In mid-June we begin a six month home assignment. Outside of Ethiopia, we are sometimes asked to describe a typical day, but “typical” supposes that life is, in some measure, predictable. But that isn’t really what comes to mind when we think of life here. For instance… Dawn called me at the office yesterday to warn me not to eat at the little dive across the street from the grad school where I usually have lunch. She suspected that I hadn’t heard about nearly 40 deaths over the past couple of days from what presented as some kind of hemorrhagic fever. As it turned out, the deaths were caused by an unscrupulous local merchant who decided to extend his supply of cooking oil by
supplementing it with highly toxic mustard seed oil. Her attempts to reach me proved unsuccessful because the phones at EGST were all down. Because our dial-up connection requires a phone and I needed to get a few urgent emails answered, I had gone up the road to a café to get internet access.
Happily, I didn’t have to go by taxi. Hopping on one of the local taxis requires some circumspection, after the latest in a series of taxi bombings took place
earlier this week, killing several people including a world-renowned expert on elephants. There has been one every two or three months. No one claims
responsibility, but there are number of viable candidates, including a couple of rebel groups inside of Ethiopia and a Somali fundamentalist group called
Al Shabab which is seeking to expel the Ethiopian troops who now occupy neighboring Somalia. It is widely suspected that neighboring Eritrea supports all
of these groups, as the still-unsettled border dispute which sparked a disastrous war ten years ago simmers on amid rumors of another war.
Back to the phones… The phones have been out quite a lot lately – a fact which many Ethiopians blame on the Chinese. The Chinese have won many contracts in Ethiopia primarily in telecommunications and road-building. One peculiar feature of the phone system is that it goes off when the power goes off. Still the Chinese are widely admired by the Ethiopians, not least for their amazing work ethic. So industrious are the Chinese that a nearby non-Chinese road project which has dragged on and on to the frustration of local residents has been unofficially re-named “The Road which Amazes the Chinese”. The power (and hence, the phones) have been out with fair frequency recently. Ethiopia depends almost exclusively on hydroelectric power. But with a sub-par rainy season last year and the almost complete failure of the short rains in February and March, the country is dry, the water-levels in the dams are low and residents of Addis Ababa are now experiencing “power shedding” 2-3 times a week in 14 hour shifts.

Our preoccupation with the inconvenience of the power shortage produces no small measure of guilt, as we now hear daily of how the failed rains have led to food shortages for some 4.5 million people. The rolling blackouts have produced steep increases in the price of candles, but the price of other commodities has surged as well, in part as part of the sharp rise in food and fuel globally, in part, because of drought and an inflation rate that is running at 20-30%. Prices also spike with what might be called
“seasonal religious factors”. Recently, it has become difficult to buy milk, even at elevated prices, especially in the evenings. Last night, we tried 4 or 5 different shops before giving up. Here in Addis, roughly 50% of the population is Orthodox and fasts from meat and dairy products for 50 days before Easter. With the collapse of the market for milk, the production drops as the cows adjust to the drop in demand. But with the arrival of Easter, demand soars and the cows struggle to catch up.
Challenges and Changes in Ministry
Amid the varied vagaries of daily life, we cope with the demands of ministry, which has in recent months also brought added challenges. For the past three years, I have been an elder of the International Evangelical Church here in Addis. Even at the beginning, the task of providing direction for a church which on a given Sunday may have 1200 people from 40 countries was far more difficult than I could ever have expected. But then in October the pastor resigned amid a complex of difficulties and conflict.
And so, quite unexpectedly, I found myself in a position of both carrying much of the preaching responsibilities at the church but also working to bring
reconciliation in the midst of the conflict. In the midst of this, we were presented with a difficult decision. The SIM-Ethiopia Director came to us and
asked if I would consider serving as Acting Director while he was on furlough over the next year. That decision also proved to be complex, impinging as it did on my
responsibilities at EGST and changing temporarily my focus from theological education to mission leadership. In the end, we agreed to take this on for six months beginning
next January. Even thinking about it is a bit overwhelming, with the responsibilities it will bring for serving and assisting some 120 missionaries involved in dozens of ministries across Ethiopia. To keep things interesting, I deal with a steady stream of students and others who come by my office. In the past few weeks, these have included.
· A Nuer refugee from Sudan, seeking money to get back to south Sudan.
· A retired Ethiopian man desiring my input on an article he has written which argues that Jesus’ resurrection took place on the cross.
· A student seeking advice on the launch of a new journal of religious studies for Ethiopia.
· A woman warning of a rumor among some of her Muslim friends of an impending al Queda attack in the US.
We could add to these the care of Amelewerk and the many other things that have fallen primarily to Dawn over the past few months. As Amelewerk has gained strength and returned to work, she has become for us a profoundly poignant witness to the Lord’s subtle grace which amid the challenges of daily life excels in making the ordinary extraordinary.

Steve and Dawn for the boys