Marcy Erickson is a Catholic missionary in Ethiopia. She is a mom of 12 children, 8 biological children, and 4 adopted. She has been involved in the pro-life movement since the early days of the march for life and has been a member of the March for Life since she was 13 years old. In this episode, Marcy shares her story of how she became a missionary and how she found her calling in life.
00:00:00.000I can't feed myself and feed my child, and I can't go to work with a child on my back.
00:00:05.880So we started a daycare program, and we would have to explain in detail to these moms what daycare is,
00:00:13.920because what we realized about two years after starting the program was that we had started the first infant daycare in the entire country of Ethiopia.
00:00:20.860Hey, my friends, do you know that Ethiopia is one of the only countries on Earth that doesn't actually have like a 919 number,
00:00:34.820an emergency number for people to call when there's something gravely wrong?
00:02:30.060Now, at that point, I had never met a Catholic lay missionary.
00:02:36.480I just kind of thought in my head I saw Africa and knew that it meant serving the Lord and serving the poorest people in the ways that I could help reach them.
00:02:48.440And so at 18 years old, I became a missionary full time.
00:02:53.960I started first in Guatemala and then went to Ethiopia for the first time.
00:02:59.220And a little bit of my backstory, though, is that, you know, there's many people that say that their family bleeds military.
00:03:32.220And then my mom went on to start Sunlight Home, which is a home for pregnant unwed mothers here in Collier County.
00:03:38.080And during that time, I mean, one of my oldest, earliest memories was being about two or three years old, sitting in a stroller and being pushed back and forth on a sidewalk.
00:03:47.960And I remember it very clearly because I was giving my mom a hard time because I wanted to leave and go home.
00:05:02.500It's a beautiful, you know, trajectory.
00:05:07.360If you don't mind backing up for one second, because that's a very powerful faith life to tell our Lord, do you want me to be a nun or what?
00:05:21.420Right away, you had that openness to our Lord.
00:05:29.420Well, I definitely have praying parents, especially a mom who basically has attended daily mass for years and years and years.
00:05:39.320And she always prayed for God to bring the right people into my life.
00:05:43.780And especially when I was a teenager and a bit rebellious, a bit, I was always very strong-willed growing up.
00:05:53.260You know, she just prayed for God to bring me the right people.
00:05:56.220And at that point, I had people coming to me quite often saying, you should consider religious life.
00:06:03.040And I was 17 between, I would say between the age of 16, 17, and then 18, they would say that, priests would say that, other people would say that.
00:06:14.480And so that's where that specific prayer came from.
00:06:17.060But it was a long, difficult road to get to there.
00:06:23.480In high school, I had a very tumultuous experience.
00:06:30.560I had a dear friend who I had met, and we had planned to marry, and he ended up passing away when I was 16 years old.
00:06:42.860But he was the one that really pulled me into the faith and taught me so many different things and then led me to, introduced me to, who became a person who became my best friend and her father became a mentor for me and a leader.
00:07:01.320And that is where my life turned around, if you could say that.
00:07:53.620So I, yeah, I applied to different mission organizations back in the day when you applied by mail and looked things up, you know, through catalogs.
00:08:06.820And to be honest, no one accepted me, really.
00:08:12.000I mean, no one wanted an 18-year-old kid to come and help volunteer.
00:08:16.220I wasn't asking for pay or anything like that.
00:08:19.280But I ended up being accepted to one organization that had places in 86 different countries throughout the world at the time.
00:08:27.580And I just said, send me somewhere in Africa.
00:08:45.940I had students from ages three up to middle-aged adults.
00:08:49.320I actually was teaching all the teachers as well because they really wanted English in this area is very important because once you get to grade eight, everything switches from their native language to English.
00:09:01.140And so, all of a sudden, they have all their textbooks in English, all their teachers are speaking English, all their tests.
00:09:08.240And so, they want to make sure these children and even adults have a foundation of English.
00:09:15.040But at the same time, it was in the middle of a five-year famine.
00:09:20.000And every day, we had starving babies that were brought to the gate.
00:09:26.460And it was so challenging and so traumatic.
00:09:32.720I mean, to be honest, just hundreds and hundreds of these babies that I never thought I would see face-to-face.
00:09:41.020And one experience after the next of children not surviving.
00:09:46.980Even some of my students that were healthy, I would say, oh, where is so-and-so today?
00:09:52.340And they'd say, oh, she died last night.
00:09:54.580And it was just like, I was quite, you know, really almost broken by the experience of just seeing the heartache that these people endure day in and day out.
00:10:11.340And for that reason, I really thought God was not going to bring me back to Ethiopia.
00:10:16.520Because I thought, who can do this life?
00:10:21.760But I knew God was calling me to be a missionary for life.
00:10:24.440So, when I came back after my first year in Ethiopia, I went to college for a few years and knew that God was calling me for life to be a missionary.
00:11:51.260And he responded to me like almost immediately.
00:11:55.720And apparently, he was in Rome in a big meeting.
00:11:58.980And somehow he saw this email come through.
00:12:01.620And he had never heard of anyone wanting to live in Ethiopia.
00:12:06.260And at this point, because of the, to backtrack a little bit, the first year that I was in Ethiopia, there were babies that were abandoned quite often.
00:12:15.880And so at this point, I felt like my calling was to adopt and foster care for as many children as I could personally take on.
00:12:25.700And so that's what I had described in this email to, to the bishop was that I'm planning to live in Ethiopia.
00:12:33.260I want to foster and adopt as many children as I can personally take on and just do my best to raise them in their culture.
00:12:38.440And so he had never heard of anyone wanting to do this.
00:12:41.720So he responded right away, put me in touch with a priest that I met with, who told me they really needed help in this city called Bahadur.
00:12:51.480So I decided to make a three-day trip up to Bahadur to just see, you know, where the Lord was leading and to see what it was like and experience the area.
00:13:04.240And by the way, that priest that had told me to come to Bahadur, which is where I did end up settling, is now our bishop.
00:14:27.240And there's no way you can learn it outside of the country, really.
00:14:30.480And especially at that time, because you didn't have any audio help.
00:14:35.480There was really no one in the area that I knew that was Ethiopian in Naples, Florida, for sure.
00:14:41.880But one of the prayers that I also prayed specifically about where the Lord was leading me.
00:14:49.180There were two prayers, actually, that I just look, look back at.
00:14:53.420I'm just like, God is just so amazing.
00:14:56.020One of them was before I went to Bahradar to visit on that three day period, I said, okay, Lord, if this is where you want me, then I want to meet someone that, that can treat malaria.
00:15:13.520Because malaria is what I had seen the most deaths of the first year I was in Ethiopia.
00:15:18.480That's how a lot of my students passed away so quickly.
00:15:21.480And so I said, I want to meet someone who treat, who knows, who's very good at treating malaria.
00:15:26.420And I said, preferably an American, could be Canadian, right?
00:16:24.540So the wife was a nurse and the husband was an agriculturalist.
00:16:27.500And I went, okay, God, that like, that outdid me completely.
00:16:32.960And then my second prayer was that I would meet an Ethiopian that knew both cultures equally as well.
00:16:41.460So someone that knew, and in my mind, I actually said, someone who was born in Ethiopia, but lived in the United States, but now lives in Ethiopia.
00:16:50.480Okay, like a citizen of both places, or at least equal in the knowledge or understanding.
00:16:57.500And the next day I met Gush Asifa, who was born in Ethiopia, went to the U.S. to study and ended up becoming a social worker in the U.S.
00:17:06.860And after 20 years in the U.S., moved back to Ethiopia, began taking in children and helping people go to school and learn farming.
00:17:14.700And he moved back to Ethiopia just to be able to help his people.
00:17:17.520So that was the answer to the second prayer.
00:17:20.240And he ended up actually introducing me to my husband.
00:20:57.900And of course, the diaper was a whole nother story by that point, eight hours.
00:21:03.080So this is what these children had lived through and or had to live through all the children in this orphanage.
00:21:09.580And I really, the day that I completed the adoption and I left the orphanage, I looked down and my little son, James, the same one that was sitting in that car seat all day, looked at me and smiled.
00:21:21.160And I looked up and I saw a rainbow in the sky.
00:21:27.080And I was almost in this point of, I just want to leave this behind and go start my life in Bahadur, start raising my kids, continue teaching English if that's what the Lord wants me to do.
00:21:37.820So, but really upon returning to Bahadur, within three days, more people are coming to me asking me to take in more children.
00:21:50.800And I went, oh, Lord, I'm a single mom.
00:22:01.960And I just stopped and I went, I have no answer, no answer for them.
00:22:08.080And so I was laying in bed one day and really, I felt like God gave me this vision.
00:22:15.880And I could see very clearly that how we would have a center that could be properly run, having one caregiver for every two infants, having the proper love needed for children.
00:22:27.200And I even saw the layout of the buildings, the trees, and I just jumped up out of bed and I said, okay, God, if this is coming from you, then you will give me the people to help me run this.
00:22:44.020And I had some friends that were volunteering in the capital city at the time.
00:22:47.380I called them and told them I had this crazy idea and they stopped me in the middle of the first sentence.
00:22:52.280They said, we're moving up there to help you start.
00:22:55.100So God answered that prayer in less than five minutes.
00:22:59.860We began with about five foster children.
00:23:02.620And at this point, we serve over 50,000 individuals annually.
00:23:16.000So, and what began with, we weren't sure how it was going to look, but the main thing that we've continually done with Grace Center is we've said, let's look at each person as an individual.
00:23:29.320You know, God sees us all as individuals.
00:23:30.940He doesn't lump us into a category of being pregnant or not pregnant, male, female, HIV positive or not.
00:23:40.040You know, so I had worked for so many projects and they specifically helped in one area.
00:23:44.980And what I found was, especially in a place like Ethiopia, where there aren't other programs, is that that just didn't work for that, for where I was.
00:23:55.120I needed to be able to say to this person, God sees you and God is with you.
00:24:02.200And here's how we can help and not send people away that were genuinely in need.
00:24:08.240I mean, one of the things that I saw really early in my missionary experience was I was visiting this wonderful program that helped people get prosthetic limbs.
00:24:17.880And while, while I was there, there was a woman that came with her six-year-old boy that was so thin, probably the weight of a one-year-old, maybe a two-year-old, six years old, laying in her lap, dying of starvation, couldn't hold his head up.
00:24:35.440And the people at this organization said, I'm sorry, we don't feed people here.
00:24:43.780And at that moment in my life, I said, Lord, let that never be me.
00:24:49.400And it wasn't that they were being mean or unkind.
00:24:52.860They had just learned that they had been taught, we just can't help everyone.
00:24:57.080We can't do everything, which is a very common way to think.
00:25:02.720But I like to say we can because our God is so much bigger than this one thing that we see.
00:25:10.000And so that's how it started with just saying yes and continually praying for people and working with people.
00:26:46.360But what we realized was that if we could catch these mothers, which we always did from day one,
00:26:51.540if we could catch them before they abandoned their child and talk to them,
00:26:56.300their problems were very similar in that I can't feed myself and feed my child,
00:27:02.540and I can't go to work with a child on my back.
00:27:04.900So, we started a daycare program, and we would have to explain in detail to these moms what daycare is,
00:27:13.500because what we realized about two years after starting the program was that we had started the first infant daycare in the entire country of Ethiopia.
00:27:21.000It was about 110 million people in Ethiopia, and there were no daycares for these babies that would,
00:27:27.420And this greatly prevented these babies from being abandoned.
00:27:31.800And the hard part is that when they're abandoned, you know, oftentimes they don't survive for someone to find them.
00:27:39.700And so, looking around our daycare, often through the years, I've just said,
00:27:46.020Wow, look at all these babies that are alive, and these moms that thought they were going to have to abandon their baby,
00:27:52.820and thought they had no hope, and, you know, they've been able to have a new life.
00:28:29.840So, I had mentioned before, Gush Asifa ended up introducing me to my husband.
00:28:38.380It's interesting, because I didn't know that we met when we met, but there's actually a couple times where I looked back just recently, not too long ago, a few years ago,
00:28:45.960I looked back at old photos, and I found a photo of him from about two years before I ever thought I met him.
00:28:51.980And he's sitting there with a couple of other people that I knew, and he would be the only person in that photo that I actually didn't know at the time.
00:28:58.220But I had met him, and at one point, we were looking for a place to rent for our project.
00:29:06.440By this time, we had outgrown the other rental houses.
00:29:10.220And it overlooked, it was a two-story building that was previously a school, and it overlooked a big garbage dump.
00:29:16.500And I looked down in the garbage dump, and I saw someone that was naked walking through the garbage dump, trying to find something that was a piece of clothing, trying to put on boxes for clothes, trying to...
00:29:30.500And this person, who was obviously a young man, found an old, very, very old girl's dress, and he was trying to fit it on.
00:29:40.180I was like, I can't believe I'm seeing this out the window of this second story of this building.
00:29:46.000And the man that was showing us the building went downstairs, and he had a shirt, two shirts on.
00:29:55.180So he gave the top shirt to this boy, who was obviously, once we saw him, cognitively disabled.
00:30:01.780And it was something that stuck with me, because I had never seen, personally, an Ethiopian male, a man, just helping his people like that, in such a real and tangible way.
00:30:19.060And a year later, I was adopting my daughter, and in comes this same man that had shown us the building, saying, how is the adoption process going?
00:30:34.360And this is when I realized I could have done the adoption locally.
00:30:38.840So I was local in Bahardar, and he said, how is the adoption process going?
00:30:42.900I said, well, it would have gone great if the lawyer that I hired actually showed up.
00:30:46.280And the lawyer at this point hadn't showed up, and actually, he never did show up.
00:30:51.080But the same person who had shown me this house went into the judge and said, look, I'm not a lawyer, but I would be happy to help her proceed with the adoption.
00:31:02.340And so I went, okay, if he can help, I'm happy to do this.
00:31:07.780So he helped me with my daughter's adoption process.
00:32:02.240Yeah, the Lord has really seemed to bless you a lot.
00:32:09.780One of the neat things is I actually think that culture of dating that way is probably or preparation for marriage that way is probably more healthy than what we've got going on here.
00:32:20.020But nonetheless, tell us about, yeah, I'm partially from an Indian background and they have arranged marriages, which are somewhat similar, but.
00:32:31.800Also in Ethiopia, they have many that are arranged marriages as well.
00:32:47.820And it's usually about families coming together and a lot of these rural communities, they know each other and, you know, they grow up together.
00:33:07.460I thought this was really fascinating because as you started the first infant daycare, if you will, for these poor moms who need to work and would otherwise have to abandon their children.
00:33:23.460I was driving south on the interstate in the U.S. in Florida a few years ago and I came across this billboard sign that says, don't abandon your baby.
00:33:47.660I mean, when I first went to Ethiopia, there would be one phone for a neighborhood and they would come outside and yell the name of the person and you'd have to run and get to the phone.
00:33:55.800Nowadays, most people have cell phones because it's not that they pay monthly for them.
00:34:02.160They can get a really cheap cell phone and honestly never use it.
00:34:23.780And I went, OK, that makes sense because how many people are going to see a billboard sign?
00:34:30.960And so that's what we were able to do.
00:34:34.100We were in touch with the local authorities and the telecommunications and told them our plan is to prevent these children from being abandoned.
00:34:59.900The first set of text messages went out to over five million phones in our area, and it said, if you need help and you have a small baby, don't abandon your baby.
00:35:15.980And what they can do is if they don't have money to call or text because it's by the minute, they can send us a message saying, call me back or text me back.
00:36:00.780That would have been a harder message to send.
00:36:02.580And I don't think that the government would have easily agreed to paying for that message because, unfortunately, from the West, abortion has become common in Ethiopia.
00:36:14.160Before the Western world, Europe and America brought abortion in, there was no such thing like just, I mean, I'm sure there were cases, but it was just so uncommon.
00:36:25.080And I remember speaking to a group of students about the development of the baby in the womb and abortion, and these were college students, and only one of them had questions.
00:39:33.880And within a two day period, there were over 2000 people that were killed just in our neighborhood.
00:39:40.380And so it's been very traumatizing for our children, our families, our staff.
00:39:48.940But the amazing thing is that our staff are quite brave and they know that they're doing God's work.
00:39:54.620And so we've been able to continue running Grace Center despite the war.
00:40:00.320And once, you know, several months after, I realized, you know, we probably are the only program that's continuing to run in the entire region, which is about 30 million people.
00:40:11.380Um, everyone else has closed up their doors.
00:40:15.880So we have, um, been able to keep going because our assistant director is wonderful.
00:40:22.940Um, but we can't be there at the moment.
00:40:25.860Um, and our staffer feel a little bit of relief that they don't have to worry about us, um, when we're there because they would want, they would never want anything bad to happen to us in the same way.
00:40:37.380We don't want anything bad to happen to them, but they realize they have no choice and they have to be there and that God is going to use that.
00:40:44.920And he's protecting them just in amazing ways.
00:40:48.260Um, so we do pray for God's protection every day, um, for them.
00:40:53.400And I would ask your listeners and viewers to please pray for an end to this war for peace.
00:40:59.740Um, and the other thing is that I wanted to share a little bit more about some of the other things we offer, um, to the people.
00:41:07.220Um, one of the things we do is, um, along with having a school and a children's home and a feeding program that provides thousands of meals a day.
00:41:15.900Um, we also help women and children who are in prison.
00:41:20.780So in Ethiopia, when a mom goes to prison, her children go to prison with her.
00:41:26.660And one of the reasons is that is this protects the children from being killed in revenge of the alleged crime of the mother.
00:41:36.640So when we first went into the prisons, um, we were actually approached by the local government who the local government loves what we do.
00:41:45.060Um, the government bodies responsible for women and children have actually rated us the top charity in Ethiopia for three years.
00:41:56.740Can you please help these, uh, families?
00:41:59.280And we just had no idea that they existed because to be honest, I had gone to the prison before just to try to visit the people that were in prison.
00:42:06.360And they wouldn't let me in because I was a foreigner.
00:42:09.220So they approached us and we began going in immediately.
00:42:12.840And we send all of those children to schools.
00:42:55.200And we were blown away to see that the well's overflowing with water.
00:42:58.920It actually provides about 35 gallons of water per second.
00:43:02.780And we realized that was enough to support the entire city where we live.
00:43:06.920It's about 500,000 people where we're at.
00:43:09.600And so we have over a thousand people a day coming to get water at this point.
00:43:14.020And, um, that's just been another huge way that we can, you know, really reach people because we get a chance to talk to them and see them.
00:43:22.360Um, and then one more thing I wanted to add is that we've been asked for many years to expand Grace Center beyond Bahadur.
00:43:31.520And I always knew that Grace Center wasn't about the location.
00:43:34.060It was about the people and God's people are everywhere.
00:43:37.360And so we were given land in another area of Ethiopia, uh, called Debra Marcos.
00:43:42.680It's about four hours South of Bahadur.
00:43:44.300And we've officially begun construction on that land to be able to serve the people in that area.
00:43:50.320And just like there weren't any programs like Grace Center when we first went to Bahadur, there weren't any programs in this area either.
00:44:03.120And so we have been able to go in there and we're going to start this program there.
00:44:07.480And we're also expanding, um, looking at expanding to other parts of the world because we know that, um, God's heart is for his people to be well and to live out the life that he's called them to live.
00:44:20.560And I believe that every person on the earth has a calling and, um, it's our job to help them to reach that point where they can live out their call.
00:44:48.600Um, our book is available on our website, gracecenterfoundation.org.
00:44:53.860Um, if you go to the homepage and scroll down, you'll see the books.
00:44:58.100The photo book is called Glimpse Africa, the Women of Bahadur.
00:45:02.220And I spent about 10 years working on that book and putting together the stories.
00:45:05.880It's basically before and after stories of the families that have come to us.
00:45:09.420So you see the person that is very sickly and unwell, malnourished, and then you see them healed and well.
00:45:16.300And most of the stories have these amazing, miraculous endings to them.
00:45:22.680You know, um, we had one girl that was completely miraculously healed of complete heart failure and her heart was completely fine after praying for her for about a year.
00:45:32.920So I love to share those stories with people.
00:45:36.460And then the other book is called Mama Maharet.
00:45:49.340And I said, well, I don't know what it means.
00:45:51.260I think it's the ruler of the planet Mars or something like that.
00:45:54.140And they think, why would someone name their child that, you know, every name in Ethiopia has a meaning.
00:45:58.920So they call me mercy, which is Maharet.
00:46:01.200And so that is my story about a lot of what I share with you and so much more, um, about just these adventures of starting Grace Center and being in all these different countries in Africa and raising children and all the people that have come to us and things like that.
00:46:15.480Beautiful. Now, a lot of people might want to support your work.
00:46:20.340We have a life funder set up for you, uh, which, uh, is listed at the bottom of this video and shows up on the screen here.
00:46:26.680Um, and what's your, what's your final message for the people, for the people, mostly of America, Canada, and the West who, who watch our program?
00:46:35.720Sure. Um, we can't do this work without you.
00:46:39.800We are mostly funded by individuals and it's people that just hear what we're doing and say,
00:46:46.640And in addition, I think being pro-life is so much more than, um, just pregnant women or elderly.
00:46:55.980It's the entire life process from conception to natural death.
00:47:01.120And it's so important that we realize that every thing that we do for every person on this earth matters because we're doing it unto the Lord.
00:47:13.420I mean, uh, we're going to conclude in a second.
00:47:17.300There's one question I failed to ask you that, uh, we're going to insert into it.
00:47:21.480Um, and it's this, Marcy, in addition to bringing the, you know, food, nourishment, healthcare, and, and, uh, just basic care to, to people, how do you bring them the faith?
00:47:33.300Well, we, um, we, um, we, um, we offer prayer for every person that comes to us.
00:47:40.420We're well-connected with the, the local, um, church leaders, the priests.
00:47:46.440Um, and, um, we mainly have conversations with people to be honest, because I found that one-on-one conversations in Ethiopia go really long way.
00:47:56.840And usually it's, these people are already hungry for the Lord because they, um, have spent so much of their life suffering.
00:48:06.780I mean, the stuff that we see there and the ways that these people have suffered, I wonder, how is this person still alive?
00:48:13.740People come to us with these tumors and these growths that it's, it's like, they're like the lepers in the Bible.
00:48:20.760People literally clear the streets when they walk through.
00:48:24.100And when we're able to help them with all of their physical needs, they know that what we're saying about everything else must be true.
00:48:32.100And so through that one-on-one conversation, we're able to help them come to know the faith and, um, steer them in the right direction.
00:48:40.980And we also make it very intentional, you know, all of our staff, many of the people that we serve are Orthodox.
00:48:48.100So they have a foundation of, of God, of the Trinity, but maybe they have never, um, been educated or been in church, um, because there's a lot of different rules that go along with that, um, similar to the Old Testament.
00:49:03.520So for example, this boy that came to us with this very large growth on his foot that, um, again, people would clear the road when he would walk through, um, God spoke to him in a dream and told him he needed to get up and walk.
00:49:16.960And he ended up at our gate, um, many, many miles away.
00:50:51.740We, this prayer was answered after we prayed for him and he had the surgery.
00:50:56.440And I met with her the following week and I said, I just really want to thank you and your husband for doing this.
00:51:01.220I mean, we, we looked everywhere and I kind of jokingly said, even this, this doctor told us that we'd have to have his leg amputated, even if we went to America.
00:51:09.780And she responded and she said, well, actually that's probably true because my husband is the only husband, the only doctor in the world that specifies in doing this type of surgery for this type of tumor on the leg and foot.
00:51:25.040And I kind of went, okay, God, you know, so these are the kinds of things we see every day, right?
00:51:33.700It's just like, and, and the boy is, the boy is still with us.
00:52:09.140And may he continue to bless you and all of your many, many children far beyond the eight you have, the four you adopted, but the many, many who would consider you their mother of mercy.