Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Zennovich shed many tears over the birth of her baby boy – tears of joy and tears of sorrow. When Zennovich was three months pregnant she came to the Luke Clinic located in a slum district in Ethiopia. She wanted an abortion.

Already struggling to provide for three children, Zennovich and her husband had not planned for a fourth child and they could not afford to have one. Though her husband worked, he had no secure income – like so many in Ethiopia.

The doctors at the Luke Clinic counseled Zennovich. They discouraged her from having an abortion, telling her that it was not right in the eyes of God. Zennovich is a Christian, but she said stress drove her to decide she needed to have an abortion.

When the doctors reminded her of God’s will, she began to weep. She was overwhelmed with confusion and worry. Dr. Wondwossen Desta, director of the Luke Clinic, referred Zennovich to his friend who operates a Christian organization that provides pregnancy counseling and operates as an adoption agency. After Zennovich visited the organization, she decided against abortion and planned to put her child up for adoption after delivery.

Three months after the child was born, Zennovich now believes her beautiful baby boy is a miracle. When he was born, she wanted to name him Tamerat, which means miracle in Amharic. Her seven year old son had a different name in mind for his little brother. Every night at bedtime, the seven year old’s father read the story of David to his son. When Zennovich tried to call her new baby boy Miracle, his big brother would only call him David and insisted his mother do the same.

Now David is three months old and Zennovich hopes to be able to keep her precious baby boy. The organization where Zennovich received counseling has told her they might have a position for her. If she is able to obtain the job, she will not have to give her son away for adoption and will be able to keep her miracle boy, David.

The Birth of the Luke Clinic
Zennovich’s story is just one of the forms of encouragement Dr. Wondwossen Desta receives from his patients as he operates the Luke Clinic in a slum district in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Zennovich comes to the clinic for regular post-natal care and is a constant reminder to Dr. Desta of God’s call for him to continue his work in Ethiopia.

“Our job is to repair the broken, to do restoration in the community,” Dr. Desta said.
Dr. Desta said he considers his family to be missionaries. Mulu, Dr. Desta’s wife, has been an integral part of the ministry of the Luke Clinic. Mulu has a position as an ophthalmologist at another charity organization, but she volunteers some of her time at the Luke Clinic.

“She is very helpful because she is also a visionary,” he said. “If she wasn’t with me, I wouldn’t have done this.”

Dr. Desta began his ministry in a slum district in Bole because he wanted to serve his own people. His vision is to expand his ministry to different parts of Ethiopia in the future. The Bole area has a population of 300,000. Dr. Desta ministers in a district of 30,000 people – composed of both extremely poor and wealthy, he explained.

The Luke Clinic can be found on a road that weaves through a poor district in Bole where it is strategically located to help those who would otherwise have nowhere to go. The birth of the clinic evolved with the growth of Dr. Desta’s own faith.

Dr. Desta’s initial conversion to Christianity was sudden – it happened in one day, he said. But his journey and calling to begin the holistic ministry of the Luke Clinic – healing bodies and evangelizing souls – was a more gradual process.

In 1989 Dr. Desta suffered massive bleeding into his lungs. While he was in the hospital, evangelists came to him and tried to teach him the Word of God. But their words fell on deaf ears. He spent the next three months in the hospital recovering from the hemorrhage and a collapsed lung. When he was finally sent home from the hospital, he was bed-ridden in his father’s home for six more months. At the end of this time, he attended a crusade and was healed during the meeting, he said. In that moment, he proclaimed Christ as His Lord and Savior.

His newly discovered faith overwhelmed him with a desire to devote every moment of his life to evangelization through teaching and praying. He discovered his passion for evangelism, became a youth leader, and joined a prophetic team that often spent 24 hours a day in prayer.

“For seven years, I was mostly an evangelist. I forgot the real situation….For seven years, I was ignoring my profession,” Dr. Desta said.

His life since conversion can be divided into three sections each lasting seven years, Dr. Desta said. For the first seven years following his conversion, Dr. Desta ignored his medical profession and dedicated his life to prayer and evangelizing. After seven years of ignoring the medical field, he turned back to his career.

Although he continued in personal prayer, he stopped attending the long prayer meetings and dedicated more of his time to his medical profession. During these seven years, he struggled with bringing together his faith and his medical profession.

“My whole life struggle was to bring my profession and faith together,” he explained. “Everyone has faith, but I [had to] learn how to put my faith in action.”

Dr. Desta began his initial ministry, the Luke Team, in 2003. The next year, he began his mobile clinic – a brigade that visits remote villages to address both spiritual and physical needs. In June 2006, he left his hospital practice to begin pursuing a full time ministry project he named SOHRI (Social and Health Reform International), which also means blessing in Amharic.

During one year spent in personal prayer and preparation, Dr. Desta contacted eleven different U.S. organizations in order to obtain some assistance in his ministry. Only three of these organizations responded. Ultimately, Dr. Desta was unable to find an organization that was willing and able to help support the ministry he envisioned.

In 2007, the Luke Society contacted Dr. Desta to request a visit with him.

“The Luke Society came to me, I didn’t seek them,” he said. “It was an answer to prayer – a divine connection,” Dr. Desta said.

A few months earlier, Dr. John Boateng (Regional Coordinator for Africa) had been visiting the Luke Society ministry in Uganda. While he was there he exchanged business cards with a Christian businessman and his wife from Ethiopia who were visiting Uganda and staying in the same guesthouse with Dr. Boateng. The men spoke about the vision of the Luke Society and the Ethiopian man expressed a strong interest in the work that was being done. He contacted Dr. Boateng a few weeks later to tell him about Dr. Desta, who he had met while serving together on a church committee in Ethiopia.

When Dr. Wrede Vogel, Luke Society Executive Director, visited Ethiopia and discussed the vision of the Luke Society, Dr. Desta recognized that this was an organization that could help him achieve his calling for holistic ministry.

“I was struggling [to work] locally alone. The Luke Society encouraged me and helped me go one step further to my destiny,” Dr. Desta said.

Partnering with the Luke Society, Dr. Desta established the Luke Clinic in 2007. He continued the mobile clinics, though reducing the amount of time spent on this type of outreach. Health education continued to be a primary focus for the ministry. Two years later, Dr. Desta began a more focused project called Community Health Education (CHE) in order to specifically reach out to destitute children and families.

The Luke Clinic at Work in the Community
Three years into the ministry, “I am very happy helping people in practice not just in theory. I am touching lives – doing something,” Dr. Desta said, smiling.

“My personal vision is connected to the Luke Society vision – it was a divine connection.”
Now this divine connection is being extended to the people of the Bole community. In this area, Dr. Desta said, the most vital problem is HIV/AIDS – affecting more than 10% of the population.

In addition, the unemployment rate in the area is 50% and there are 2,000 orphans in the area surrounding the clinic.

Currently, one of Dr. Desta’s main focuses is on obtaining certification from the government for HIV/AIDS testing and counseling.

The initiative Dr. Desta calls the Community Health Education (CHE) project is need based and begins by providing vaccinations for eight diseases that are prevalent in the community. Although most patients come to the clinic voluntarily to receive these vaccinations, they are reluctant to receive the measles vaccination. Herbal doctors have spread the rumor that the measles vaccination is demonic and will only aggravate the illness.

Similar to other areas of Africa, the polio vaccination efforts have also been complicated by rumors, Dr. Desta said. A number of Ethiopians believe the injectable polio vaccine is contaminated with HIV, which means only the oral vaccine is accepted. Dr. Desta hopes to provide further education regarding polio and persuade them of the benefits and safety of receiving the vaccine.

The Luke Clinic also prioritizes hygiene issues by teaching daily lessons on personal and environmental hygiene. Malnutrition is another major problem the Luke Clinic hopes to address with health education – 46% of Ethiopians in the area are underweight.

“Let the Little Children Come Unto Me”
The work of the Luke Clinic does not remain inside the four cement walls surrounding the compound. The pictures of 22 children are posted in Ayne Muru’s office, located on the clinic compound. Ayne is Dr. Desta’s sister-in-law and an administrator at the clinic. She has created a project to reach out to orphans in the community.

There are 5 million orphans in Ethiopia (living in single parent homes or parentless due to either abandonment or death). 1.2 million of these children are AIDS orphans. In addition, a number of the orphans are HIV positive themselves.

The project is organized as a sponsorship program. Each child is connected to a family or a church in the community who commits to sponsor the child for education and other needs they might have. In addition, Dr. Desta has committed to providing regular medical check-ups twice a year for each sponsored child. With 22 sponsored children on the list and 100 children on the waiting list, Ayne’s initiative is having a tremendous impact in the community.
The staff at the Luke Clinic has joined together to sponsor two of the children involved in the project, Kalkidan and Meseret.

“We wanted to be an example,” Dr. Desta said. “We can’t just tell other people what to do and not do it ourselves.”

Dr. Desta took Luke Society staff from the U.S., along with Dr. Boateng, to visit the homes of these little girls.

Kalkidan
Kalkidan is just three years old. She is a fireball of energy who is ready to explore and is nearly unstoppable. When Ayne met Kalkidan’s mother, 21 year old Sebele, she was struggling to earn enough money for food. Sebele’s husband left her when she was nine months pregnant. After Kalkidan was born, Sebele earned money by selling candy, but as Kalkidan got older and more restless it became too difficult for her mother to care for her while earning money for food.

When the Luke Clinic began to sponsor Kalkidan, her mother was able to send her to a private school. Kalkidan soon became much less restless. Sebele is now able to work and earn money for food while her daughter is at school during the day. Kalkidan is also easier to care for after school because she is growing calmer.

After the Luke Clinic began sponsoring Kalkidan, Sebele attended four classes at the clinic where the staff taught her proper hygiene and provided health education. Sebele had also been having psychological problems and was distressed. The clinic provides counseling for her and offers her regular encouragement.

Meseret
Meseret was eight years old when her father abandoned her, her mother, and her little sister. When Ayne met Meseret, the little girl had only sadness in her face.

“She didn’t talk at all,” Ayne said, “she had the [emotional] scar on her face.”
Meseret’s mother, 25 year old Birke, was only able to earn enough money to feed herself and her two daughters. Birke went from house to house performing home duties – washing clothes, baking, cleaning. She also worked as a deliverer selling injera, a sponge-like flatbread traditional to Ethiopia.

Her husband’s brother visited Birke’s home twice after her husband left, but she has not seen either of the men for two years.

“We must pray for God to turn the hearts of the fathers,” Dr. John Boateng said.

The Luke Clinic staff now sponsors Meseret to go to school and Birke is able to afford to send her younger daughter, Mekedes who is four years old to school as well. Birke has also attended a few health classes at the Luke Clinic when she is able to take time off work.

“We use every opportunity to teach health education,” Dr. Desta said.

“Before this year, I couldn’t afford the standard of living in Ethiopia,” Birke explained. “I could only afford food. Now my children go to school. It is my pleasure. I am very happy.”

Ayne and Dr. Desta continue to seek Ethiopians in the community who will sponsor these children. As the project grows, the Luke Clinic strives to be an example of touching lives in Jesus’ name – of putting faith into practice.