Call and Response

Photo by Anıl Karakaya

Much of life is liturgical: a call and response. Often these calls are expected and we know the appropriate response. Tiny interactions like giving a friendly greeting as your neighbor heads to work or having the same conversation with your spouse you’ve had hundreds of times before. The daily liturgies can become well worn and predictable. This is normal and to be expected.

But once in a while you hear a call that disrupts you. It demands more than a predetermined response. It could be good or it could be bad, but either way it shakes you.

Have you ever had this experience? Someone is so kind to you that it makes you feel ashamed. You think to yourself “I don’t deserve this.”

I’ve been to a lot of places in the world and I’ve seen a lot of things but I’ve never seen anything like what I saw on Friday. So I’ll attempt to describe to you what is essentially an indescribable experience.

But first, a little background.

We have been visiting the Children’s Carepoint in Woyiraboya these past few days. I wrote about the Carepoint in the letters I mailed to everyone (if you didn’t get a letter and want one, email me your mailing address).

This is a community center that was opened in the past few years by the Woriyaboya Vineyard Church in partnership with Children’s Hopechest. It provides essential services to kids in the community and their families. Things like medical care, schooling, and small business training to the mothers of the kids.

We met many of the kids that our church sponsors in the program and their parents. We spent several days with them, sharing meals, worshipping, playing, and learning about the work they’re engaged in.

The center is a well run and organized operation. The staff and parents are passionate about the work happening in their community. To see their zeal and effectiveness inspires and challenges me in my own work stateside. By US standards they have few resources, financial or otherwise, but using what they do have, there has already been great work done in the past few years.

Though this Carepoint has only been open two years, I’m told it’s one of the most successful in the country by several metrics. The kids are progressing in school, the moms are running small businesses and saving money every week (something WE don’t even do!)

In other words, this is not some sob story about helpless people looking for a bailout. God and the community are doing something special here, it’s already happening. The only question is: do we want to come along for the ride?

It’s a call.

It’s amazing to see, yet this thing could do so much more. There are currently 40 kids enrolled in this Carepoint. They have capacity to take on 104 and are seeking those of us with means to make an investment in the community. I noticed during our time there, many kids standing outside the Carepoint looking in at what we were doing. They want to join and are awaiting our response.

What is happening here will grow. In 6 or 7 years it will be almost unrecognizable to what it is now. Do you want to be a part of it? Email me with any questions: drewfralick@gmail.com

Sponsoring a family in Woyiraboya - it’s like I came to you in the late 90s and said “hey do you want to buy stock in this new company called Google?”

An impactful and challenging three days, but perhaps what I’ll remember most is their greeting to us on the first day. It is a call that will take me a long time to formulate a proper response.

The Carepoint is at the bottom of a hill and around a bank of trees. As we approached, walking down the hill, we could hear the sound of singing and drums. Coming into the area in front of the Carepoint, the kids, parents, staff and members from the church were lined up like a Roman phalanx, singing to us. But it felt more like they were singing AT us. They were walking forward towards us, slowly, singing at the top of their lungs. Our translator instructed us to also walk slowly towards them. We edged closer and closer to one another until we were no more than a foot or two away- us standing there, them continuing to sing. Face to face with a legion of singers.

Abruptly, they all turned around and started walking towards the Carepoint. By this point we were enveloped on all sides by singing and dancing people. They continued to sing and walk forward, us now a part of their procession.

And finally came the Call.

The words to their song in Amharic were:

Come and see, come and see, come and see, what God has done for us.

Can anything good come from Nazareth? Yes it can, yes it can.