African journey brings Goshen student back to her roots

GOSHEN, Ind. – After three months immersed in another culture, most college students studying abroad are ready to get back to the comforts of home. The last thing many students would want to do is start over learning a different culture in a new country for another three months.

But for Goshen College senior Lydie Assefa, from Indianapolis, Ind., visiting another East African country – Ethiopia – after living in Tanzania for a semester through Goshen College's Study-Service Term, felt more like going home.

Assefa's father, Dagne Assefa, is an Ethiopian who moved to the United States in the 1970s to attend Goshen College. So when she found out she would be two countries south of Ethiopia during the spring, she didn't want to miss the opportunity to connect with her Ethiopian heritage.

In Ethiopia during the summer, she was able to live with biological relatives, instead of with an adopted host family, as she had in Tanzania. She lived in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, with one of her aunts, and she was also able to travel through the country and visit with family members she had not seen since she last visited eight years ago.

"Before coming to Ethiopia, reconnecting with my family was sometimes a source of anxiety as I wondered how they have changed, if they would remember me, if they would even like this cousin or niece from America who has had relatively little contact or communication with them," Assefa said.

During her three months in Ethiopia, she was able to visit with and meet about 100 relatives. "When I first got there they kissed and hugged me," Assefa said. "They were so excited to see me and some were crying."

While it was easier to connect with her older relatives, the real challenge was warming up to her shy younger cousins who were not born or were too young to remember the last time she visited, and had only heard stories of their cousin from the United States. But Assefa was able to find a way to transcend culture, age and language.

"One day we played jump rope the whole afternoon," Assefa said. "And then we were best friends."

For Assefa reuniting with her 78-year-old grandmother was a special experience. "When I first met her I was really nervous," Assefa said. "But when I walked into the compound, she was running toward me."

Assefa's grandmother, who speaks very limited English, didn't let the language barrier prevent her from spending quality time with her granddaughter. "She just liked to talk to me. She didn't care if I understood," Assefa said.

But Assefa's three-month stay this summer was not just one big family reunion. She kept busy during the days conducting interviews for her college senior history thesis and completing an internship at the nongovernmental organization Compassion International.

For Assefa's senior history thesis, she chose to research the relationship between the Meserete Kristos Church (the Ethiopian Mennonite Church) and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church – Ethiopia's predominate Christian church since the fourth century.

The first Mennonites went to Ethiopia in 1945 as relief workers. But with Ethiopia being the only country in Africa that was never colonized – with the exception of an Italian occupation from 1936 to 1941 – the foreign missionaries needed to show the government and its people that they were people of service, not intruders. In 1947, Mennonite relief workers built a 40-bed hospital in the town of Nazareth – the same town where Assefa's father was born. In 1959, with permission from the emperor, a Bible Academy opened in Nazareth, congregations formed and the Meserete Kristos Church was officially founded.

The Meserete Kristos Church grew in the 1960s and '70s, and this became threatening to the Orthodox Church. As the dominant, state church of Ethiopia for hundreds of years, the Orthodox Church was worried that the establishment of this new church from abroad would affect its membership and position in society and were therefore suspicious of the practices and beliefs of Meserete Kristos Church members. Meserete Kristos converts – many from the Orthodox Church – dismissed their Orthodox upbringing and looked down on the Orthodox Church. Hostility grew between the two churches, and the Meserete Kristos converts faced varying forms of persecution during this time, including physical beatings, imprisonment and shunning by their families.

"As I talked to my dad about his experiences in the Meserete Kristos Church as a believer in the late 1960s and 1970s, I became more intrigued with his personal story of persecution by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church," Assefa said. "This dynamic really interested me, and so I decided to pursue [studying] the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Meserete Kristos Church by examining it on a personal level through the stories and narratives of individual believers, beginning with my dad."

For her thesis, Assefa interviewed about 35 people, mostly members of the Meserete Kristos Church who converted from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and plans on interviewing more Ethiopians and Mennonite missionaries now that she has returned home to Indiana.

When she wasn't collecting information for her senior thesis, Assefa completed a history internship with the Christian organization Compassion International. The main goal of the organization is to provide children with sponsorships for their basic physical needs and education.

Assefa worked in the communication department interviewing university students to gain a sense of the impact the sponsorship program has had on their lives. She used those interviews to write articles telling their sponsorship story, which were used in brochures and other publication material to encourage further sponsorship.

"Recording and sharing with people their life stories at Compassion International and for my thesis has been a truly rewarding and eye-opening experience, but reconnecting with my family has been unbelievable," Assefa said. "The most rewarding aspect of reconnecting with my family is rediscovering a large, intimate family that loves me unconditionally despite communication and geographical boundaries."

-By Tyler Falk

Editors: For more information about this release, to arrange an interview or request a photo, contact Goshen College News Bureau Director Jodi H. Beyeler at (574) 535-7572 or jodihb@goshen.edu.

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Goshen College, established in 1894, is a residential Christian liberal arts college rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition. The college's Christ-centered core values – passionate learning, global citizenship, compassionate peacemaking and servant-leadership – prepare students as leaders for the church and world. Recognized for its unique Study-Service Term program, Goshen has earned citations of excellence in Barron's Best Buys in Education, "Colleges of Distinction," "Making a Difference College Guide" and U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges" edition, which named Goshen a "least debt college." Visit www.goshen.edu.