At Home on the MKS Farm

“Moo. Moo.” That’s the sound I wake up to each day. Meserete Kristos Seminary currently has eight cows and two heifers, along with several bulls and oxen. The cows wander around campus while grazing near the guesthouse where I live or on the main green. As they munch on the dirt and dry grass, they are oblivious to the students chatting in their midst.

There’s only one tiny sidewalk on our campus. The other walkways are dirt roads and paths, which turn to mud in the rainy season. Cats abound—20 or 30 of them. Though they’re fed injera scraps from the dining hall each day, they’re sickly and mangy looking. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph them.

From my balcony, I see our clothesline and the greenhouse in the distance.

Students often comment how much they love the green areas of campus, the farmland, and the peacefulness of it all. Most of our students come from farmer families, so they grew up plowing, planting and harvesting crops (mostly grains), and caring for their animals. Students enjoy telling me about their family farms, and I love to listen.

Addisu, the head of agriculture at MKS, gave me a farm tour the other day. 

Addisu majored in horticulture and plant science and has worked here for 10 years. Before that, he worked for years on a big farm run by foreigners. His English is fantastic, and he clearly loves his job!

The MKS cows are raised mostly for their milk. The milk is given to employees of the seminary, namely the agricultural workers and kitchen staff who put in long hours each day and don’t get paid that much. The surplus milk is sold to the public.

Occasionally, a cow is slaughtered, providing beef for the meat stew that is served once a week in the campus dining hall. (The other 20 meals a week are vegetarian.) Onions, carrots, potatoes, and cabbage are grown as food for the campus community.

500 chickens lay 375 eggs a day. Some of the eggs are scrambled twice a week for breakfast. The rest are sold to campus employees and people from Bishoftu, who can be seen walking off carrying their flat of 30 eggs. Eggs are the main income-generating part of the MKS farm. 30 eggs cost around $6.00.

The farm workers that I met on my tour seemed happy to meet me and happy in their jobs too. Ashenafi was watching over the cows as they grazed. With two oxen, Melaku was plowing a field that would become a seed bed. Biri and Aberash were milking cows. Ileni, Meskeram, and Tamenech were harvesting onions. When Addisu introduced me, he often told me the meaning of their names. Melaku means angel, Ileni means “the queen of” Sheba, Meskeram means September (her birth month), and Tamenech means believer.

Near the two dormitories, a group of staff and students were shoveling rocks and branches out of the soil, where a soccer field will be created. 

Haji, the main gardener who takes care of the plants and flowers on campus, is standing in the front of this photo. 

Haji and I greet each other “Good morning” and chat for a few minutes on the days we see each other. Like Addisu, his English is very good, and like Addisu, he loves what he does. I’m surrounded by happy, friendly people here on the farm of Meserete Kristos Seminary.

Mennonites in Ethiopia

“Meserete Kristos Seminary is a good place to study.” Learning about paragraph support, my students recently worked with that topic sentence. In small groups (and excited about the white boards and markers I had brought along), they listed things that make MKS good:

• Good teaching
• Full materials
• Library
• Good dorm
• Good food
• Good Wi-Fi connection
• Biblical focus
• Farmland
• Peaceful

My students seem pleased with the institution they have chosen. While I may think of what the seminary lacks, they think of what it has. (Pictured here is the main building with classrooms and offices.)

2,179 students have now graduated from Meserete Kristos Seminary (28 years after it began). Here’s the history in brief:

• 1994      The seminary began as a Bible institute.
• 1996      Ten graduates received diplomas in the first graduation.
• 1997      The institution became a college.
• 2007      The college moved from a rented space in Addis Abebe to a new campus in Debre Zeit.
• 2020      The college became Meserete Kristos Seminary.

The seminary seeks to train people to serve the church and society. 203 students are currently enrolled, taught by 13 full-time and 4 part-time faculty. Students can choose from four majors:

1. Bible and Theology
2. Mission and Intercultural Studies
3. Peace and Development
4. Leadership and Management

Personal connections for me: MKS is affiliated with Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana, where I was born. In the past, MKS was affiliated with Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where I worked at EMU for nine years. When I was a student at EMU (then EMC), I made friends for the first time with international students who came from Ethiopia.

Mennonites have an amazing story of church growth in Ethiopia. The first 10 Ethiopians were baptized by Mennonite missionaries in 1951, marking the beginning of the Meserete Kristos Church (meaning Christ is the Foundation). 

After a military coup in 1974 and the subsequent communist regime, the church was forced underground. Ethiopian Mennonites began to worship in secret, just as our Anabaptist ancestors did in Europe in the 16th century. 

From 1982 to 1992, during the time of underground worship, church membership grew drastically from 5,000 to 34,000. Today, Ethiopia has one of the largest Mennonite memberships in the world (300,000).

Mennonite World Conference membership numbers as of 2018:

• United States—500,000
• Ethiopia—310,000
• India—257,000
• Congo—225,000
• Canada—149,000
• Mexico—110,000
• Indonesia—102,000

A seminary like Meserete Kristos can hardly keep up with the needs of the Mennonite church here, which continues to grow rapidly. 

I recently had the pleasure of spending a day with the Mennonite Central Committee country representatives Paul and Rebecca Mosley and some of MCC’s local staff. It was great to make personal connections and learn a bit about MCC’s work in Ethiopia.

Here at Meserete Kristos Seminary, I am not the lone Mennonite volunteer. Werner and Joanne De Jong are at MKS for three years under Mennonite Church Canada. It is great to be able to talk together about the joys and challenges of living in another country.

For a good overview of where I work and live, here’s a 12-minute video in which a former Mennonite volunteer describes his experience.  Video on MK Seminary

To hear three Ethiopians talking about the persecution and growth of the Mennonite church, this is an excellent 10-minute video. Video on MK Church