Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

There are two other Islanders staying at the guesthouse with us now, Steve and Chad Townsend. Steve is a pastor in Belmont, this is his third time in Addis. During his stays he likes to preach at some of the local churches as a guest speaker. We decided to go along to one of the services.

The pastor of the church is a good friend of Dundee’s (the guesthouse owner and Strong Hearts director). It’s a small building made mostly of tarp with curtains hanging on the inside to disguise the structure. We arrived a little late and the place was packed when we walked in. As foreigners, we were of course given front row seats.

We thought we were going along just to support Steve. What we didn’t realize was this was a healing service. These types of services are quite popular and apparently happen quite often in Addis and in Ethiopia. After Steve finished preaching the resident pastor took over and started his healing.

A healing service sounds all well and good until you realize that a healing service is actually a type of exorcism. Women would come forward out of the crowd to be healed by the pastor. He would shout (in Amharic) at them, blow through the microphone and then push them. They would fall on the floor in fits of screaming and thrashing. There were about half a dozen women exorcised that night.

One little girl was also brought forward. Her mother had taken her to a witch doctor who had cast a spell on her. The girl screamed and writhed on the floor for quite sometime. The whole congregation prays with hands raised in order to protect themselves from the demons being exorcised. In the end the pastor took a bottle of water and threw it over the girl in order to cast the demon out.

Jacob and I watched this whole service with quite a bit of apprehension. Afterwards, Sammy (Dundee’s friend) and Dundee couldn’t believe that we had never seen anything like this before. We had to explain that this is definitely not common practice in North American churches. Instead, it’s the things of horror movies and hollywood.

The ‘healing service’ was one of the most unusual things I’ve witnessed. I am still not entirely convinced of the genuineness of the women being healed, especially as they all seemed to have the same demonic symptoms, but I guess we’ll never know. Either way it wasn’t your everyday church service.