HWHIA trainings Liberia and Ethiopia

By Anthony:

I continue to travel a lot to teach Helping Without Hurting in Africa to development workers and church leaders so I am not writing blog posts about every training. But when we did a recent training in Liberia, one of my plane tickets was funny (my middle name is Diedert). 

While in Liberia Sara and I got to meet our good friend Job Carpenter who worked with us on the Farm in Texas way back in 2013. 

We also were reunited with a Calvin seminary classmate Boimah Mason, who we knew way back in 2008.

The Liberia training was hosted by Christian Aid Ministries, an organization largely supported by Anabaptists. The humility Christian Aid Ministries showed continues to amaze me. They were willing to invite us from other denominations to come and teach their staff and their church leader partners. This led to rich theological and cultural discussions where we all learned a lot from one another. But even more than this, they had humility to invite us to lead our training which in a sense is inviting self-critique of their organization and how they do their work in Liberia. I was so impressed by their willingness to learn and willingness to make changes to how they do their programming. Let me also say that I learned a lot from them! I now have many Anabaptist friends who I deeply admire and count myself richer for it. We really had great times of worship and prayer together.

Here is our host family, Ryan and Melody and their children. They were among the families that were abducted for weeks when they were missionaries in Haiti. You may remember their story from the news. What a wonderful family. We were so blessed by them.

One of the things we are most excited about with this group is their commitment to HWHIA. Two of their staff, Chauncey and Marvin (below), traveled from Liberia to Uganda to take Part 1 of the training. Then they went back and trained their staff and partners in Part 1 on their own. Then they invited us to come and teach Part 2 to everyone. Now they are starting to plan more trainings with community members and church leaders which they will lead themselves.

One of the more engaging and controversial discussions we always have is about how to support orphans and other types of vulnerable children. There are good reasons to have institutions where some children can be taken care of while waiting for families. But some orphanages should be closed. We discuss all the pros and cons of orphanages and child sponsorship. These things are complex and there are no simple answers. You can see our book for more detail.

When we were in Liberia we learned about how Christian Aid Ministries withdrew support from many orphanages a couple years ago. They realized that dependency had been created, and that the orphanage system in Liberia was really being abused. The number of orphanages in the country was far beyond the need for the real number of orphans. Their assessment was confirmed because in the case of many of the orphanages, when the financial support was withdrawn, the orphanages emptied out. The parents of the children simply came and picked up their children to take them home. It turned out in many cases that there were very few real orphans in many of the institutions. Many parents had created false narratives to get free support for their children. This doesn't mean Christian Aid has stopped helping children in Liberia. I applaud them for reevaluating their methods and changing their strategies as they continue to help Liberian children and families.

Another thing we discussed is the ridiculous food situation in Liberia. It's a country that has tons of available farm land which is hardly being used. And yet it's a country that still imports rice. There is a lot of dependency in Liberia. The US has been giving a lot of help after the second civil war in Liberia (1999-2003), but things now need to change more towards development instead of constant relief. I have shared on social media why I was so angry with the abrupt, unplanned, uncharitable way that the USA shut down USAID. This caused and will cause tremendous damage. But on the other hand, cutting off unhealthy aid may finally shake some countries into thinking about better development plans.

Graduations in Africa are always exciting with a lot of cheering and dancing.

They gifted us with traditional Liberian attire:

Here is a testimony to share. Some of the people we trained from Christian Aid went out and taught others. Emmanuel was one of the people they trained. In Chauncey's words:

Emmanuel Somah lives in Peace Island Community, Monrovia Liberia. Peace Island is a rocky hillside crowded with houses overlooking a swamp. It is a community facing some severe challenges like no network, poor water, and few roads. But despite these challenges Emmanuel is bringing change to his community.

After receiving the teaching from Lesson 7 - Asset Based Community Development, Emmanuel went home and got to work. He started right in his house. With his prior teaching knowledge, he started a school right in his house! He looks for children that are unable to go to school in his community and teaches what he is able. He calls their school Asset Based Child Development.

But he didn’t stop there! He realized their community is dirty so he and his children got busy and started cleaning up trash! The gutter that had been clogged with trash was opened so water could flow again. And all while the community watched and speculated. Some said he is receiving money from the white people to let him work but others said no, Emmanuel is working for the good of all of us, what can we do?

So these community members went together and bought brooms for the cleaning project, and others loaned rakes or other tools. Now their next vision is to attack the public toilets with soap and bacteria cleaner! Let’s pray for Emmanuel as he still has many challenges to face in his community. Let’s pray that others will catch the vision and realize that change starts with me. And may each of us challenge ourselves with the question “What can I do?”

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 Ethiopia HWHIA

Jonny and I traveled to Ethiopia in November 2024, to do a training hosted by the Bible League, but with people from many different organizations and churches. Unfortunately I got really sick while there, probably with food poisoning, so Jonny had to lead a couple of the days completely without me. I get sick quite often on my travels unfortunately.

Due to a computer glitch I lost all of my notes about the interesting discussions from this training, so I will just share some photos. Here are some clips of people singing. It sounds very different from the songs in Uganda.

The training was at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology where I got to spend time with my friend Nathaniel Veltman who teaches there.

They eat a traditional dish that is raw ground beef. I did not eat that one! Yet somehow I still got sick.

Addis Ababa is very cold at times (at least compared to Soroti). I wore a suit every day.

The Ethiopian church context is very interesting. The church is ancient in Ethiopia. It's had Christians for thousands of years, something which makes most African Christians proud. But today there is a division between evangelical churches and the historic Ethiopian Orthodox churches in Ethiopia. From what people told me, it sounds like basically everyone in the country by default is part of the Orthodox church in the sense that it's so embedded into every aspect of society and part of the mainstream culture.

The evangelicals believe this has led to a lot of ritual, traditionalism, and a lot of people who aren't actually in relationship with Jesus but going to church every Sunday because you need to in order to get married, have burials etc. It's intimately enmeshed into the social fabric of society. Some people told me that the Orthodox churches don't teach people how to read the Bible, or evangelize, or how to personally pray. Other evangelicals said that the Orthodox churches get really uncomfortable if you talk about Jesus too much instead of focusing on his mother Mary. I don't know the reality as I didn't get to visit any Orthodox churches. Of course there are two sides to every story. Someone else told me that his church leaders secretly train church leaders from Orthodox churches who are hungry for good biblical teaching. I did a podcast interview of a pastor who talked at one point about doing evangelism among communities of people belonging to Orthodox churches. That resulted in me getting criticism from someone who found it offensive that I would post such an interview, since they have good Orthodox Christian friends. It's certainly a complicated situation. As an outsider, I don't know what to think. I only know what people have told me.