First Baptist Church of Schulenburg

Here is a chapter in Teresa Rieder’s adventure as a mission volunteer in Ethiopia over the course of six years. This is the story of how a young Ethiopian boy named Yigermal Bekele came to be living in America.

After retirement in the US, Teresa and her husband Tom traveled to Arba Minch, Ethiopia, where they began volunteering as independent missionaries. One day, as Teresa was driving her bajaj (a three-wheeled motorbike) into town for supplies, a man jumped from the side of the road and flagged her down. A translator explained that the man was inviting her and her husband to come to his house the next day to have coffee and meet his family. So the next day, they took a friend who served as a translator to
the man’s home.

Tom and Teresa met Bekele and his wife Amarech, the family’s grandmother Ako, and the couple’s two children, a son named Yigermal who was 11, and his sister, Misganye, who was 9. Yigermal was physically disabled as was his mother. They both had braces on their legs and walked with crutches. As they drank coffee and talked, Tom and Teresa learned why Bekele had flagged her down. Bekele told them that he was a very poor man and was having a difficult time providing for his family. He was only
able to grow a small amount of food on a tiny plot of land to sell in the marketplace for things his family needed. He had been crying out to God for help and asked, “What shall I do?” Bekele said that God told him to go sit by the road and wait for a ferenji (fa ren gee) in a Bajaj to come by. (A ferenji means foreigner) So he did. And when Teresa came flying down the road with her white skin and white hair in the Bajaj, he knew she was the one God had sent!

Teresa learned that Amarech and Yigermal both spoke some English. This is how that came to be… Most kids in Ethiopia go to the public government schools; however, even those are not free. Families sacrifice greatly to send their children to school. School is a privilege. Years before Tom and Teresa came to Arba Minch, there had been some German missionaries living there. They ran a private school there named Rehobet School. In the government schools that the children attended, they did not teach English.
However, at Rehobet School, which was run by the missionaries, they did teach English. One of those missionaries met Yigermal one day and arranged to pay his school fees so he could go to Rehobet. And so Yigermal started learning English at that school. By the time Teresa met Yigermal, he already spoke English fairly well. What an amazing confirmation of this whole story! Before Teresa even knew she would be going to live in Ethiopia, God was preparing Yigermal for his future. Yigermal had been born a healthy normal boy, but around age 5, he started getting weak in his legs. It progressed more and more until he couldn’t walk unassisted. Amarech already had the disease and took him to the local hospital where they built him a set of braces for his legs. Unfortunately, the disease also affected his hands, rendering them useless. He could not grasp anything with his fingers. Despite his struggle to do simple ordinary daily things, he never complained or gave up. He always found a way to do whatever he wanted or needed to do.
Plus, he was so smart and inquisitive… and he loved to make things! One time, he made a “pretend” laptop computer out of cardboard and tape. It had a hinged lid and a keyboard with each letter cut out and glued on. He told Teresa that it was a Toshiba! She could not imagine how laborious it must have been for him to make that laptop, but it definitely showed his level of determination and creativity and intelligence at an early age. Although his body was weak, his mind was strong. Building on his interest in
computers, Teresa found an old keyboard (no computer, just the keyboard) and had him practice typing. She taped chopsticks to his hands and he learned to ‘peck away’ at the keyboard. Little did either of them realize that this was a foreshadowing of the future God had in store for Yigermal! Yigermal dreamed of going to America one day. Teresa didn’t know of this dream until she and Tom were
preparing to leave Ethiopia and return to live in Texas due to some family medical issues. It was then that Teresa discovered that Yigermal had been praying to God since he was 8 to send him to America where he could get a good education. He had heard a motivational speaker named Nick Vujicic on the radio. Nick was born without any arms or legs. Nick is a strong Christian and shares his faith as a public speaker. Nick has learned to overcome his lack of limbs and can do almost anything. He coined a phrase that
resonated with Yigermal: “Disability does not mean inability.” Yigermal adopted that phrase as his own life motto… and he lived it out daily.

When Tom and Teresa told their Ethiopian friends that they were leaving Arba Minch permanently, there were many tears all around. Soon after they shared that they were leaving, Yigermal gave Teresa a letter he had painstakingly written out by hand somehow grasping a pencil between the palms of his two flattened hands. He had come up with very precise and logical reasons why Tom and Teresa should take him to America to live with them. Reasons that included paved roads, plenty of food for better nutrition,
better schools. He even covered the spiritual aspect stating, “We could be blessed by many.” But what touched Teresa the deepest was his NEW motto adapted from Nick Vujicic’s motto: His adapted motto was “Disability needs ACCESSibility!” The truth was that there was no future for Yigermal in Ethiopia. With his disability, no one would ever hire him. The only thing he would be able to do would be to become a beggar on the street. So to Yigermal, accessibility for his disability meant that in America, there would
be paved streets. There would be plenty of food so he could gain strength. There would be good schools
where he could learn a trade and have a career.The truth was that Yigermal had really made a strong case for his need to go to America. We do not have the time to share with you this morning, but let’s just say that God made a way… in so many miraculous
ways, God made the way for Yigermal to come to America. After Yigermal arrived in the United States, Teresa took him to Shriners’ Children’s Hospital in Dallas for extensive testing to get a diagnosis for his disability. That is when they learned that he and his mother had a form of Muscular Dystrophy called Charcot-Marie-Tooth. When it was time to enroll Yigermal in school in Texas, God worked it out for him to attend the private Catholic school in Tyler. It was perfect to meet all his needs. He was welcomed at that school with open arms… and soon had many great friends. They called him Yogi, short for Yigermal. He was as much a blessing to them as they were to him. He succeeded in school there, graduating with a 3.96 grade point average - a very high A average… and went on to attend Tyler Junior College where he worked as a tutor for other students. From there, he went on to attend North Texas State University in Denton where he graduated in May 2025. Did we mention his college major? You guessed it… Computer Science!!