2ND QUARTER
2017
A F RI C A
ETHIOPIA
Friend, you’ll be thrilled to read this report from Hosanna...but you’ll also be challenged by the continuing need.
I
t was barely daylight on the first day of the JVMI medical clinic in Hosanna, Ethiopia. Staff and volunteers assembled to prepare for a week of ministering to the physical and spiritual needs of the Gefat Jewish people, one of the Ethiopian Jewish communities whose heritage and customs trace back to Israelites dispersed into Ethiopia. The history of the Gefat Tribe dates back 600 years, and today they are known locally as the “Fuga,” a derogatory term that means “hated, unliked people.” The original meaning of Fuga was “blower” because they were blowers of the shofar, but over the years, the term morphed into something insulting—more commonly expressed now as “may they dry up and blow away.” But in spite of the century-long attempt at repressing the people they were there to minister to, everyone at the medical clinic on that early morning would soon learn that the deeply embedded heritage of faith of the Gefat Jewish people had not even come close to being suppressed.
As JVMI team members gathered to pray for Yeshua’s guidance and presence on the hectic first day of the medical clinic, the doctors, nurses, and other staff and volunteers didn’t know that the first patient of the day—a young pregnant woman in the late stages of labor—was already standing at their door. Having walked from one of the most impoverished areas of Hosanna during the chilly, predawn hours that morning, the young woman— now only a few moments away from giving birth—waited patiently. When asked through an interpreter why she had walked so many miles out of her way to the clinic instead of a hospital nearer to where she lived, she replied that God spoke to her during the night and told her to walk the dusty and distant miles to the Jewish Voice clinic. The young woman had heard the Lord telling
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