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 and buy equipment for another 6 health centers.We don¹t know how many patients will come for treatment at each health center, but potentially 1,000 patients a year could come for care at each center. We will probably serve close to 10,000 patients in 2008. Why are we doing this? If not us, who? No one else was doing it, or planned to do it and it is critically important. If AIDS patients don’t take their medicines properly they don¹t get healthy and they also develop resistant HIV that they can pass on to others. Good care takes a lot more than just handing out pills.Second, the government of Ethiopia asked us to do this. In fact, they asked us to take on all 26 health centers in the city, but we knew that was too big a bite to take. Building a strong partnership with local officials makes life better in many ways. We have tried from the beginning to go to the appropriate officials before we did anything and ask for their input, and then as much as possible respond positively. We recently received a government award for our contribution to one of the communities where we work.Third, the Gospel is being shared in word and deed. Everyone, government officials, health center staff and patients, know that we are Christians. We are free to ask patients about their spiritual needs and free to share the Gospel if patients are open. Patients experience Christ’s love through our staff and the loving care they give. We reach not just 10,000 patients but their family members that bring them and sit with them and we reach the government officials that monitor our work and the health center doctors and nurses that work alongside us.It takes a lot of money to set up and run this, but a lot of the cost is the initial set up and we received a one-year grant to cover this. The government also told us that after one year they will take responsibility for the program and all its costs. We hope that within a year and a half we will have turned over all this work and that it will carry on without our help.What will we do then? More of the community work that is the foundation of the project. None of our work in Lideta or Bole has been put on hold. In fact, we have grown to where we are helping almost 400 AIDS-affected families, and we have made small steps towards opening up work in a third community, Kolfe Keranjo.We also want to build partnerships between churches in America and churches in Addis Ababa. Our network of local churches that we help with their mercy ministry programs is growing and we hope that this year we will pair some of these churches with US churches. We have formal agreements with two Addis Ababa churches and two US churches have taken the first steps towards establishing partnerships. We want to share with our partners from both continents what we have learned about caring for the sick and poor and about having a biblical foundation for mercy ministry.Another area where we plan to grow is by expanding beyond HIV/AIDS. While helping people with AIDS is a good way to serve our communities it also set limits on our impact. We want to plant new churches, but don’t want to plant churches limited to people affected by AIDS. It is easy for people in the community to see us as only caring for people with AIDS and only doing this work because it is the issue of the day and lots of money is being given for AIDS work. We want to see churches reaching and transforming the whole community. We are praying for a church-planter to come and join us.Dr. Jon White and his wife Jessica and their three children have joined our team. Jon and Jessica are in the middle of Amharic language school, but when they finish Jon will dive into project work. One of Jon¹s jobs will be to explore serving more of the needy in our communities. This may be through palliative care for people dying from any cause, not just AIDS. It may be something focused on Tuberculosis or other diseases, but the goal will be to bring the gospel in word and action to our whole community and begin to transform the whole community.Two interns, Derek Armstrong and Sara Philips, organized a research project in cooperation with the Ethiopian Health, Nutrition Research Institute (formerly Pasteur Institute) on drug-resistant Tb and HIV co-infection. We hope this will give us a picture of some of the broader health issues in the city and also create opportunities for broader ministry.Another goal for this year is the development of a mercy ministry internship program. We want to have a place young people come for up to a year and work with the poor and study. Missions is changing and we need young people coming along with both the vision and skills to serve in places like Ethiopia. We are looking for a building that could house a large number of people and also have space for new project activities. We are praying for someone (preferably a couple) to come and help make all of this happen.Finally, we want to continue, and possibly expand, our short-term medical teams. In 2008 we will have eight teams come for up to two weeks to serve with us. Teams have been a key part of the project¹s development and we want to make sure that we continue to use them effectively.Family news:It looks like our twins, Hannah and Cooper are both going to be doctors! Hannah graduates from East Tennessee State University Medical college in May. She plans to do her residency in general surgery. She spent the last few months interviewing and will know where she has matched next month. Cooper will start medical school at East Tennessee State this July. He hopes to work overseas when he finishes. His time with the Peace Corp in Morocco helped confirm this call.Asher is a junior at Covenant college, studying art and hopes to become a film maker. This semester he is in Los Angeles doing a film-studies internship with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.Kit is the only one left at home and he is a junior at Chattanooga Christian School. One thing he wanted to do during his year in America was hunt. When we got back last summer he bought a deer rifle, took his hunter safety course and got his license. He shot two deer, one an eight-point buck (for those of you who know about and care about these things). He also wanted to be involved in sports and in the fall ran on the CCS cross country team. For the spring he tried out to play soccer for CCS and made the varsity team. Bev is taking accounting courses at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. She took one course in the fall and is taking two courses this spring.We plan to return to Ethiopia in June. Kit is looking forward to finishing high school in Ethiopia at Bingham Academy where he has attended since kindergarten.Blessings,Andy Warren

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