Africa's Spiritual Fire

We spent the past few days at Longano—a lake about an hour and a half north of Awasa. The first night we spent at Sebana, one of the nicest resorts in all of Ethiopia. It was quite relaxing, with a black sand beach and well-kempt bungalows with squishy beds (soft beds are incredibly hard to find overseas!). We spent the day relaxing there, sunning on the beach and collecting pumice stones that were floating just off shore. We also spent a good amount of time eating at the restaurant there… they had oven baked pizzas, soups, pastas… all sorts of delicious foods.
The second day we packed our stuff into the back of Ben and Kelly’s truck and took a rather rattling road to the other side of the lake to Camp Longano. This is a place David used to come to as a child. It’s for SIM missionaries to come and retreat to. The site has had several improvements since David’s day. They just got electricity to the site four months ago and there are several new buildings for campers to sleep in. We met up with a missions team there and spent the night with them. While we were there we got to hear some testimonies from Ethiopians native to the area. One thing that really impacted me was how many of them came to Christ through visions and dreams. Much of the population in this particular part of Ethiopia is Muslim. There are mosques everywhere and colorful graves emblazoned with the star and crescent dotting the roadsides.
One story I heard that stuck out to me was the testimony of a former sheik. This man was the head of seven mosques and he also happened to be married to seven wives. One day he was sitting outside of his house on a stool when he had a vision. He saw a helicopter approaching from the horizon. It was going to land on his compound. He tried to wave it away, since his compound was quite small. The helicopter landed anyway and a man came out. He was a ferengie (a white man) and he was dressed in a white garment. He came over to the sheik and offered him a key.
“What is this for?” the sheik asked, looking at the key.
“With this key, you will open one door and lock another,” the pilot replied.
The sheik took the key and stared at the man. “Who are you?”
“I am Jesus,” the man said.
With that the vision vanished, and the man was back in his compound, alone. When he realized what had happened, he ran down the road to the closest church. At first the ushers would not let him in, since the sheik was known to disturb many services before. Once the sheik told them what he’d seen, they allowed him in and he shared his story with the Christians there. He converted and brought a Bible back to his house. When he tried to share his story with his wives and children, they thought he was crazy. One of his older sons tried to kill him with a gun—but ultimately his family ended up accepting Christ as well. His seven mosques were converted into churches.
There are countless stories like this. Men and women who encountered Christ through dreams and visions. I love this testimony for the fact that Jesus used a helicopter. Who would have thought?
On Sunday morning I got to have a brief taste of a backcountry church service. It was totally in Amharic, and the church itself was a larger version of the mud huts you see all across the country. Unlike the services in the West (and in Korea I suppose), this one seemed very unstructured. The first half hour we were there, the congregation was in prayer and meditating the scriptures. Every individual was meditating on their own. Then, slowly, a song began to rise out of the congregation. It wasn’t like a hymn or a Hillsong anthem. It was a love song from their hearts. I really got the sense that these Christians were wholly and simply admiring God through their prayers and songs. This is something you just don’t get or see in the structured services of the States. It was very touching to watch—as well as very striking for me. These people, who own very little, the clothes on their backs and the huts they curl in at night, praise and adore God with a singularity and fervor I have yet to reach. I have so much physically—and yet it seems that they are spiritually rich in a way I can’t comprehend. There is a passion here in Africa, among the poorest of the poor, that goes beyond the physical realm. They could possibly be the richest people I know.
We’re back in Addis now, to spend one more day in the city before we jet off to Kenya—the last leg of our journey! It’s a bit surreal to think that we’ve been traveling for two months now. I’m excited for Kenya—but I’m also excited for the States afterward. To see family and friends will be a blessing I’m quite ready for.