Remembering Home

SixSeeds is all about good, family, fun.  And one of the ways to have all of those is through service. Periodically, we hope to showcase stories about people (and, wherever possible, families!) working together.  Please enjoy this story about our SixSeeds partners the Phifer-Housmans and look forward to more in this series!
 

It's funny when life brings you full circle.

In 2003, four siblings from Ethiopia -- Ephrem, Meheretab, Yodit, and Bethlehem Teklu -- met Mark and Gayll Phifer-Houseman. The two parents from America and the four children became a family through adoption.

It wasn't always easy.

The children learned English (their third language), held their own in sports and academics in a new culture, and made many new friends in their new home. In addition, following Mark and Gayll's longtime commitment to service, they participated in volunteer projects in Mexico, Honduras and the U.S.

In 2006, Ephrem returned to Ethiopia for a month to visit his grandmother (the children’s only living relative) and help her refurbish the small adobe home that he and Meheretab had built several years earlier. At that time he used some of the skills he had learned building houses in Mexico to install a sewer, bring running water on to the property, and make the home warmer and water-tight.  Aday (“grandma”) was deeply moved by his care and longed to see her other grandchildren as well.

Last December, Gayll, Ephrem, Muhr, Yodit, and Bethlehem traveled to Addis Ababa for three weeks, joined by Stephanie Payne, a close friend from their church. Due to health concerns, Mark stayed home to hold down the fort (no small task!).

The family hoped to spent time with Aday after an absence of six years and volunteered with Hope Enterprises, an outstanding Ethiopian NGO that runs the only feeding center for street children in Addis Ababa. Hope Enterprises has been serving destitute children and their families since 1971, and welcomes volunteers to help in their after-school programs with tutoring and sports. SixSeeds.org joined with them to support them financially as well as cheer their efforts.

Thankfully, while they were gone, they agreed to blog their first-hand accounts of their trip, which you can read here: 

Spoons by Candlelight

Cows and Other Adventures

Learning to Care

Living a Blog-Worthy Life

As you can see, like other parents, Gayll and Mark want their children to learn to be outward-focused, joy-filled givers who see service as the natural overflow of the gifts they’ve been given. They feared the consumptive, me-first values of our society might ultimately harm the four children from Ethiopia. That’s why they embraced not only their kids, but their Ethiopian heritage and grandmother as true family.

Since the time Gayll brought the children home from Ethiopia in 2003, the Phifer-Houseman’s have always hoped they would eventually be able to return to Ethiopia---both to see Aday again and to provide an opportunity for their kids to begin to see themselves as part of Ethiopia’s future.

Indeed, their oldest son Ephrem’s dream has always been to return to Ethiopia and or Africa to develop water projects. Towards that end, he studies agriculture systems management, a combination of agriculture engineering, water resources, and agriculture business, at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The young man is no slouch.

It’s the ideal academic program to develop his interests. For further learning, this summer, Ephrem will be returning to work with the Millennium Promise Villages program in Koraro Ethiopia.  This is a cutting edge NGO founded by Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs in conjunction with many Africa leaders and UN development workers. This internship offers the chance for him to see what it’s like, on the ground in remote areas of Ethiopia, trying to holistically impact an entire region’s future with agriculture projects integrated with education and health projects.
Sometimes life does, indeed, bring us full circle. We look forward to hearing more of Ephrem's journey and that of his younger siblings.