Over the weekend, the first half of the Interface seminar in Amharic (an Ethiopian Semitic dialect) was presented to the leadership staff of Amanuel Ethiopian Evangelical Church in Alexandria, Virginia. The church consists of over 300 members and a leadership team of about 15 people. The lead pastor was approached and interested in taking Interface in person in their native language of Amharic, which is the official working language of Ethiopia.
Letekidan (Leti) Gebremariam, our SMUSA interim language coordinator and liaison for the American Ethiopian Church has been feverishly knocking on Ethiopian church doors in her area promoting SM courses since joining us in November as a last-minute invitation to our National Coordinator Team meeting in Arizona and online via Zoom. She has a Perspectives for the World Christian Movement background and immediately felt the call to mobilize the Ethiopian church in America using the SM tools already developed, but translated into the Amharic dialect. Her quick and obedient yes to joining the SMUSA family has produced rapid fruit. There are two pastors currently enrolled in an online Kairos Course because of Sister Leti’s networking.
The response to the course was positive and leaders said they would like help in developing a mission strategy. For Leti, this was the biggest breakthrough. She hopes that the introduction to the Interface seminar will continue to spark interest to introduce Kairos to the congregation in the future and inspire church mobilization that multiplies to other Ethiopian churches across America. Leti is also partnering with pastors from Horn of Africa to develop a facilitator team that could potentially reach Ethiopian churches on the West Coast in the near future.
We welcome and are inspired by Leti for her passionate heart to ignite and launch a new language to the SMUSA family, and mobilize an entire people group to partner with God’s mission for the nations.