The highlands of northern Ethiopia.

Thanks to everyone who has contacted us with words of encouragement and contact information, as we work to get our name out there! We’re very grateful for all of you!

The train has left the station, and we’re in full swing now in terms of being functioning candidates with Christian Veterinary Mission. We’re compiling our mailing list for our monthly newsletters (contact us if you’re interested in being added to that list!), and we’re determining out topics for our weekly blog post over the next few months, based on questions we’re getting from our supporters.

There are three main ways that folks can help us with this process. The first, and most important, is prayer. Our prayer requests can be found here. The second is through financial contributions. We’ll write more about this topic in the next few weeks, but the gist is that CVM requires that its field staff be receiving monthly contributions equivalent to our monthly budget before allowing us to move to Ethiopia and start working. That is to say, we need enough people giving on-going monthly gifts to meet our monthly expenses. On-going gifts that have started before we move over will go towards our one-time expenses, like plane tickets, visas, furniture, a vehicle, etc.

The third way to help out is to connect with us via social media (this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram), and to encourage others who might be interested in our work to check us out!

For the rest of this post, I’m going to talk about why and how Ethiopia has become our intended destination.

Hearing About Ethiopia

When I came back from Iraq in 2009, Kristen and I decided to look into the possibility of working long term in developing countries. I had worked in a number of developing countries as part of the Army Veterinary Corps, and Kristen traveled to Haiti in 2010 and 2011, where she worked short-term with a couple of ministries.

In the spring of 2012, I contacted Christian Veterinary Mission (I’ll explain more on why we chose to work with CVM in a future post), and started a months-long conversation with Fred Van Gorkom, CVM’s Africa Regional Director. When Fred heard about our background, he began to urge us to consider Mekelle, Ethiopia, as a potential destination. For one thing, my time in the Army had taught me that one of my greatest strengths and joys is in training others, and encouraging them to develop their understanding and skills. This led us to talk about the possibility of teaching at a veterinary school in a developing country. Fred, who had served in Ethiopia for nearly three decades, had a number of connections at the veterinary school in Mekelle, and knew that this school had expressed a need and desire for improvements in both pedagogy and its research programs.

In addition, the fact that I was well-versed in both evangelical and Orthodox expressions of Christianity led Fred to urge us to consider Ethiopia; more on this below.

With Fred urging us to consider Ethiopia, we began to learn more about the country, and in particular, about its livestock and veterinary infrastructure, and about the history and status of Christianity and other religions in the country. I plan on writing in greater detail in future posts on both of these topics, but here’s an overview:

Veterinary Medicine in Ethiopia

Goats in the pastoral Afar Region of eastern Ethiopia.

Ethiopia is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa. It has over 100 million inhabitants, and occupies 420,000 square miles (about 1.5 times the size of Texas). The terrain varies from mountain to savanna to desert; and livestock are abundant throughout all areas of the country.

Ethiopia is said to have the highest population of livestock in Africa, with over 150 million animals, made up primarily of cattle, sheep, goats, and camels. This number omits the livestock population in the Afar and Somali regions, where most people are pastoralists (that is, herders), because it is extremely difficult to get accurate counts. Suffice it to say that the numbers are very high. Many of these animals are ultimately exported, often to the Arabian Peninsula via Djibouti, Somalia, or Kenya. Livestock plays a significant economic role in the country.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of veterinary infrastructure, debilitating diseases are common in many herds. This adversely affects Ethiopians in at least two ways; first, it decreases the number of animals born, the number that are brought to slaughter and/or milked, and it drastically decreases the amount of milk and/or meat produced. This is the economic and nutritional impact. It also predisposes people to zoonotic disease – diseases spread from animals to humans, often when animal products are consumed.

A key step toward improving veterinary infrastructure is improving both veterinary medical education and improving the research capacity of those institutions. As research capacity improves, veterinarians and livestock owners will have better information about animal disease in the Ethiopian context, and will be able to make informed decisions regarding animal health.

Christianity in Ethiopia

The roof of Kidus Giorgis (St. George’s Church), an 11th century stone-carved church in Lalibela.

Ethiopia embraced Christianity by the early fourth century, at the latest, when the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church received her first bishop, St. Frumentius, from Alexandria, Egypt. Today, the EOTC has between 40 and 46 million members. In addition, over the last 200 years, various Protestant churches have appeared and grown throughout the country, so that there are approximately 14 million Protestant Christians of various denominations in Ethiopia.

The relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Protestant Churches has been tense at times, for a number of often complicated reasons. Recently, members of the EOTC and a number of Protestant churches gathered in Addis Ababa, at the first ever regional consultation of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative, to discuss the relationship between Orthodox and Protestant churches and Christians.

Ultimately, for there to be peace between Orthodox and Protestant Christians, there must be increased understanding in where the true and important differences lie, as well as what is genuinely shared in common (indeed, 20 years of communism went a long way in teaching Ethiopia that in many cases the commonalities far outweigh the differences). People who are able to understand both the Orthodox and Protestant perspective could be very helpful in this regard.

In addition, there is currently a need at the local Orthodox seminary for teachers of biblical languages, biblical studies, and patristics.

Why Ethiopia?

We are going to Ethiopia (God willing) because we believe that’s where we can best share Christ’s love in terms of the gifts, skills, and experiences that he has given us. We remain unspeakably grateful for your support as we pursue this goal.