Letter from Ethiopia | Lay people on mission

Martina and Sirio, a young couple who chose to go on a mission trip, write to us from Ethiopia. “We have so much to learn from the children”

by Martina Luchi

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you from Ethiopia, specifically from Bale Robe, where my husband and I have been for about a year.

Here, we are involved in different activities. I teach English at the elementary and middle school in the mornings, while Sirio is a bit of a factotum at the mission, baking bread, overseeing an experimental field of various types of wheat that he sowed here and other needs unique to mission life.

Together, we run an after-school program with neighborhood children. We started with 5 or 6 children on the street playing on the ground, and day by day the number started to increase by leaps and bounds. Now, 3 months later, we have exceeded 100 participants, every day, 7 days a week.

We read stories with them, get them to draw, paint with watercolors, do puzzles, team and board games, and games such as jump rope, Frisbee, racquetball, etc.

It is an exciting activity because we bring together children of all ages (from 2 to 12) from different ethnic groups and religions (Orthodox, Muslims and Catholics) and it is wonderful to see how well they integrate and respect each other.

We have so much to learn from them. For us, every day is a thrill because it gives us the opportunity to receive so much good and positive energy from these little ones who overwhelm us with affection even physically.

In return we are taking care of them by trying to pass concepts of respect, caring for their assigned material, and education.

Above all, we are trying to make them understand that we are there…. This concept of mutual trust is the glue that most of all binds and binds us to each other.

We started by playing outside, on the ground, sheltering from the rains under the canopies of the neighbors’ houses; then, we moved inside the mission compound: still sitting on the ground, but at least under a canopy in the parking lot to shelter us from bad weather. Now, plans have been made to build a building with tables and benches, so we will have a suitable and decent facility to accommodate them all.

We are at the stage of finding the funds to be able to build this facility and we are relying on the help of various friends and acquaintances to get started as soon as possible.
We are confident that we will succeed and that our children will be even happier than they are now.

Often, we are also involved in buying them medicine or clothes when we see particularly critical situations, and because of the children, we therefore have access to the poorest families trying to help them out.

We are doing what we can to give a couple of hours of serenity a day and hope to continue for a long time!

A dear greeting from all of us

Martina and Sirio

Source and Images

• spazio + spadoni
• Martina Luchi