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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Paul Howe

God’s Guidance at Gimbie

I do apologize for jumping the gun a bit there.

Where I come from in Ethiopia, there are at least 4 special musics before anyone can speak, and so I should have known that it was a bit premature.

Although in Ethiopia I do have more time allowance, in Ethiopia church goes all day long.

I know I don't have that privilege today, so I will try and keep to this clock.

Before we start, I'd like to open with a word of prayer.

Our Father in heaven, I pray that you would send your spirit to this room today.

That your angels would stand by the doors and keep the devil and his angels from disturbing this place.

Oh God, I know that I am a weak and sinful human being and I pray that in spite of these things you would speak through me today.

As I was introduced, I am the administrator of Gimbe Adventist Hospital.

Gimbe Adventist Hospital is located in Ethiopia, about 450 kilometers west of the capital.

The hospital has 70 beds, although these days have been quite busy and our patient census has been up to 120.

So we've had patients packed in like sardines and we've turned our auditorium into a ward.

Depending on how many projects we have running, we may have up to 300 staff.

We have 6 clinics, some of which are not accessible by road.

There's 1 that the best way to reach it is on a donkey's back, actually.

We have a nursing college that's growing rapidly and expanding, and God is blessing in many, many directions.

I'm well aware that it's almost crazy for someone like myself to be managing an institution of the size that I manage.

And I also know that it's only God's power that is keeping the hospital going.

If you ask any of the hospital staff about the previous administrators and even the current administrator, they will answer you quite honestly.

And they'll tell you, well, this 1 was pretty good, and this 1 was fairly bad, and so on and so forth.

And when they come to me, they'll say, Mr.

Paul is young and inexperienced, and he really doesn't know what he's doing.

But he's praying a lot, and God is blessing the hospital more than it's ever been blessed before.

And it's been a great privilege to learn from the Ethiopian people while I've been there.

And I want to share with you today some of the lessons that I have learned in Ethiopia.

Before I went to Ethiopia, I believed that I had some measure of humility.

But as time went on, I realized that this actually was not the case.

I learned this fairly recently from 1 of our Ethiopian staff.

Wonderful woman, about 45 years old, very experienced.

We have a lot of medical teams visit the hospital from many different parts of the world.

And they're usually a great, great blessing.

But occasionally they're somewhat of a mixed blessing.

And I do understand some of the problems.

Our hospital has a mud driveway, which means that when all the hundreds of people that come in and out come in and out every day, they sometimes have mud like up to here.

And so it's a bit difficult to keep the hospital clean.

We have 8 cleaners standing at the door every morning, and they've got these buckets and mops, and then all these people coming in and out, and the hospital gets dirty relatively quickly.

So it can take some adjusting on the part of Western physicians to really get used to this.

And 1 of them who came with a group was rather unkind to our head nurse.

And he said what he said in public in a way that could have been very, very hurtful.

And so after this group left, I called Atsede, the head nurse to my office, and we sat down.

And we sat down, and I was like, Atsede, I am so, so sorry for what happened.

I can't believe that these people would say these things to you.

I know that I am a good nurse, and it's true, she is.

And because they came to help our people, it doesn't matter what they say.

And I realize that true humility is actually very confident.

Often we think we're humble when we're just insecure, and that was definitely my case.

But there's a very, very great difference.

And as Christians, this is particularly pronounced.

We have the great honor to call God our father.

Nothing anyone says should be able to touch the self confidence that we have in Christ.

My father often likes to quote a rather well-known statement, and that's, if self is dead, then it can't be offended.

So think of that next time that you become angry.

I've also learned a great deal about what it means to love people.

And I know that we all believe that love is kind of the basic foundation of everything.

And it's really quite elementary, and we often pass it by.

But in Ethiopia, I've had opportunities to take closer looks at it from a couple different directions.

For 1 thing, I think we often believe that we have everything under control because we've learned how to be civil to each other, to avoid being rude.

But this can be rather different than loving people.

How many of you have enemies today, like a real serious enemy?

But if you really have faith and trust in God, you will stand for what he wants you to stand for, and you will have enemies.

It doesn't mean that you should try and pick fights with people, But often we go around and we sling around some of Ellen White's quotes like we need to be men who can call sin by its right name and be as true to duty as the needle to the pole.

And I'm here to say that if you try and do that, particularly when you're in a leadership position, you will make enemies.

And so I challenge you to think about this when you're feeling like your life is running smoothly.

Because often, I believe, and at least it was the case for myself, that I tried to keep everyone happy all of the time at the expense of standing for things that should have been stood for.

I've also learned about this love your enemies through some of my staff members.

There's a guy who now works for the hospital who used to be the head of our whole region of Ethiopia for the communists.

In that position, he was responsible for putting many people in jail where they were never seen again.

After communism fell, he came to the hospital and worked in human resources, where he was responsible for firing people and refusing to hire many people.

And this last is actually a pretty big deal because each and every day, many people come to the hospital looking for jobs.

And even though our salaries are quite low, there are many people who are very interested in employment.

And He's the guy that always gets the flack for saying no.

So needless to say, he's not the most popular person in Gimbee.

About 6 months ago, he was involved in a very serious car accident.

And he and his family began to suffer difficulties in many directions, particularly financially.

And as he was lying in his hospital bed as the months went by, I started to notice people coming in to help him.

And I was quite surprised by who some of these people were.

Some of them were people whose family members he had jailed and had never been seen before.

And many were people who he had refused to hire and who had very little means themselves.

And so they would come in and try and do small things that they could to make him feel loved.

In Ethiopia, when someone's sick, you give them mirinda, which is kind of like a Fanta or Orange Crush or something like that.

And so all these people come in and give a merenda, and pretty soon we had to set up this table for the merenda.

And I saw that in Ethiopian culture, the people are able to love their enemies in a powerful way that I had never observed before.

And I realized for myself that I had not had enemies for most of my life, although I do have some now.

And I realized that the reason why I hadn't had enemies is because I hadn't really been standing for anything.

But then, now that I had had some enemies, I was really challenged by the people on how I should treat them.

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God’s Guidance at Gimbie

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