Enjoy watching a short video of Nathan Polk (Jason and Liz' son) interviewing his parents on the current situation in Ethiopia!
Dear Redeemer Family,
Like each of you, we are having to reenvision our life and ministry during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ethiopia has nearly 120 confirmed cases as of the third week of April and has declared a state of emergency which requires wearing a face mask when outside and prohibits gatherings of more than four people at a time (don't worry, the picture above is of our Christmas service in January, not a recent defiance of stay-at-home orders!). As a result, our ministry office is closed in order to protect our Ethiopian staff and community beneficiaries. Our kids’ school is also closed, which means Nathan, Isaiah and Anna are completing their final weeks of the school year online. Liz and I are working hard to relearn our 4th grade math and 2nd grade English grammar. I have also gotten very good at Anna’s spelling words, like “hit” and “fast.”
When we are not home-schooling our kids, I am working to stay connected by phone with our church plant team to move plans and ministry initiatives forward to the degree possible while under a national state of emergency. The members of our church plant team have been staying in touch with our church members through frequent phone calls to encourage and pray with them. This also enables us to keep updated on the health and food security situation of each family so we can intervene as needed. By God’s grace, our partner community health project, Ethiopia ACT, received special funding to provide emergency food and sanitary supplies to community families. Our church plant also received some COVID-19 disaster relief funding from Mission to the World so that we can provide food relief to vulnerable families through our three church ministry locations and one other partner church congregation in four different areas of the city. Ethiopia was recently listed by the BBC as one of the 10 most food insecure countries in the world given the drought, locust swarm, and COVID-19 pandemic that are simultaneously hitting the country. Please pray for the nation of Ethiopia as it bears through this storm.
If you would like to give towards this need of food relief for vulnerable families, you can give online by clicking the blue button below and designating your gift for Ethiopia relief in the "comments" at checkout.
With much love from all the Polks,
Jason