Lately, I’ve been realizing the
power of a good story. A good story can
be useful, powerful, and evocative. Here
in Ethiopia I’ve realized that stories and anecdotes are a really great way to
communicate. This lesson dawned on me
after a meeting the other day with some of our Ethiopian church partners. After nearly an hour of intense discussion,
the kind of groaning cross-cultural communication that makes me feel woefully
inadequate, I finally threw out a good story, or really example in this
case. In this meeting we had been
discussing a concept of an “in kind contribution” that WiLi had made to the
church. Rather than transferring money,
we had basically contributed a certain set of services. We were discussing budgeting and reporting,
and I was having a very hard time conveying this “in kind contribution”
concept. Finally, after about an hour, I
looked at the empty chair beside me and said, “Ok, it’s like we gave you this
chair. Maybe in the past we gave you
money to buy a new chair, but this time we instead went out and found what we
thought was the best chair made from good materials and suiting your needs, and
we bought it and gave you the chair.
So…it’s like this chair…ya know what I mean?” And amazingly, after the hour of discussion,
this simple example conveyed the right concept!
On this blog I tell you a lot of
stories of WiLi’s work in Ethiopia and my experiences. I tell you the names of the villages where we
work, I share the stories of the people I meet, and the details of their
lives. I do this because I believe
stories are powerful and evocative.
Maybe at some point you’re going to get tired of these stories, maybe
they’ll all start to sound the same, but I sure hope not. The beauty is in the detail, and I hope our
hearts never grow numb to the raw reality of impoverished people and
communities in Ethiopia.
I want to be a better
story-teller. There are so many things
that I see and experience here that I wish I could better convey to you. I know my words are inadequate, and what they
say about “pictures being worth a thousand words” is why I try to include here
as many pictures as my poor internet connection will allow me to upload :) I want to be the kind of person who at just
the right moment in conversation is ready with a good story starting with
something like “One time there was a man walking through the jungle…” I’ve realized that stories like this are
themselves worth a thousand words and can often convey my
crazy-mixed-up-ferenji-thoughts way better than an hour long explanation.
Daily we are all living and
witnessing stories worth telling. As I see
more of the world and see more of the reality of friends and family near and
far, I’ve come to realize that the narrative of our lives tends to mirror the
overarching narrative we see in the world.
If we see hope in the world, we have hope in our own lives. If we believe the world is doomed, then most
likely the trajectory of our lives will be pretty gloomy too. I believe that the true narrative of creation
and every created thing is one of hope and redemption. I see this truth in the lives of my friends
and family, I see it in the villages I visit in Ethiopia, and most importantly
I hear this truth proclaimed from the lips of my Lord and teacher Jesus, and
from the pages of my favorite book the Bible.
So here’s to stories worth telling,
and story-tellers worth listening to! I
wouldn’t count myself in the latter category, but hopefully some of the stories
you read here fall into the former. To
send you off, here are a few pictures from life and work here in Ethiopia the
past few weeks!
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| Inspecting new well sites with a team of our partners from the Mekane Yesus Church |
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| New well drilling site in Finchawe |
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| Little girl fetching water from a pond |
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| Meeting with a Sustainable Livelihood Group as part of a program assessment |
