by International Samaritan | Feb 9, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
There’s a health clinic in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that serves 100,000 people each year, including many of the 10,000 or so people who are the poorest of the poor. These people live in the community called Kore, which surrounds the dumpsite. While serving in this...
by International Samaritan | Feb 2, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
Amidst the wars in the world and the divisiveness within our nation, I’m writing to share some good news this week about a city that has made significant progress in the last 15 years on a problem that plagued it for at least a century before. I’m interested to hear...
by International Samaritan | Jan 26, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
Have you tried to pursue “The American Dream?” I know many people from Honduras who have. This past fall, several of our Samaritan Scholars read a book with a group of people who visited us from Grace Community Church, located in Detroit. The book was Enrique’s...
by International Samaritan | Jan 19, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
Prepare to be inspired by the incredible story of Dawit, one of our Samaritan Scholars here in Ethiopia. Dawit has not only defied the odds to pursue his own education, but he has shown unwavering dedication to improving access to education in impoverished areas,...
by International Samaritan | Jan 12, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
Living in China in the 1950’s, a boy named Zhiying and his siblings were forced to raise themselves after Mao Zedong sentenced their parents to a forced labor camp. Zhiying recalls being 5 or 6 years old at the time and struggling to figure out how to survive with no...
by International Samaritan | Jan 5, 2024 | Weekend Reflections
I am living proof that the dreams of each of our Samaritan Scholars are valid. I was raised in a village in Kenya, the eleventh born in a family of twelve siblings. For us, struggle was the order of the day. My elderly parents were not educated. They were staunch...
by International Samaritan | Dec 29, 2023 | Weekend Reflections
Here in Ethiopia, we celebrated the New Year this past September with singing and dancing in the lively streets of Addis Ababa. One of the remarkable groups that performed named themselves the Samaritan Family. Clad in vibrant, traditional attire, adorned with...
by International Samaritan | Dec 22, 2023 | Weekend Reflections
Why did Barry Sanders retire so abruptly from the Detroit Lions in 1999? Amazon Prime recently released Bye Bye Barry, a 90-minute documentary to relive the glory days and reminisce about what could have been. By the end of the film, Barry concedes that it was...
by International Samaritan | Dec 15, 2023 | Weekend Reflections
Can anything good come from Nazareth? This is how Nathaniel, who became one of Jesus’s apostles, responded when he learned where Jesus was from. It’s a question our scholars often face themselves—either as they interview for jobs or enter schools outside of their...
by International Samaritan | Dec 8, 2023 | Weekend Reflections
I was introduced to International Samaritan in 2022, through an invitation from my church to go to Honduras and learn about “garbage dump” communities and to help people there break out of poverty. I thought, “Wow! There are 15 million people worldwide in this...
