During my first trip to Ethiopia in 2011, four years prior to launching Arukah Global, a team of three of us from our church in San Jose, California visited a church in Ethiopia that would soon become one of our ministry partners.
I had no idea that the following moments would change the course of my life.
As I stood outside of the crowded church service taking photographs of the people who had gathered, a little girl kept running up to me-smiling, giggling, and tugging on my arm while saying something in Amharic - the local language. She'd disappear behind her mother, only to return moments later and do it again.
Curious, I asked my Ethiopian host what she was saying to me.
He quietly leaned over and explained, "Mr. Mark ...that little girl thinks you are her father."
I didn't know it then, but this little girl would become the beginning of a much bigger story.
A few days later I boarded my flight home believing our paths would never cross again. God had a very different story in mind.
