December 9, 2004

Greetings!

I got back recently from a month in Ethiopia preparing for my return to the country of my youth after 50 years of absence.

When I was 11 and 12 I spent most of my time in Christian boarding school, but I always spent Christmas vacation with my parents in Maji. I recall the nearly two-week trip from Addis Ababa, by jeep, camping each night along the road. My parents always pressed to be in Maji by Christmas, but we seldom made it in time, so a stocking was hung on the tent pole on Christmas Eve and carols were sung as we traveled.

Maji town sits on a hill. Below it, on top of another hill, sits the compound for the mission station. Two large, round, grass-thatched houses were joined by a rectangular tin-roofed structure. This duplex housed the Russells on one end and the nurses on the other. The purpose of the structure in between was to provide a safe roof for wood stove pipes. I have vivid memories of this home: the large open space with a center pole, the mud-covered floors over which thinned-down dung was spread periodically (reduces the fleas and acts like thin cement) and covered by locally made straw mats, my bedroom where unworn shoes developed mold on the soles, the kitchen and its large wood stove with a reservoir for hot water on the side, a porcelain bath tub in the storeroom, the view across the valley from the dining room window that revealed white clouds rolling up out of the valley and a mountain ridge with a gap in it. Once I asked my father to take me over that gap to see what was on the other side. “There is no road,” he replied, “only the road from the north, the way we traveled.”

The music in the church service was old Presbyterian hymns on a portable pump organ. My father folded that organ up and carried it, like a large suitcase, from the house to the church and back each Sunday so that I could practice throughout the week. I was the church organist. The Ethiopians who attended heard the good news of the gospel of Christ and dutifully sang with us as we taught them those old hymns.

.I told my story to the congregation of the Tum Bethel Mekane Yesus Church. “As a child I looked out across the valley, from Maji, and saw the gap in the hills. I asked my father to take me there, but he said there was no road. In Maji I had the job of playing a musical instrument for the worship service. I longed to hear singing in Deze, but it was always the old Presbyterian hymns. Today I have received two blessings. I took the road down into the valley, up the mountain, through the gap and down into Tum where I found you. My second blessing is to hear you sing in Deze. Thank you. Now I am asking for one more blessing: I would like a woman of the church to tell me her story of how she found Jesus.” The sounds of clapping and the joy cry resounded around those mud walls, as my story was translated from English into Amharic, then into Deze.

"The church was there, and I came to Jesus and my son was saved. The boy was saved because I accepted Jesus as my Savior. From that moment I follow Jesus. Praise God for saving my child. Today is a fasting and prayer day, starting this morning. He is 4 years old, that is why he couldn’t come today. What God has done for me—so many things I could tell if we had more time. My son’s name is Solomon Tsoni.” Her story told in Amharic and translated into English.

Life in the United States is easy. Life in Ethiopia is abundant.

Dorothy Russell Hanson

The 2005 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 330