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2007-05-15 issue:

Meserete Kristos College moves in

by Carl E. Hansen

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Founded as a fledgling Bible Institute in 1994, the Meserete Kristos College grew in rented quarters in Kotebe, Addis Ababa, to become a degree granting theological college with 110 full-time and 42 part-time students last fall. Then in January, the school took the giant step of picking up all its physical assets and moving “lock, stock and barrel” to its new permanent home on the outskirts of Debre Zeit, a town of about 100,000 that is 45 kilometers southeast. All 30-plus truckloads of stuff was squeezed into the first half of the new education building (below). Students followed on Feb. 5. Classes began the next day.



When the second half is added, the education building will be a five-story structure of 91 rooms with a total usable floor space of 54,600 square feet—enough to house all the classrooms, academic offices, library, and language and computer labs. It will be the first of 11 buildings projected for a campus designed for 2,000 students. The cost of this first building will be about $1.7 million.

For now, this half building is a spacious home for the whole college, with the men’s dorm on the top floor and the women’s on the floor below. Food preparation is done outside in two tin shacks, and the cafeteria is God’s great outdoors. A kitchen, dining hall and toilet block are under construction.

This not-quite-finished building stands tall as a monument to the cooperation between the Ethiopian church and international partners who shared their resources over the past eight years. The first of the liberal arts programs will be inaugurated in this new facility in September.

Courtesy photo

By Carl E. Hansen of Meserete Kristos College.

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