How one woman’s ‘vision from God’ led to helping thousands of lives in Ethiopia

 

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 23, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).

In 2006, five young children arrived at a small, faith-based facility in northern Ethiopia for food, medical aid, and an education. Now, nearly two decades later, Grace Center provides extensive care and support to over 50,000 individuals yearly of all ages and abilities — all thanks to the vision that its founder says she received from God.

The center carries out multiple programs dedicated to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of anyone who comes to them for help.

“At Grace Center we ask: What would Jesus do for this person? Then we do the same,” founder and executive director of Grace Center Marcie Erickson told CNA.

‘God gave me this vision’

Erickson shared how God called her to Ethiopia to help those in need.

“I was a senior in high school and I said a prayer asking God what he wanted me to do with my life. I heard him send me to be a missionary,” she said.

Erickson went to Ethiopia to teach English in the middle of a famine. “There were people coming every day that were starving. There was also a lot of abandoned babies.”

“I spent time in many different countries in Africa, volunteering with different schools and orphanages and children’s homes, and ended up back in Ethiopia,” Erickson said. “God made it very clear that that was where he wanted me to be.”

“I really felt that the Lord was calling me to adopt and [provide] foster care for as many children as I could personally take on,” she said. Erickson listened to this call and adopted three boys and later adopted a daughter. She raised the four children by herself before she married her husband, Sefinew Birhanu Mengistu, in 2008.

“In this particular area of Ethiopia, there really weren’t any services for the people. There was no help for food or housing,” Erickson said. She wanted to do more, but as a single mother she was unable to take in any more children. She believed this was because “God had a bigger plan.”

“I was laying down in bed right in the midst of this,” Erickson said, “and God gave me this vision of having a center and how it could be properly run and properly staffed, and the kids would receive proper love and care.”

“I sat up. I said, ‘OK, Lord, if this is coming from you, then you’re going to give me the people to help me run this.’”

Erickson then started Grace Center in Bahir Dar, a city in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia, with the help of a few friends. She said it all came from the idea that “God knows every person. He’s created every person and he has a plan for every person.”

Help for ‘every single person who’s genuinely in need’

Today, Grace Center has about 225 staff members on the ground in Ethiopia. They provide food, water, housing, child care, medical assistance, and education. The organization assists people from infants in day care to adults looking for jobs.

The center obtains no government aid but receives 85% of its funds from individual donations that go directly to Ethiopia to aid its mission and programs.

Grace Center has its own school where kids learn about God and receive what Erickson believes is the best education in the area. If children live too far from the center, the staff find a school closer to them and make sure they are able to attend.

Erickson said the organization’s prison ministry program is vital to many children in Ethiopia.

“In Ethiopia, when a mother goes to prison, all of her children go to prison with her. One of the reasons is to protect these children from being killed in revenge of the alleged crime of the mother.”

Erickson added: “What we were able to do was not only minister to them and talk to them and pray with them but also find schools in their areas. We can have them bused to these schools that are going to have protection.”

Grace Center also has a day program for special-needs children that is “very unique to Ethiopia.”

Staff members provide different forms of therapy and have access to equipment that has either been donated or built at the center. It is one of the few special-needs programs in the country.

Grace Center houses abandoned special-needs children and other orphaned children full time but tries to help families live outside the center so they can “be part of the community,” Erickson said.

The center has “anywhere from 25 to 40 children” full time. “At this point, we have 37, and these are babies that the police bring to us, usually, that are found in the ditches, they’re found in boxes,” she said.

Grace Center started a program so that locals can adopt these children. Erickson explained that families in Ethiopia thought adoption was something only foreigners did. She said “we were able to come in and say, ‘No, this is actually something that God does. He adopts each one of us, and we need to be prayerful about that.’”

If Grace Center is unable to reunite abandoned children with a family member and they are not being adopted, they will be fostered by families that work directly with the center.

“This is not like foster care in America. This is run by us,” Erickson said. “These are Christian families. We pay for the houses and we have a house mom for each place, and they live throughout the neighborhood.”

Rescuing babies

In an additional March 19 interview with “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly,” Erickson also detailed Grace Center’s baby rescue hotline. The program started a few years ago when Erickson realized there was no helpline for mothers advertised in Ethiopia.

“The first text message went out to over 5 million phones in our area saying … if you’re pregnant or if you have a small child and need help, please call this number,” Erickson explained.

“And every single pregnant person that we’ve talked to up to this point through our hotline has decided to choose life for her baby, has carried her baby to term, and kept her baby.”

‘A big vision’

Erickson shared the upcoming plans and expansion of Grace Center and its pro-life programs. She told CNA: “I feel like God’s just given me a big vision.”

The expansion has started in Debre Marcos, another Ethiopian city about a four-hour drive from the current location, where they have already started to build. Erickson said the Grace Center’s director there has created an initiative to grow plants on the land to help feed the local community.

Erickson, who is based in the U.S., has an upcoming trip planned to Ethiopia to do work at the Grace Center and oversee expansion plans. She will be there for about three months with her husband and their 12 children.

Erickson said they are “looking at expanding to other countries” and “are excited to see what God will do.”

Watch the “EWTN Pro-Life Weekly” interview with Marcie Erickson below.