Escorted Out of A University

I looked up and suddenly I was surrounded by a large group of Ethiopians. A conversation of four to five people had quickly turned into a crowd of twenty five to thirty. Our team had visited this University before in the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Abbaba. The past couple of times we had visited I had only had a chance to speak to no more than a handful of people together about their lives and what did they think of Jesus Christ but here I was surrounded on all sides by curious college students wanting to hear why I had visited their country.

I realized that this was my opportunity, when one of them asked me the nature of my visit and what I thought of his country. As I began speaking about our desire to help the poor and to help people understand what a relationship with Jesus Christ looked like, another one of them began to object. "We have many religions here," he began. "Protestant, Muslim, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox...everone has their own religion here. We do not need relgious teaching. We have plenty of that. If you would like to teach on maybe Economics and give us some technology to make our country better we will be willing to listen to you."

I had never been in this situation where I was publicly preaching like this so I took my time to answer. A number of questions and objections to my coming came up but I really felt that God was leading my answers. Many in the crowd who objected most were actually Eastern Orthodox. They knew I was a Protestant trying to infiltrate their country with my Protestant teaching. In Ethiopia, especially the capital, the Eastern Orthodox church has much of the power and influence. They see Protestantism as a threat and are very stubbornly opposed to anything we say, even though we were simply teaching on the basic principles of having a relationship with God. They continued to try to change the subject of our discussion to Economics but really having money. One of them made it quite clear. "Money is everything!," he objected, after my many attempts to convince them that money and finances were the issue for Africa and Ethiopia.

I spoke pretty boldly but I was careful not to be offensive. I looked around at all the faces that were staring and me and declared, "The Western nations had given billions of dollars to Africa and Africa is worse because of it! You have many religions it's true, but there are African countries right now like in Kenya where Christians are killing one another! It is not relgion that God wants it is relationship! Finances and technology will not help change the heart of Africa! You will only cause your country to become dependent on the more advanced nations like Europe and America. Even today everytime I leave my house here, people beg from me. The only English that some children in your country know is 'give me money!' Money is not going to change poverty here in your country. Poverty is not just an economic problem, it is a spiritual problem!"


Finally one of them looked at me. He had gentle eyes and genuinely wanted to understand more but he was Eastern Orthodox and he was trying to make sense with his beliefs and what I was trying to say. "If this is true then what do the people need?" I bent down. He was sitting on the steps of the school flag pole infront of me and I looked right into his eyes. "They need the love of Jesus." "But people know about that," he was quick to point out. "People know it," I pointed to my head, "but people don't know it," I then pointed to my heart.

Soon after my last conversation I walked away from the flag pole. There were still thirty or forty people standing there but I had been speaking for forty minutes and I was tired. As I spoke to an actual Christian believer who had come up beside me to encourage me to continue preaching a security guard of the University came up to us. He spoke in Amharic, the local language, "The foreigners must leave. They can not be preaching like this." We were all escorted out of the University but we left in triumph, knowing that we had made a couple individuals really think.