Montana churches take on challenge in Ethiopia

By SUSAN OLP

BILLINGS, MONTANA (Billings Gazette) — Harvest Church's African journey began two years ago at a leadership summit. Pastors from the Billings Heights church watched a stellite feed of a talk by British screenwriter and director Richard Curtis. Curtis, a humanitarian, has raised nearly $1 billion for charitable causes.

"He was showing poverty around the world, especially needy kids," said Tim Weidlich, teaching pastor at Harvest.

Curtis aired a two-minute clip of a young girl in India as she unfurled a blanket on a sidewalk and lay down to sleep. All the while, people walked by without a second glance.

"We thought, 'We can't live with that happening, but we can't do everything. What can we do?' " Weidlich said.

After six months of research, Weidlich and a team of 15 lay people chose to focus on relieving the suffering of or-phans in Ethiopia, in east Africa.

"That country has easily the greatest need," he said. "It's the second-most impoverished nation in Africa, with 4.6 million orphans and 250,000 homeless orphans in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia."

The church decided to take a two-part approach: do humanitarian aid projects in Addis Ababa to help the orphans survive and become productive members of society, and to adopt youngsters from that country and bring them to Billings.

The church wasn't alone in that decision. Journey Church, a daughter congregation of Harvest in Bozeman, decided to partner with Harvest on the project.

Team visits Ethiopia

Weidlich led a team, which included the Rev. Brian Hopkins, pastor of Journey Church, on a trip to Ethiopia last November. Out of that came a connection with Bright Hope School in Addis Ababa and with Christian World Adoption out of Flat Rock, N.C., which operates four orphanages in Ethiopia.

The team also returned with video that was incorporated into a presentation pastor Vern Streeter unveiled to the Harvest congregation in late March. Streeter issued the challenge to join in the humanitarian effort the church called Ethiopia Hope.

Eleven families decided to adopt one or more children. And a team of 13 people volunteered to travel to Addis Ababa to partner with Bright Hope to dig a well, build a security fence and help the school develop a farm that will teach the students a trade, provide food the school and help it make extra money to live on.

The school has 2,400 students – about a fourth are orphans. The team left Oct. 30 for the trip and will be in Africa for 12 days.

They already have begun to blog about their efforts there.

"This morning I didn't know if things had fully hit me yet," team member Heidi Scheie wrote on Wednesday. "Then I wondered if my brain would allow me to process the magnitude of the poverty that we are surrounded by, then I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. I wouldn't be able to function."

But the team has functioned, getting to know the people, getting the work done and trying to make a difference, said team member Kyle Reynolds. Fifty-five local people joined the team in building the fence that only the day before had seemed like an overwhelming task, Reynolds said.

"We did it, and we did it together … land, culture, an ocean, or even language could (not) stop a group of people wanting to make difference in one of the poorest countries in the world," he wrote.

Family expansion

Back in Billings, Tim and Kerry Davis decided to give up their almost-empty nest to adopt two Ethiopian brothers, Gabe, 12, and Max, 8. The Davises aren't strangers to adoption, having adopted daughter Sydney, 17, when she was a baby.

Tim and Kerry also have two sons, Taylor, 23, and Garrett, 22. Tim said it was always a goal of his and Kerry's to expand their family.

"And Sydney was the greatest advocate of doing it," Tim said, sitting in a conference room at Harvest Church with Kerry, Weidlich, Susan Peterson, the adoption program coordinator, and Jon Ekker, who helped organize a fundraising concert to cover adoption costs. Both Peterson and Ekker and their spouses also are adopting orphans.

Adoption is arduous and expensive, Peterson said. The process takes anywhere from eight to 18 months, and the cost per child is about $25,000.

That's why Ethiopia Hope is sponsoring a concert Sunday at the Shrine Auditorium, to help defray costs for the adopting families. It also put on dinners, lunches and a garage sale in the spring.

Adopting can't be an emotional response to the needs of the children, Peterson said.

"This is a lifelong commitment," she said. "I'm so impressed with the thoughtful approach of these people. They're fully committed to the process and fully committed to the children."

The church is walking through the adoptions with each of the families. It also has established a support group for the parents to share with and encourage each other, and for the adoptees to spend time together.

Kerry and Tim left for Ethiopia on Aug. 29 and returned with the boys on Sept. 6. The youngsters, enrolled at Independent School, are learning to speak English, and they communicate in other ways, with their hands and their expressions.

Adjusting to Billings

They're doing well, Kerry said. They fit well in the neighborhood, playing with the other boys who live on their block.

"We didn't get these kids as babies," she said. "But they are adjusting. They had a life before us, but kids are universal. They do all the same things."

Max already has earned the title of "Hero of the Week" at school. The boys love to wrestle, enjoy riding bikes and both are talented at soccer.

"Most importantly, they're just part of our family," Kerry said.

Weidlich said Ethiopia Hope has long-term goals. After volunteers complete their work with Bright Hope, the church plans to partner with a church in Addis Ababa that works with orphans.

Harvest also has a goal for families in the church to adopt about 50 orphans altogether, Weidlich said. That will develop a population of Ethiopians in Billings, he said.

The idea, too, will be to involve the youngsters, as they grow up, in Harvest's future work in Ethiopia, Weidlich said. Someday, some of them may even return to their home country as doctors or humanitarians.

"We see this as a cycle," he said, "with them impacting our country and our country impacting theirs, so it's not one-sided."

The New Testament book of James exhorts the church to reach out to widows and orphans. That's the bottom line, Weidlich said.

"That's what it's kind of about for us."

(Susan Olp can be reached at solp@billingsgazette.com)