Jo Ann Griffith
Box 25 B.E.S.S.
Dembi Dollo, Ethiopia

For the past forty years Jo Ann has served with the Presbyterian Church as a teacher in Ethiopia. Jo Ann came in 1970 to the Bethel Evangelical Secondary School (BESS) in Dembi Dollo in western Ethiopia as a teacher of English and Bible. Seven years later, she was asked to teach the home economics course to girls in grades 7 to 10. This she did along with English weekly in the 11th and 12th grades, which are considered college preparatory.

Until 2003 Jo Ann lived in a dormitory setting with 36 boarding girls and found deep joy and happiness in the relationships that grew between her and the students and staff. Jo Ann says her involvement in the dormitory setting provided countless opportunities to put the theories of home economics into practice: nutritional meals at low cost in the school dining room, the introduction of vegetables into the local diet, the wise use of human resources, the improvement of the home with an emphasis on cleanliness for health and beauty's sake, and first and foremost, human relations. After home economics was removed from the curriculum in 2001 she returned to being an English teacher.

(Photo Album)

Letters from
Jo Ann Griffith

• June 2004
• February 2004
• October 2003
• March 2003
• June 2002
• March 2002
• October 2001
• March 2001
• October 2000
• March 2000
• October 1999
• February 1999

Quality education is offered at BESS to pupils in grades nine through twelve. This school is one of the few church-related schools in rural Ethiopia not confiscated by the government during the seventeen years of Marxist revolution. It is one of two schools operated in Dembi Dollo by the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). Mekane Yesus translates "dwelling place of Jesus" in Ge'ez, Ethiopia's ancient church language. The EECMY was formed in 1959, the outgrowth of Lutheran missions, and in 1974 the two Bethel Evangelical synods in Ethiopia, the result of Presbyterian mission work, merged with it. The EECMY is second in size among the country's evangelical bodies, with a membership of more than 870,000 in eight synods.

Bethel Evangelical continues to provide education in two streams—academic and vocational—given within a context of Christian education. The sign at the gate of the compound is their motto, "BESS Where Christ Directs Learning." Graduates of BESS are found at every level of society. In 1998, forty-nine of the fifty-one graduating students held a grade point average that assured them entrance into the university.

Bethel is an integral part of the Bethel Mekane Yesus Synod. Present leadership of the church has come through the educational programs of both the elementary school, Birhani Yesus, and the high school, BESS. Recent graduates of BESS have taken advantage of the option of attending the Mekane Yesus seminary in Addis Ababa. Those graduates now returning to the Bethel Synod in places of leadership are making a significant difference in the life of the church.

Jo Ann was first appointed to missionary service in 1959 by the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations of the former United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and served a short term in Addis Ababa as a teacher at the Annie Campbell George Memorial Girls School. Following missionary orientation training at Stony Point, New York, she returned to the school in 1963 to become assistant director and also served as the committee chairperson and hostess at the Addis Ababa Mission Station. She was assigned to her present placement in Dembi Dollo in 1970.

A native Virginian, Jo Ann Griffith is the daughter of an Associate Reformed Presbyterian minister. She earned an undergraduate degree in elementary education at Erskine College, Due West, South Carolina, and a graduate degree in religious education from Pittsburgh-Xenia Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania. Before going overseas she taught at Bethune Elementary School in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a member of First Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Gastonia, North Carolina.

Birthday: September 30