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 former lives, previous occupations, and faded family portraits—a constant reminder of how much has been lost…or taken, in a diseased and impoverished land. Zalalem, formerly a beautician, was eager to share two books of photographs chronicling her early life, which appeared to hold much more joy and simplicity. One sitting somewhere in a fountain, another climbing the stone steps of a castle with her parents, a graduation photo, memoirs of her years. A small pamphlet on her dresser offered a small clue to the source of family dissension.

There is an unbearable stigma for many Ethiopians who choose to leave the Orthodox Church. Often a conversion, or even being seen or overheard praying with someone of a Protestant faith, will result in an abrupt division, and disassociation from the closest of family members. Zalalem seemed resigned to this unfortunate turn, yet unshaken in her conviction to follow Christ.  It obviously had cost her dearly. She had not spoken with her mother for four years.

Often a story such as this can serve as both encouragement and admonition. There was a sense of reassurance when leaving Zalalem, that amid the heartbreak of financial ruin, her HIV positive status, and her ultimate rejection by family and friends, there is something greater than all of her losses that can never be taken from her. It could also caution us to guard against our own acedia, or ambivalence toward the tremendous cost that some must pay and the genuine suffering that God has somehow withheld from following our own regenerated hearts.

As we walk these two weeks through the sullen streets that could, at times, be mistaken for burial grounds, there is a cross that towers high above all of this.

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