The Siloam Ethiopia mission needs the community's help in order to keep changing lives in the East African country.

The mission will serve Ethiopian food for a fundraiser that will be held Saturday, Dec. 6, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Word of Life Evangelical Church, 175 Church St., Landisville. Visitors will pick up their meal at the curb. People may call 717-874-8510 to reserve a meal, but a reservation is not required.

The menu will feature injera, which is Ethiopian bread, with options of Ethiopian dishes including doro wat (chicken dish), misir wat (split lentils), atakilt wat (vegetables), and non-spicy split yellow peas.

"People should come to this event to help others, to help the poor," said Demeke Getahun, who is the pastor of Word of Life Evangelical Church. "We are a mission that's helping the poor people medically and also to save the children from the street. We are supporting the widows that don't have anything, so we gave them money every month for their groceries. And also, we support the school in the area. The mothers and fathers don't have enough to buy school supplies. We help with that also."

Siloam Ethiopia sponsors eight girls in Ethiopia, split into two houses.

The mission is especially important to Getahun, who is from Ethiopia. "We know how they live there, and we know how people are suffering in different ways," he said. "We cannot just sit back. We want to do something for them. God blessed us here. The Americans are very generous. They always help with these kind of events when we prepare. It is going almost nine years now, that's amazing. We don't have any income. We just do the fundraising, and a few churches are supporting us."

Siloam Ethiopia also helps support mobile medical clinics. "There is a station that they're moving everywhere, and it is helping them taking blood pressure and giving them their medicine," said Getahun. "Most of them are very homeless. Some of them never had shower in their life, so we give them a shower, give them a clean house, clean clothes, and you see their life is changing."

He said the people of Ethiopia are facing many challenges. "There is a shortage of water in that area," said Getahun. "There is a problem, a big problem, but we try to reach as much as we can. We focused on the kids because our heart is like that. We cannot neglect the widows."

Siloam Ethiopia plans to do even more. "Our heart is to open more houses," said Getahun. "In the future, we have a plan to build houses to continue to support the (girls living on the streets)," said Getahun. "A lot of children who don't have mothers and fathers, they go on the street. We save them, and they are getting an education, and we see they are changing."