Six Presbyterian churches in the Sacramento Presbytery, including the Red Bluff Presbyterian Church, have joined together to try to meet the stated needs of a small village (Maasha) and area in Ethiopia. The Shekkacho people live in a wetter area of the country but they have a problem with good drinking water.
One of the projects that the churches fund is the cost of building water collection points that enable the villages to have clear, unpolluted water. Before this project, everyone washed, cleaned dishes, and drank the polluted water. This water flowed pure out of the mountains. Ethiopia, which has English as its official language, tests all students going into 9th grade and those going to college.
A student has to pass this test to go on in school. It is a very difficult test and those in the villages don't have much exposure to English. For two years now these groups of churches have had an English Project in which teachers go and teach English in the local high school for one month in the summer. Last year only two teachers went.
This summer, Ann Wittorff Ferry, one of our very capable teachers in Tehama County, answered the challenge to volunteer. Five are going as teachers. They are spending from July 3-Aug. 8 on this mission.
The Red Bluff Presbyterian Church is paying for Ferry's expenses through the Rose Etta Todd Mission Fund that was established three summers ago in memory of Rose Etta Todd. Ferry will be teaching a morning and afternoon session of fifty students each for almost a month.
The students there are so anxious to learn that they complain if the breaks are any longer than announced.
These projects have been requested by the Ethiopian presbytery in the area. A fact that very few people know is that there are more Presbyterians in Ethiopia than there are in the U.S.A.
Most people walk in and out of your life ... but friends leave footprints in your heart.
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