By: Emil LaCivita
Truth be told, I’d never been on a mission trip. Everyone else in my family had, the timing never intersected with opportunity for me. My buddy was “going to Ethiopia,” he said. “With all women,” he said, “for a great cause.” Among other legitimate reasons, he needed a “bro” to keep him company so he wouldn’t be the only one. He’s pretty smart, I figure he thought I could use a mission trip. If that doesn’t get you juiced to go, nothing else will. I had heard some great things about Addis Jemari, I’d been all over the world, but never to Ethiopia, so it sounded interesting and I said “yes.”
Before we went, we had to list skills that we could offer to help while there. One of the skills I mentioned was “painting.” I’m pretty sure I thought that maybe I could get roped into painting a couple of rooms or help underprivileged grade-schoolers with some fun art activities. Imagine my chagrin when I got the email that said, “Cool, since you’re a painter, we want you to paint a wall mural.” What? Never painted one of those before…(I’ll be more careful next time I fill out a skills profile.) I had 2 weeks to figure out how to pull that off and not embarrass us all.
I got on the Internet and put a plan together – Wall Mural 101. Design it, block it, get a bunch of colors, execute it, and hope they don’t cringe. I found a design, with African flair, picked out colors, brought a picture to guide us, a few painting utensils, and headed off to paint a wall mural in Addis Ababa. Then, on day one, I came face-to-face with it. That was when I found out that the wall at the Addis Jemari Family Empowerment Center was 60 feet wide. Yup, 60 feet. 10 feet high. “Buh bye” wall mural design. “It’s okay,” I thought. “I’ll just flood it with color and repeat the pattern. And I’m sure I can everything at the paint store in Addis Ababa.”
Or not.
Turns out, the paint store near the FEP Center wasn’t what I envisioned. It was a very small room. They didn’t have many paint supplies. They didn’t have any of the paint colors we needed. In fact, they had exactly two colors: blue and white. No primer. The project was doomed – wall mural cancelled, mission trip wasted. Then….. they showed us some color tinting bottles to mix with white paint to make colored paint. That’s when the mission team kicked into action. As far as I could tell, no one else knew how to paint. But everyone jumped in to help. We bought six plastic pails to mix paint. Two of the ladies on the team instantly turned into paint mixing experts…mixologists if you will. While me and my buddy scrubbed down the wall, and started putting base coats down, they mixed and mixed colors for us so that we could focus on painting. We had three days to get this thing done.
We had plenty of obstacles: a ladder made out of large tree branches, held together by rusted nails, no water pressure to wash out brushes and rollers, no daily shade at the wall, the wrong primer mix with water that peeled off, not enough paint tinting jars to get the colors we wanted, and most of all — a novice wall mural painter who’s plan went out the window and who couldn’t figure out what to do with the bottom half of the wall mural.
But somehow, some way, it all came together. The mixologists mixed and mixed for days until we got some great colors! A boy found cases of tinting jars in town for us! The neighbors lent us a more sturdy ladder! We scrubbed off the peeling primer mix! And the novice mural painter had a divine intervention epiphany at 5 am on the last day with what to do with the bottom half of the mural! And you know what? The families and staff at the Addis Jemari Family Empowerment Center ended up loving their new courtyard mural! They laughed and smiled and hugged us for brightening up their environment. I witnessed a mission team “miracle” on my first try.
Lessons learned along the way:
- A little paint can bring a lot of love, joy and smiles.
- There are people from other cultures that have so very little, yet somehow find a way to be so warm, friendly, and happy.
- Admire the amazing people in your community who give so much to others without expecting anything in return.
- Mission teamwork is fun and it trumps all obstacles and the friends you make are for life.
- Helping people who need it the most is fulfilling and worthwhile.
- Who was Addis Jemari and what exactly did they do? They help more than 50 Ethiopian families get through the toughest of life’s circumstances, and when the chips are really down, and innocent children are orphaned, they provide support and hope to young girls that would otherwise have none. They change lives.
- To my buddy who asked me to go, thanks man.
