Heart of the Master

By Kleopatra Aslanidou

"In my deepest, darkest moments, what really got me through was a prayer. Sometimes my prayer was 'Help me,' sometimes my prayer was 'Thank you.' What I have discovered is that intimate connection and communication with my Creator will always get me through because I know my support, my help, is just a prayer away."

Haile Selassie Emperor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637690536

Book preview

Dedication

To my father, Nikolaos (1934–1998), for everything he has done for me

To my mother, Ester, for leading me to the true path

To my son, Nikolaos Gabriel, my mentor and wise adviser

To Salem and my grandchildren, Gabriella, Noah, and Priella

To my sister Eleni and the rest of her family

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I would like to thank God Almighty for giving me the faith, chance and the power to fulfill my dream

Special thanks and gratitude to:

Trilogy publishing and the amazing team that contributed to this book, including but not limited to my acquisitions executive, project manager, editor, and graphic designer

My husband for his encouragement and valuable assistance in writing this book

"The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’

people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not

in identifying winners: it is in making winners

out of ordinary people."

K. Patricia Cross

"We meet no ordinary people in our lives, if you give them a chance, everyone has something amazing to offer."

Ryan Seacrest

Every one of us, according to our deeds, will meet our own judge and master.

Nikolaos Antonios Aslanidis (my father)

God’s Plan

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 20, 2020, I had a long walk and then a relaxing dinner with my husband. Returning home, I felt it was time to share my story.

We are living in an era when the prophecies of the Holy Scriptures about the end times seem to be taking place. COVID-19, an unpredictable and uncontrollable situation, a plague of disease, became a global pandemic. It has resulted in massive deaths with loved ones’ funerals occurring on Zoom. The fear we are living in is a clear indication and a global alert that we should start thinking about the Word of God. It is the first time in my life I feel that everything is changing and that I can expect the unexpected.

I thank God for preserving me, for I am a witness that indeed His words are true. Everything will change except His words. God has shown us that He is the almighty authority over all the universe, and we humans are powerless. For His name’s sake, I want to testify about the living God who impacts the world and motivates us. God has been a great source of encouragement in my life, and I want people to have faith in God, who always has a solution for our lives.

I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to a Greek Orthodox Christian father and an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian mother. I’m considered a half cast—kilis—an unpure race, a mixture. I always asked myself why my parents gave me the name Kleopatra. I was told that my Greek paternal aunt, Kaliopi, from Karpathos had lost a loved one at a young age, so in her memory I was given her name. It always felt like a burden and that it didn’t fit me. Someone with such a name must have the shoulders to bear the name. Whether I liked the name or not depended on my circumstances at any particular time in my life. It seemed like a long name, so my father made it shorter and called me Patra.

At Greek school in Ethiopia, I was the only student with the name Kleopatra. The name gave me understanding; it was the name of a famous queen of Egypt, and perhaps I would get some kind of wisdom in life. When I was working with the royal family as a caregiver and assistant, one day I was sent by the Princess to the embassy. When I arrived to deliver the documents, the clerk asked me my name, and I said Kleopatra. He told me that my name is not easy to bear in French: "C’est pas facile porter le nom Kleopatra."

Be Wise – Understand the Will of God

You might ask why I am talking about my name. In Genesis 17:5, God changed someone’s name for His own purpose and for that person’s good.

In 2013, I went to Jerusalem, Israel, for the first time to visit the holy sites. When I was walking in the streets in the old market, an old Jewish man named Shimon stopped me and greeted me with a kind hello, shook my hand, and asked me my name. He asked where I was from. I said hello to him and told him my name was Kleopatra and that I was Greek and Ethiopian. The old man asked me to drink tea with him just down the road. He said the reason he stopped me was because he felt some kind of power while I was walking, a power emanating from me. Until now, I did not fully comprehend what he meant. For some reason, I accepted his invitation to drink tea with him in the souk, or bazaar, where Arabs and Jews co-exist peacefully and have their shops.

Shimon told me he prepared and sold natural herbs that help people heal. We talked about a lot of things, including my name, and he kept insisting that he didn’t like my family name Aslanidou and from now I should use the name Sarah. I shall call you Sarah Eshel, he said. I asked him why my name should be Sarah. He said because it was easy for the Jewish people and it was also biblical. He explained that Sarah means princess or a woman of high rank, and eshel is a tamarisk tree. After I left Israel, I maintained communication with Shimon for several years, but later on for some reason I stopped.

The Divine Gift

The Almighty God is working in many ways. We realize some of them right away, some later, and some never. But God is always there for us and never far from us.

I grew up as a Greek Orthodox Christian. My father and mother taught me to love God with all my heart, mind, spirit, and soul. At the age of twelve, I was chosen by my English teacher, Miss Chris, to join the chorus every Sunday at the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Froumendios in Addis Ababa. When I was in the fourth grade, I had been chosen to sing a lullaby at the end of the school year because of my melodic voice. Singing the lullaby made me famous in elementary and high school. It was my proverbial fifteen minutes of fame, and everyone applauded enthusiastically. My father was extremely proud.

I sang every Sunday in the church chorus until I finished Greek high school. I was also a good student. Even with all the difficult circumstances my family faced during that time, those years were still the best years of my life. When I was fourteen years old, I was baptized again in the name of Jesus Christ. My mother became an apostolic evangelical follower. Every week we had at-home Bible studies with Brother Tesfaye Belihu, a man who feared God and a man of grace and wisdom. Because of him, my sister Eleni and I came to understand the nature and the power of the name of Jesus Christ. For eight years until I graduated from high school, I attended his Bible studies every week at our house or the houses of other Christian brothers and sisters. We met regularly to pray and read the Word of God.

Receiving the Holy Ghost

One Saturday we gathered at my godmother’s house for prayer. Her name was Mary Yousef, and she was an Egyptian. While praying, I received the Holy Ghost. From the time I received Him until I got back home—about an hour—I was talking in tongues. What beautiful, strong feelings I experienced. I didn’t want it to stop. Blessed be the name of the Lord! Since then I have never questioned God’s divinity or God Himself, the Creator. Even with all my mistakes, I never doubted the personality of Jesus Christ as God Himself.

My ancestry goes back to the Solomonic dynasty and Lij Iyasu in particular, who was the grandson of Emperor Menelik II and the son of Ras Mikael (later King Michael), governor of Wollo and friend of Menelik II. Lij Iyasu succeeded to the throne in 1913 but soon lost support because of his Muslim connections. He was deposed in 1916 by the Christian nobility, and Menelik’s daughter, Zauditu, was made empress. Upon the death of Empress Zauditu in 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen, adopting the throne name Haile Selassie, was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. His full title was His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God. Haile Selassie’s regime abolished slavery by 1942 before gaining membership in the League of Nations.

I discovered my ancestry when I went to Ethiopia in 1998 to bury my father, Nikolaos. His father was Antonios, a Greek from the island of Karpathos, and his mother was Bogalech Shawel, an Ethiopian from Wollo. My great grandfather Andreas, a well-known professor, was originally from Izmir. After the Greek genocide by the Ottomans in 1922, the Turks captured Smyrna with troops led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern-day Turkey. A gang murdered Greek Orthodox bishop Chrysostomos of Smyrna, and a few days later, a great fire burned the city.

My great-grandfather Andreas left Izmir and went to Karpathos where he was referred to as Judge for his wisdom and fairness and for deciding cases and resolving problems among the village people of Pyles in Karpathos. Then Andreas went to Tehran. Before that, there was an interesting history of the Greeks who entered Persia during the Qajar dynasty and the time of the Persian Shah in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and established the Greek community. Some other prominent families went to Rasht in Persia, and after the Greek genocide, Andreas’ brother went to Agadir in Morocco where my cousin was born. The Persian and Greek civilizations have not always been at war, but for millennia, they have often engaged in exchanges in the arts, learning, architecture, theology, culture, and commerce.

After my father’s burial, I stayed in Ethiopia and visited one day with my uncle Neguse, my father’s cousin. He told me my grandmother, Shawel, did rituals for traditional spiritual practices, including drinking perfumes and eating flowers every Ethiopian new year, normally during the month of September. He told me she was a descendant of Lij Iyasu.

During the Italian invasion, Vassili and Antonios (my grandfather) helped the Ethiopian emperor and the rebels in their resistance against Mussolini’s imperialistic and expansionist war of aggression against Ethiopia. The Italian military briefly occupied Ethiopia during World War II since it wanted to make Ethiopia an Italian colony. They failed to establish control, however, and Ethiopia was never colonized. Ethiopia’s location, economic viability, and unity helped it avoid colonization. Ethiopia was officially recognized as an independent state in 1896 after defeating the Italian forces in the Battle of Adwa. My grandfather and his brothers, particularly Vassili, purchased arms from Czechoslovakia with money from England to provide for the Ethiopian rebels and fighters in order to protect Ethiopia. Subsequently, the Italian government discovered the role my grandfather and the Aslanidis brothers played. A secret letter from the Italians dated January 19, 1938, went to Asmara, the capital of Eriteria, to signal the activity of the Aslanidis brothers in what was described as providing contraband (arms) to the rebels in Ethiopia. My ancestors had a great faith in God and a strong love of their adopted country, Ethiopia, and the fellow Ethiopians who were fighting for survival against the Italian aggressors. My grandfather and his brothers had a close relationship with the Ethiopian emperor and visited the palace regularly.

My maternal grandfather, Fayessa Moreda, was a war veteran who fought against Mussolini’s invasion. He was not a soldier, but when war broke out, men and women were called to military service, and my grandfather answered the call of duty and risked his life during the war. My grandfather and his companions shot down an Italian war plane in the territory called Bure. Unfortunately, he was shot