By Mark Gumm
What an encouraging story of how God is using the church in Ethiopia to meet both physical & spiritual needs of people in their community through the Home-Based Care program. While in Addis Ababa last month, I spent the afternoon with our World Orphans partners, Kore Berhane Wongel Baptist Church. I visited with Pastor Fekadu, the head of the denomination and with the local lead evangelist at Kore Church, Tesfaye and a couple of the elders. We talked through some of their progress since we were there.
The Home-Based Care program began in May of 2011 and has blossomed into a thriving ministry since my last visit in June. They recently had an event at the church for family members of HBC program and 10 family members accepted Christ as their savior and four of them have already started attending the New Believers class on Saturday, and they hoped the others would start within the next week or so. The entire leadership at Kore Church is excited about the impact of the Home-Based Care program in their church and their community and they have done an excellent job at incorporating evangelism and outreach into the core heart of the HBC program and it is really exciting to see.
They have added two grades to the church-run school, 3rd & 4th grades, and several new classrooms since we were there. They now have 266 students in Pre-K thru 4th. The church has added scholarships for four needy children to attend the school, paying the school fees from their offerings.
We did visit a couple families, including Etenesh who was praising God that He answered the prayers from our last visit – her daughter, who had been gone for 10 years, came back home and she is praying for her to accept Christ.
Our thanks to Chino Valley Community Church for your heart of love for our brothers & sisters in Ethiopia and all of you for your leadership.