Mahay Choramo - Conversion and Life As An Evangelist

Conversion and Life As An Evangelist

Mahay Choramo heard itinerant evangelists preaching and underwent a religious conversion. (He had no contact with the SIM missionaries, only with their followers.) At a time when many people in Mahay Choramo's region believed that Satan was a literal person who was plotting against them and "Get away Satan" was a common expression, Mahay Choramo's conversion convinced him that he didn't need to be afraid of Satan, and he made it his personal goal to preach the Good News so that others needn't be afraid of Satan any more either. Desiring to read the Bible for himself, Mahay Choramo taught himself Amharic and obtained a copy of the Bible. He came to admire the evangelists of the New Testament and determined to follow their example. The Book of Acts also convinced him that persecution was the lot of a Christian, a message he took to heart since at this time non-Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia were subject to persecution. On one famous occasion in the early 1940s, when a judge sentenced Mahay Choramo to time in prison, Choramo thanked the judge. When the judge asked why he was thanking him, Mahay Choramo replied "I will be able to pray and meditate better on my own." Mahay Choramo's opposition to the Ethiopian authorities brought him into contact with other Ethiopian Christian dissidents.

Over the next fifty years, Mahay Choramo dedicated his life to church planting, planting dozens of new congregations throughout southern Ethiopia. He did not consider himself a church planter, however, since he believed that churches must be organized spontaneously from the ground up. Rather, he would move into a new area, initiate contact with locals, and live with them and preach to them until a church was formed. For example, in Gamu-Gofa, he set himself up as a merchant selling salt. In the market, he would pray for the sick and preach to anyone who would listen. After a while, he gained some converts, whom he encouraged to meet regularly to listen to him preach. Eventually, he helped these converts to select a pastor from among themselves, and Mahay Choramo then moved on to the next locality. Mahay Choramo believed that this method was faithful to the methods employed by the apostles in the Book of Acts. However, Mahay Choramo did maintain a lifelong relationship with the Wolaytta Kale Heywet Church, to which he would periodically return between missions.