of the kids.  He announced yesterday that his new claim to fame is introducing “The Knuckle Song” to Ethiopia.  David Arnold, my “fake nephew” has been doing a great job with the children’s groups as well.  It was fun watching him lead about 30 young girls in a game of “David Says” (think “Simon Says”). He is also doing soccer clinics and yesterday had about 35 boys playing together at IEC, the International Evangelical Church.  This afternoon he is doing another clinic for the boys in our Bole project.

One of our returning team members is Audrey Morrison, a pediatric audiologist from Brooklyn, NY.  Audrey brought some hearing aids with her and one of the highlights of  yesterday for me was watching her fit Estefo with a hearing aid and seeing the expression on his face as he began to hear sounds.

This team has more pastors than any team we have had before.  There are four of us – the real pastor Warren, recently retired from Zion Presbyterian in Columbia, Tennessee, Chris Hildebrand from the Brooklyn Presbyterian Church, Tommy Allen from First Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Renton, Washington (Tommy is blogging about our trip here – http://soulhacks.wordpress.com/ ) and myself.  We have been leading community Bible Studies, facilitating group pastoral counseling sessions in beneficiaries’ homes, leading team and staff devotions and preparing for a pastoral training conference that we will be conducting later this week.  My mother has also been involved in leading women’s groups and girls’ groups and making home visits.

Today our medical staff is conducting a clinic at IEC.  Dr. Davis was able to go this morning to the Fistula Hospital to see the campus and observe the work of Dr. Catherine Hamlin.  The Fistula Hospital has become world renowned in part because of Oprah Winfrey promoting the hospital on her show.  (See more here - http://www.fistulafoundation.org/hospital/history/hospitalriver.html )

Continue to pray for us and the work we are privileged to be doing here.  Pray for our health (so far everyone has stayed very healthy with only a small exception – nothing a little Pepto Bismol can’t handle though).  We thank God for the opportunity we have to be a part of this exciting work.

–
Paul Warren
Pastor
Abbott Memorial

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