Ugh….the alarm went off really early this morning……we had a 8:15 departure from Mekele to Addis Ababa.  Even for domestic flights, one should be at the airport 2 hours ahead in Ethiopia.  Ethiopian airports can be a mob scene. Fortunately, everything proceeded just fine, giving us enough time for coffee and an egg sandwich. Plus,  we arrived in Addis just about on time.

In the waiting area for our flight, we met a French businessman traveling on our same flight.  He is the Chief Logistics Officer for a large wind turbine farm being built north of Mekele.  He indicated that this is the largest contract ever won by a French company in Ethiopia, approximately $350 million.  It will consist of 120 wind turbine generators, each generating 3 megawatts of power.  The project has just started and will last another 2 ½ years.  When asked about his biggest logistics challenge, without hesitation, he answered “transporting each turbine blade by land from the port of Djibouti to Mekele”.  Each turbine blade (like a propeller) is about one hundred feet long (think 10 story building) and is built in one piece.  There are two blades per turbine. There is only one route that is straight enough for the long bed trucks to transport the blades, and it recently had a bridge failure along the way.    Our lesson…..it doesn’t matter if doing a small hang dug well for a community of 500 or if you are doing a mega-green energy project for the whole country, without good roads, it just makes life a little more challenging for everyone!

Our flight arrived just about on time and we were met by our hosts for the next two days, staff members of the Development and Social Services Commission (DASSC) of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church of Mekane Yesus.  That’s a mouthful, so we will be using shorthand of DASSC and MY in our notes.  A bit of explanation……MY is the Lutheran Church in Ethiopia.  With 5.3 million Lutherans in Ethiopia, it is the second largest national Lutheran church body in the world (third is Tanzania!).  It has 22 synods operating throughout the country and runs several Ethiopian seminaries to educate congregational leaders and pastors.  Think of DASSC as an independent (separate governing board) non-profit that is affiliated with the church.  It is licensed by the government to do community development projects just the same way our previous implementing partners of OSHO (Oromia Self-Help Organization), ORDA (Organization for the Rehabilitation and Development of Amhara) and REST (Relief Society of Tigray).  Each synod has a local DASSC staff implementing projects for their local synod.  W2T entered into a development relationship with MY DASSC in 2009 for the implementation of 12 water projects through the local DASSC staff in the Central Gibe Synod.

After leaving the airport, the local staff took us by the national MY/DASSC office for a tour.  After meeting some of the other staff on hand, we visited the Amist Kilo MY Church, which is located on an adjacent property.  

This church was the first MY congregation to be established in Addis Ababa.  Depending on the Sunday, they worship 600-1,000 members.  We toured the grounds where the church now also operates a primary school K-3.  We had a chance to visit with one of the pastors and we were invited in to see the sanctuary.  

The women of the church were doing a major cleaning in preparation for Sunday’s communion service.  This church has a special significance for Jim and his family, as his daughter Lynnae was baptized in this sanctuary by Rev. Loren Bliese, who still lives in Ethiopia working for the Bible Society, translating the Bible into local dialects for Ethiopia. While walking around the church compound, we met Waizeyeet Urgae Gamba Ega, who has been a member of this church since she was 8 years old.  She is presently 64 years old.  She is also a member of the Bible Society and had attended a meeting just this week and saw Rev. Bliese there.  Waizeyeet shared some interesting history of the MY church with us.

After completing our visit to the church, we headed west out of Addis on a major road to Ambo.  After a two hour drive, we arrived at Ambo, which is about ½ between Addis and the Central Gibe Synod(CGS) offices.  We will spend the next two nights at the Ambo Hotel.  The CGS DASSC staff met us at the hotel for a meeting to discuss the impact of last year’s projects and a current proposal for 11 new projects that W2T is considering for 2010-2011 implementation.  

CGS is one of the fastest growing synods in the country and is unique in that it is completely self-sustaining for it operations budget of the synod.  We also discussed our plans for tomorrow, when we will be visiting 3-4 of the recently completed projects as well as some prospective communities for the 2011 projects.

After dinner, our final task of the day was a pleasant one…..preparing about 50 dresses and 25 pair of shorts that will be presented tomorrow to the Social Committee of CGS for distribution among the children in need in the synod. 

An equal number of dresses and shorts will be presented to the representatives of REAL Africa on Sunday, but more about that in a later blog.  These dresses/shorts were handmade by a group of women at Faith Lutheran Church in Austin TX.  We look forward to tomorrow, as we get to visit with communities experiencing the blessing of fresh, clean water! 

Dick Moeller