At Bismarck Community Church, the idea of adoption has spread from the personal to the global.

When a couple of families who attend Bismarck Community Church adopted children from Ethiopia, their action inspired the Rev. Jared Lee, BCC’s pastor, and the congregation to adopt a project to try and benefit thousands more in the east African nation.

A group from BCC traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, for 10 days in March, a trip that Lee called “life-changing.

What Lee remembers strongly is the feeling of “heaviness,” from that trip, he said, “the complete darkness, and yet the redemption from it.”

Among other activities, the group met with doctors working to rescue girls from the sex slave trade. In one part of town there were 3,000 girls, forced into prostitution, within one square mile, Lee was told.

BCC’s connection is with a community called Jemo, near Addis Ababa. The Bismarck church is partnering with Children’s HopeChest, an evangelical Christian organization that works to secure sponsors for orphans around the world.

Children’s HopeChest creates community-to-community partnerships, followed by sponsorships and finally capital projects — income ideas as simple as chicken coops that allow people to become self-sufficient, said local project coordinator Troy Reno.

Lee and Reno are encouraging the wider community here to invest in helping Ethiopia, as well.

Lee said they want to build a new bridge to replace one where children drown when it washes away during the rainy season, and provide a clean water well for up to 25,000 people. Since girls usually have to carry water, he said, it would free them to attend school.

Lee said there are 250 children in that community who need sponsors to help them get access to food, education and health care, and to help create economic development opportunities.

Mission dollars are traditionally scattered to different places all over the world, Lee said. Instead, he said, “I wanted our church to have an investment that would bring our hearts along with it.”

“It’s so easy to just write a check,” he said. The personal connection with a specific project, “it’s the investment of time, prayer and emotional energy (that) allows us to be changed by what we are doing.”

What the Bismarck church is hoping for is to make this partnership accessible to anyone in this area who would like to sponsor child, or even visit and spend time with the children there.

BCC is hoping to take at least one trip per year to Ethiopia, he said.

This Sunday, Bismarck Community Church will launch the project. Wil Crooks, a staff member of Children’s HopeChest, will be at the church at 10:15 a.m. Sunday to give the message and to meet with anyone who wants more information about sponsorships.

“The main thing,” Lee said, “is I don’t want people to see this as something that BCC does. We have administrative ability (but) anybody in Bismarck that wants to be part of it (can). They don’t have to come to church.”

“Community-to-community relationship is really neat,” Reno said. “To watch the progress, get involved in the progress to become a better place, is more fulfilling.”

Children’s HopeChest was founded in 1994 and has more than 100 partnerships in Russia, Swaziland, South Africa, Ethiopia, Uganda, Haiti, Guatemala, Moldova and India. Children’s HopeChest is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.

For more information, call Bismarck Community Church at 223-3304 or visitwww.hopechest.org/community/jemo .