September 2001

Dear Friends,

I wrote this newsletter together with one of our students at the Gore Bethel Home for Children who marked my life. I hope that you enjoy it.

"My name is Belayneh Leencho. I am a student at the Gore Bethel Home for Children. I am just like all my friends in that I love football (soccer). I am sure that I would be a great player but this will probably never be known because my legs don’t work."

Belayneh was born in Kileey, a rural village in western Ethiopia. When he was a young child his left leg became, as he says, "tired." So, he moved about with a stick fashioned as a crutch. Time passed and then one morning he woke to find that his other leg had also become "tired." Instead of running with his peers and playing football Belayneh was crawling and reduced to the role of a spectator, another victim of polio.

"At times in my life hard questions have pressed themselves into my mind. What is to become of me? Will I one day be reduced to begging for every scrap I eat or cloth I wear? How can I compete in this world with so many strikes pitted against me? My parents are simple farmers with no education. I am poor. I am crippled. To hear people click their tongues to the roof of their mouths in pity as they pass. Often, in truth, how less than human I have felt."

As the result of a new sponsorship program—Illubabor Children’s Agape Response (iCARE), created by the Illubabor Bethel Synod and loving individuals in the Shenandoah Valley Presbytery—our children’s home had the room to handle an additional fifty boys and girls. Belayneh was one of those selected.

A few months after arriving I noticed the effort Belayneh displayed academically. I saw how unnecessarily difficult it was for him to move about. I discussed with him the possibility of being seen by medical specialists in the capital city, Addis Ababa.

"Brian told me that during summer vacation we would be going to see doctors about my legs. I was both anxious and apprehensive about what awaited me at the end of this trip to a city I had never seen. I was even more nervous when we entered the doctor’s office. I was shaking as they directed me to lie down on the cold metal table and began moving and manipulating my legs. I wanted to cry as they moved my legs beyond the point they had moved in years, and searing pain ripped through them."

I talked to Belayneh during the examination trying to keep him calm hoping it would make the experience pass more quickly for him.

"Brian, who was in the room, told me to be brave. He then began telling me jokes in Oromiffa, a language neither doctor understood. I wanted to laugh, not because his jokes were funny, but because the two men didn’t know he was talking about them. Than the examination was over and I was sitting up again."

The doctors explained to Belayneh that his legs had hope of being rehabilitated.

"A lump was moving from my stomach into my throat. I was trying to remember what it felt like to move with my legs, to walk. I don’t know if I will be able to walk and run again, but I believe my ability to move about will improve somehow. I was reminded in the Bible of the crippled beggar Peter healed who stood to praise God. I have been reading it over and over again. God has given me so much and he has a plan for my life. I believe this, and I choose to keep pushing and not to give up. Even if I never walk or run like others I will use what God has given me to raise myself up beyond everyone’s expectations to His glory. I choose to concentrate on what I can do and not what I cannot."

Belayneh is now living in the Cheshire Home for Physically Handicapped children outside Addis Ababa. He is moving about with the assistance of a nifty little wheelchair until his operation takes place. We are proud of Belayneh for his individual efforts and unwillingness to give up. I take a lesson learned from observing him and share it with you. That I would be wise to discover what gifts God has bestowed on myself through diligent prayer and meditation on His word. And to then focus all my energy on what I can do and not to waste my life on those tasks and or things that I cannot. For they have been set aside for others, with different but no greater or less valuable gifts than my own.

Thank you for all of your continued thoughts and prayers for myself. Please also pray for my wife Telile who continues her studies at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia. And lift up your prayers and keep in mind the Gore Bethel Home for Children and the work being done there.

God’s blessing on all that you strive to do.

In Christ!

Brian C. Gilchrest

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 34