We were able to spend the month of October back home in Texas visiting family and friends, so we don’t have any crazy tales to tell this time. Our next entry we will talk about coming back to Langano and how things have been going.

We are dedicating this blog entry to our Langano station and the ministries that we have here. It’s close to Christmas and donating to one of these ministries might be a great gift idea for someone. Thank you for taking the time to read about what is going on at our mission station and for considering where you might want to give financially.

Langano Farms is a micro-enterprise project run by the local community. This project is less than a year old, and is already benefitting the Langano community in many ways. Currently, it includes a vegetable farm and orchards which provide both food and jobs for the locals. The goal is immediate expansion of the garden project to triple production/sales of vegetables (this land plus future adjacent land already available). This expansion will include a new greenhouse and “seedling ponds”. There are also plans to open a chicken farm, tea shop, and grinding mill. Once these projects are up and running, Langano Farms will become a self-sustaining project that benefits the community with both jobs and a closer market to buy food from. Donations would go to help get these projects up and running. Mike Rodgers manages this project and is very well loved by the community. They are all so grateful for the investment he has made in the Langano area.

Langano School

Langano School is an elementary school that teaches 1st through 6th grade and serves approximately 300 students. The school is located among the Arsi Oromo people, who have limited educational resources. The Oromo people place a high value on education and classes have students ranging in age from six to thirty six years old! The school is staffed by Ethiopians and taught in Oromo, but they also have English classes. Our teammate, Joan Smith, helps “coach” the Ethiopian staff and also teaches the English classes. Langano School added 6th grade this year and is hoping to add more grades as space will allow. Currently, each grade only meets half a day because they have to share classrooms. Donations would go to help the school be able to expand and also to help the students buy their required notebooks.

Sports Friends/ Camp Langano

Sports Friends, which is part of SIM, is a ministry that uses sports as a tool for evangelism and church planting. Camp Langano is Ethiopia’s first overnight youth camping facility. Throughout the year, Camp Langano hosts week long camps for Ethiopian children. In addition, the camp hosts all kinds of other group events including pastor training, sports training, and school retreats.

Currently, the camp is continuing to build out capacity, with the addition of four new camper cabins planned to be completed by the beginning of the summer. Also in the works is a game pavilion, a new meeting center, and an amphitheater.

Jake and Sarah Wetzel are serving in this ministry and we are continually amazed at how Jake has been able to build out a full service camp in the middle of the bush! Sarah is a writer and interviews many of the Sports Friends leaders to be able to write out their stories. She has a compilation of some really incredible, inspiring stories.

Shane is the business manager for Camp Langano. He basically takes care of operations for the camp which includes everything from coordinating housing to overseeing the kitchen and managing the camp staff. (With a lot in between!)

Funds given to this ministry will help cover the costs to send children to camp (they attend for free).

Langano Heath Center

The Langano Health Center serves an area of over 50,000 people in the Arsi / Oromo region of Ethiopia. Patients travel up to three days to access some of the best medical care available in the Arsi / Oromo region.

The Health Center is very busy, seeing approximately 100 patients per day. Full medical services are offered including a laboratory, family planning, prenatal care, deliveries, and post partum care, health education, community health, immunizations, STD clinic, malnutrition program, TB program, and HIV counseling and testing.

The Health Center currently has three Ethiopian nurses, and is looking to hire a fourth nurse. At the moment, one of the main focuses of the clinic is to empower the Ethiopian nurses to begin taking over many of the management activities within the clinic. So far, the transition has been going very well.

There is also an Ethiopian evangelist who is part of the clinic team. He enthusiastically preaches about Christ at the clinic several mornings a week and also accompanies the nurses on home visits.

Kim Scheel runs the clinic (although as mentioned above, we are trying to turn most of the management over to our head nurse, Abera), Laura Niblack is our community health nurse and is out in the community a lot. One of her big projects right now is coordinating the installation 20 “shintabeits” (longdrops) in the Langano area! Allyson also works in the clinic, seeing patients and delivering babies.

Currently, the clinic has two main funding needs:
1.The Langano area is in the midst of a famine, and the clinic is providing food assistance to the local people. This local aid is costing more than was allotted in the budget.
2.The Health Center has plans to expand with the addition of another building (funds already given). Before the new addition is able to be opened, though, funds need to be raised to build new staff housing. This is a critical need. A new staff duplex costs approximately $40,000 USD and would house 2 more employees.

House of Hope – Mana Abiddii

House of Hope (Manna Abdii) is a crisis nursery / foster home for babies whose mothers have died in labor or shortly after. These babies are brought in by their families to be cared for until they are 6-9 months of age and able to eat table food. More often than not, these babies are extremely sick and malnourished, and come into House of Hope on the verge of death. House of Hope offers these babies a new beginning, a solid start with around the clock care and daily nurse visits. At the end of their stay at House of Hope, the babies are transitioned back to their homes, and their families continue to bring them in for weekly monitoring and health care throughout the rest of their first year.

House of Hope is operated under the umbrella of the Langano Health Center.

Formula has doubled in price since last year and it is by far the biggest expenditure at House of Hope. Money donated will help buy more formula to be able to care for these babies.

$40 – provides formula and nursing care for one baby for one week

$160 – provides formula and nursing care for one baby for one month

$1500 – provides formula and nursing care for nine months, plus ongoing nursing care and formula once they go home until the baby is 1 year old.

Langano Kids’ Aid

Langano Kids’ Aid is a fund created to help children with physical disabilities gain access to medical care needed in the capital city, Addis Ababa. Most of the children who benefit from Langano Kids’ Aid have disabilities such as cardiac defects, cleft palates, hydrocephaly, burn contractures, and spina bifida. Funds in this project pay for transportation to Addis, lodging, food, doctor bills, and medicine. There are quite a few avenues to get free surgery once they are in Addis (Ethiopian Heart Fund, and CURE, to name a few), so Langano Kids’ Aid acts as an avenue to access. These children’s families otherwise have no idea how to access the help their child needs in an area so far away.

$150 pays for one child’s transportation, treatment, and medicine for a year.

Langano Kids’ Aid is a project run under the umbrella of the Langano Health Center.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!