Highest Point Hike

We finally made it to that highest peak. We'd seen it seen it for years, but had never been able to reach it. Read Annette's letter to find out how we made it at last=> Highest Point Hike.

These People Can Sing!

(click here for full-size photo of Anuak singers)
We took this photo and then recorded them singing. It's pretty amazing.
Listen to the live recording of these very singers: short version | full length

A highlights of our time in Ethiopia was the opportunity to worship in an Anuak church service. Annette's father, Dr. Paul Baumann, worked as a missionary doctor with the Anuak people in the later 50's and early 60's...he was the first doctor they'd ever had. We were not able to travel to Gambela - their region of Ethiopia - because of genocidal violence (search ANUAK on Google), however many Anauks live in Addis Ababa and we visited them at their Mekene Yesus church.

We had the opportunity to talk with them in depth about their situation and needs. As a result of these conversations Annette's family has raised, and continues to raise, funds for:

• orphans in Gambela state (due to AIDS and the fighting in the region)
  
• medicine & staff at the only medical clinic in the entire state. (An American nurse just returned from an investigative trip into Gambela to visit the clinic and see what their present needs are...there is not even one doctor in the entire state.)
• Bibles for the Anuak and Nuer seminary students most of whom can't afford one (Nuer's are another tribal group in western Ethiopia).

Teen Immigrants: the Push and the Pull

Though Annette and I work mostly with middle class families, we've met many people who felt they had no other choice but to risk it all and immigrate to the U.S. But unlike all my relatives who left their homes in Scotland, Holland, England or Germany looking for a better life in America, these kids won't pass thru Ellis Island or register their names on an immigrant roster. They are forced to sneak in, fearing for their lives, and praying to Jesus or Mary that they won't get caught...that they will find a job and be able to send some money home to their families.

"It's Horatio Alger with a Latin American dream," said Jo Anne Adlerstein, an immigration attorney in New York City.

While these immigrants may be gone for years — or forever — they're not forgotten. Every day, villagers [across Central American and Mexico] see the fruits of the labor of these teenage boys and girls who left to work in the United States.

In Vasquez, there's the house with the new, fancy red door paid for by a girl who has worked in Houston for a few years. There's the adobe that replaced the mud walls in one mountainside home — an upgrade paid for by Santiago, a 17-year-old dishwasher in a Houston restaurant. There's the big new room for his home-based business that Luis Pretzantzin, 44, built with the money sent home by his son, who has worked in Houston's Mexican restaurants since he was 15.

Click the following link to read more about Indigent families rely on teen immigrant workers from the HoustonChronicle.com.

Now THAT'S a Trip

After 60 hours of one-way travel, my parents finally made it back from a work trip in Africa. The following is from an email they just sent us...sounds like it was quite a trip:

It has been an incredible trip. We have seen terrible poverty and stayed in nice hotels and in steaming missionary houses. We have met wonderful African pastors leading dynamic, creative churches, theologians writing 21st century life tranforming books and seen common Christians doing biblical acts of love.