John and Gwenyth Haspels blaze mission trails in Ethiopia

by Beverly Bartlett

      Gwenyth Haspels eventually was at peace with the idea that she might not be going to Africa. She told God that if He did not want her to go, she would be willing to stay in the United States.

      “That was interesting, because most people probably think of it the other way,” she says. “‘We’re willing to go if you want us to.’ For us, it was, ‘We are willing to stay if you want us to.’”

      While it would seem to be the natural background for mission work, it was still far from an inevitable decision. “Most missionary kids don’t end up going into the field,” John Haspels says. “Some wouldn’t even think about it. But through the latter years of high school and all through college and seminary, I sensed that I would end up in mission work.”

      Now John and Gwenyth Haspels are doing some of the most challenging work in worldwide ministries, bringing the story of Christ to cultures that have never before heard the gospel. Being on the “frontier” of Christian missions means conveying the message of Christ to people who do not have even the faintest knowledge of the gospel story. In some cases, such as in their most recent project, it means they must literally build a road to the community they wish to reach.

      Once there, they must study the culture of the people and look for commonalities that they can use as analogies and metaphors.

      “We try to look for things in their own culture that are already bridges for sharing the gospel,” John Haspels says. “So the gospel isn’t something strange, but something they can latch onto.”

        For example, they recently started working with the Baale, who believe in blood sacrifices. Using that belief as a starting point, John and Gwenyth Haspels are able to talk to the Baale about the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Often, John Haspels says, this involves learning the people’s own creation story, and then telling them the Biblical account.

      Frontier mission work is difficult in more than one way. Mission workers in many parts of the world today can keep in touch with family and friends in the United States via e-mail and cell phones. But for most of the year John and Gwenyth Haspels live with only a two-way radio to use to communicate with the outside world. They have to travel five hours to get to a phone and obviously don’t have e-mail. It’s a two-day drive to the next city of enough size that they can get supplies for the clinic and school that they run.

      “It’s really isolated,” Gwenyth says, “and there are no other foreigners except for the German girl who works with us.” John and Gwenyth Haspels, however, work in close partnership with the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus.

      This road is not just a way for John and Gwenyth Haspels to reach remote villages. It also offers the Baale greater contact with the outside world and improved economic opportunities.

      John and Gwenyth Haspels have signed a three-year agreement with the government of Ethiopia, promising to build a school and clinic for the Baale. They are also digging wells. “All of this will be the context in which evangelism and church planting will take place,” John Haspels says. Meanwhile they continue to live with the Chai and Tirma, nurturing a young church in a culture that did not know of Christianity until eight yeas ago.

      John and Gwenyth Haspels do their work, knowing that harder days may be ahead of them. They are watching with a wary eye the ticking time bomb of AIDS, an epidemic that is sweeping across the continent and has already attacked one member of their village. But Gwenyth, a registered nurse, knows they are making only slow progres. Judging by the number of syphilis patients she treats, many in the village are still participating in risky behavior.

      Sometimes she fears that only the effects of the epidemic will change behavior. “Not that we’ll stop teaching,” she said. “We’ll do it in the clinic and we’ll do it in the church.”

      (Beverly Bartlett is a freelance writer living in Louisville, Ky.)