Watermark in Africa

We continue to see the Lord move during our time in Ethiopia!                        When we first arrived to our small team site for the day, we immediately got the opportunity to talk to the leader of the village. As we dialogued with him, we were confronted with a large amount of verbal opposition from others in the village. We soon encountered an Ethiopian Christian on the side of the road, and were told that this entire village only had four families who were following Jesus.   Realizing that this village would be uniquely challenging for us to spread the Gospel, our Ethiopian partners directed us to the only local church so we could cry out to Jesus and ask for His help and protection. In this small 12’x12’ church, we started with time for individual prayers for us, the translators, and the disciplemakers, before moving onto communal, verbal prayers from our team and ...

Praise God for His faithfulness! This morning as we gathered for breakfast, we prayed over our team, translators, disciple-makers, and the Ethiopian people that we would encounter. Specifically, we asked God to move in tangible ways that would make His presence clearly known to both us and them. Boy, did he ever deliver on that prayer! At multiple moments throughout the day, we found ourselves sharing the gospel with precious children and were shocked at their eagerness for what we had to share and at their hunger for the gospel. It was incredible to witness the Lord break down the communication barrier between the Americans and Ethiopians through His provision of our translators. Through the interactions today, many children as well as adults made the decision to put their faith in Christ & not made made rules & religion.    At one point this morning I had 12-15 men surrounding me & listening intently as I shared my story of life change & how God has changed m...

This has been an eventful trip with lots of challenges already.    Sorry I haven’t been able to update the blog but I’ve just now been able to connect to wifi.    Our team was supposed to fly out of Dallas on Friday morning but due the weather in Newark (our connecting point) our Friday flight was cancelled.    We were fortunately able to get booked on a flight to DC that would connect us to Addis Ababa for most of the group but we had to be at the airport @ 4:30AM on Saturday morning.    Our Saturday flight was uneventful but meant that we had a 10 hour layover in DC.    5 of our group had to fly through Houston & due to weather in DC they never made it & had to spend the night in the airport only to take a flight the next day from NYC.    3 days of airports, flights & layovers & most of the team is finally in Hosanna (our mission site) with the group of 5 expected to arrive late Monday night in Addis to join u...

In a few short days (Friday, August 2nd) the 2nd Ethiopia 2024 team will get on an airplane for the long flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.    Our mission will be to share how Jesus Christ has changed our lives & how much he loves the people of Ethiopia.    This will be the 2 nd  of 2 Ethiopia trips for the Watermark Young Adults partnering with E3 Partners this year.    The “journey” to Ethiopia started long before getting on the plane as we had our 1 st  training meeting in early February of this year so we have been praying & planning for this trip for 6 months.    Our training and preparation for Ethiopia has consisted of support raising (learning how to share the financial need in healthy ways), immunizations (shots) party and cultural awareness training, practice sharing the gospel, roleplaying sharing our testimonies, and giving a biblical defense for the gospel for common Orthodox and Muslim arguments. As I think about thes...

Today was a day of seeing God provide in ways bigger than we could ask or imagine. After worshipping together with all of the Ethiopian & American team, our small team broke off and went to a village. The disciple makers immediately took us to a volleyball court that was empty. Walking to the court, we were praying that the Lord would provide people and that many would hear the Gospel preached. Our team started playing and in less than five minutes we had an overflowing court of people. One of the disciple makers took me aside to an Orthodox lady that was standing off to the side watching. She spoke English pretty well so we got to learn more about each other and then shortly went into my personal testimony followed by the Gospel. She asked a lot of good questions and together we looked at scripture. While we were talking, a large group formed and started following along. Looking back, I saw that the court had transitioned from volleyball to a place where around 200 people were hea...

Today was a day that truly displayed the power of prayer. We came across one man in the afternoon who was willing to listen to the story of the Gospel. We encouraged one of our local Ethiopian partners to share and give him a chance in using the evange-cube as we gave support. As the conversation carried on, our translators would explain the questions the man was asking so we could participate in the conversation. At one point we were told, “He believes the message to be true, but he has a block in his mind.” While I didn’t fully understand what this meant, I immediately began to pray to God. I knew that while I didn’t know what the ‘block’ in his mind was, I know God did. I asked God to remove the barrier that this man had in his mind and compel his heart to come to know Jesus as his savior. As the conversation was coming to a close, our translator asked us to pray as a group over the man. We all joined together to pray earnestly that this man would be able to have a personal relation...