A team of three took off for Ethiopia recently, to spend five days investing in leaders: my wife and I, along with a young woman whose church is prayerfully considering the partnership, and she herself is discerning a possible gap year or longer in mission service after completing grad school.

Palu sits right on the equator on a lovely bay surrounded by mountains. The region is predominantly Muslim, and Ramadan was still going on so a lot of restaurants were closed during the day. Palu is a city known for extremist activity since the local teachings tend to be more fundamentalist, and radicals can easily hide in the nearby mountains. Our brothers and sisters in Jesus live with this stress every day, yet they continue to show God's love and remain joyful.

I’m sometimes asked, “Why missions? Why bother?” How does participating in the Ethiopia Partnership strengthen our local congregation at Renaissance Vineyard Church? Missions is a great context for discipleship. Jesus did so much of his discipleship “along the way.”

We connected with the pastor we were supposed to visit the next day. He was able to get the owner of the hotel to open their doors for us, yet there was no restaurant in the hotel. They slaughtered their only goat for our dinner, then the pastor and his team began to wash our muddy feet in friendship and holy welcome. I wept, feeling as if I had gone back in time, and was living in a Bible story straight out of the Book of Acts.

Jeff Cannell, Pastor of Central Vineyard in Ohio, tells of his most recent trip to Cambodia. He says, “We sent people out in groups of three on prayer walks. My group literally prayed at each fork on our paths whether to go left or right...we ended up in a marsh containing a shelter…”