Ethiopian ‘Joseph’ takes risks to serve
I have been the Tigray relief project coordinator for Meserete Kristos Church Development Commission (MKCDC) for the past four years. Because of this work, people gave me a new name. They called me Joseph, after one of the most renowned figures in the Bible, who saved his family and all of Egypt during the famine.…
Over 1,000 Mennonites killed in Ethiopia
Let us pray Violence has devastated Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), the Mennonite body in Ethiopia. As of February 12, armed groups had burned 49 MKC churches to the ground, looted and damaged another 81 churches, and killed 1,231 MKC members, including 31 church leaders. Inter-tribal violence in western Oromiya regional state, home to nearly one…
Students dream of new churches in South Sudan
A recent article in Anabaptist World stated there were no known Anabaptist congregations in South Sudan. Praise God that that is no longer the case. Gatjiak (Simon) Tongyik, one of the new students sponsored by Mennonite Church Alberta to attend the Meserete Kristos Seminary in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, says there is now one small Mennonite church in…
‘We have no safe area under the sky’
For much of my life I associated Ethiopia with famine. I’m just old enough to recall the searing scenes from Ethiopia in the mid-1980s: windswept, dull-beige landscapes; skeletal cattle; distended bellies; flies; people crowding trucks laden with sacks of food; and charitable rock concerts. It was the most famous famine of modern times, made so…
‘Come over and help us so that we can help the needy ones’
Pastor Desalegn Abebe’s message to North American Mennonites is simple. Abebe is the head of Meserete Kristos Church (MKC), the Anabaptist denomination in Ethiopia, where 17 months of civil violence has led to 12 MKC churches being burned, 44 displaced and 163 full-time ministers and their families displaced and without income. Speaking via video link…
Ethiopian Church grows in maturity
As Fanosie Legesse and Steve Brnjas were driving through a small village in rural Ethiopia, their car slowed to pass through a narrow street when suddenly a boy darted into the car’s path, and was hit. His body flew and landed a few feet away. The driver stopped, though hesitantly, sensing there might be trouble.…
