CANCEL ማደረግ

Welcome back to Ethiopia (through this email)! We had to get our emails sent early and we were given permission to call home early too because tomorrow (Monday) is the nationwide elections and we have been warned that there may be a loss of power and that there are safety concerns. Currently Abiy Ahmed is the President and has been since 2018.

Here he is on the side of this building.

He is Oromo (this is one of the tribes in Ethiopia) and his party took over in 2018 when the Tigran’s were in power and the president at the time died.  In 2019 Mr. Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for acts of Diplomacy and ending a military stalemate between opposing tribes from 1999 to 2000.  However, since taking office he has pushed for a seaport in the Red Sea.  The problem is that it is in Eritrea.  For those of you who are not up on geography, this is a separate country that use to be part of Ethiopia and gained its independence in 1993 after a nearly 30-year armed struggle with Ethiopia. This has stoked fears that the two countries could go to war again. 

So, you can see that there is a lot riding on this election.  However, Mr. Abiy is expected to win the election and his party to win many parliament seats.  This could mean a lot for Africa’s second most populated country next to Nigeria.   Due to this we will be staying in our apartments all day.  Too bad as it would be interesting to see what it is like outside. 

A few photos of people waiting to vote.  

On another note, you can see the title of this post is CANCEL ማደረግ (Amharic title) you can probs guess why, that is what happened a lot this week. Let us hop in!

March 26^th

PEOPLE CANCELLED! So, we did quite a bit of Gambella work and got some people ready for the baptismal program coming soon! Again, this is all done via Zoom. We have been hoping that we would be able to go back to Gambella. However, the mission President told us that Church Headquarters does not anticipate that being possible with all the conflict that is happening in the area. Tribal issues are heating up, and they do not see that lessening. And on top of that there is the issue of getting out of the area safely and quickly if something were to happen. Air evac is the only option and it took us five days to get out when we had to leave last time. It does make me sad, as I am not sure how the church will continue to function with this kind of isolation and no support from the missionaries. So, you could say today we did a lot of missionary work with phone calls today!

March 27th

Elder Lucas was sick, that means it was an Amharic study day for me. 🤪

Meeting and dinner with a bunch of the missionaries.

March 28th

Exchanges! Today we had exchanges with the Beklobet elders! I was with Elder Alder; he is a dang cool Elder.  I taught him a little Amharic and lowkey just visited members and went out finding. It is always awesome to get to know other Elders in the mission as well.

Elder Alder and Me out in the literal "FIELD" in both meanings.

March 29th

Not much exciting happened today.  When we were finished with our exchange, we did Amharic connect with all the Elders.  For those of you who do not remember this is our language study!  After this Elder Lucas and I went to Efas house. We helped him cook and played some games with him and his family. It rained a ton when we left his house and were going  back to church 🌊  If you want to have a better understanding of my explanation of last week why most of the country does not have internet you can look at the video and see the outside of the home we are going into and the inside pictures of where they live and how we cooked dinner with them.  Efa has two children and works as a guard.  We cooked rice, beans, tomatoes and onions with him.  Kind of like a stew.

The rain coming down at Efa's house.

March 30th

BALLLLLEEERRRR LESSON WITH BAIYESSA! (great for you older people 😊) We put him on date for Baptism.  He is a professor at the University of physics and is married with two children.  We have been working with him for some time now.  However, we talk a lot about relationship building and that is what we have done before we started on church.  He is very smart and has had a lot of questions.  After we left his home, we had to go find Elder Lucas a backpack.  He came on the mission without one, so we had to fix that problem. Tomorrow it is Sunday.  found some people and bought my companion a backpack to help with exchanges and things like that.

Elder Lucas and me with Baiyessa.

March 31^st 

Good Sunday!  We had 36 people at church! 💪 But hooooolllllyyy people were late! With five minutes before church no one was there and we were shocked. However, by 10 after we had a full room.  I think people are nervous about tomorrow and the election and getting themselves and their homes ready in case they need to stay in and be safe. After church we taught Negersa.  He is another friend who is also on date for baptism.  He’s rly chill! (I’ll get a photo with him next week) We leave tonight to stay with the APs in lockdown so Tuesday we are ready for exchanges.  It will be nice to be with several Elders while we wait out the elections tomorrow.  One issue is that we don’t have food in this apartment so we may have to wake up early and get downstairs to the Souk and get some food before things start to heat up. 

Don't do anything stupid people! Like let one of the Elders give you a haircut!

Love you all!!! ❤️❤️❤️

Elder Frasier