Friday, June 25, 2010

One Family's Visit to the Mossy Foot Project

In the summer of 2007, the Adelseck Family (3 generations) paid a visit to the Mossy Foot Project (www.mossyfoot.com) in Ethiopia. Their slideshow gives a moving overview of their visit highlighting the people of Ethiopia who are afflicted with podoconiosis, those who serve them, and how the Mossy Foot Project affects the lives of all who it is privileged to touch.
See the show at: http://mossyfoot.com/index.html#/adelseck-show/

Monday, June 14, 2010

IN THE FIRST PERSON... Meet Choforo Asefa Gesho

Choforo Asefa Gesho is a 75 year old man from Gununo Woreda . Choforo has 8 children. Choforo has passed lots of challenges and bad times in his life times. He was sobbing and full of praise when he was telling his story and what he has passed throughout his life.

He was 14 years old when various kinds of signs he had never seen on his body started to appear. Time and again, bulges he had never seen before puffed up and started growing.
Click HERE to read Choforo's full story.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Doctor Has Teeth Pulled for the Sake of His Ministry

Francis Chan, Crazy Love (David C. Cook, 2008), pp. 148-149

"A medical doctor who utilized his skills in Ethiopia for more than 60 years, Nathan Barlow dedicated his life to helping people with mossy foot. Mossy foot is a debilitating condition [that] causes swelling and ulcers in the feet and lower legs. The subsequent deformity and secondary infections makes people with mossy foot social outcasts equivalent to lepers.

I met Nathan shortly before he died. His daughter attended my church and brought him to her home from Ethiopia when his health started to fail. After only a few weeks, he couldn't handle being in the States. The people he loved were still in Ethiopia, so his daughter flew him back home so he could spend his last days there.

Once, Nathan got a toothache and had to fly away from the mission field to get medical attention. Nathan told the dentist he didn't ever want to leave the mission field for the sake of his teeth again, so he had the dentist pull out all of his teeth and give him false ones.

This amazing man was the first to help these outcasts, and he spent his life doing it. Yet no one really knew about him. It surprised me that such a man of God would faithfully serve for so many years, despite minimal recognition."

More about Nathan Barlow at: http://www.mossyfoot.com/index.html#/nathan-barlow/