Ethiopia Mission Trip Update: Day #7

After breakfast, Joy and I, along with Tesfa, the Public Health Nurse, took us back to Haregewoin’s HIV-positive orphanage while Dorothy stayed with Christine to take care of her. This time, Joy was armed with stickers and I with Jolly Ranchers. The children were just that. Children. Playful. As we played outside, I gave out the candy to each child. After mine was done, I showed them the blue tongue and they began to show theirs. It was rather fun looking at them sticking their tongue out so strongly! Kids will indeed be kids. Then a lady came to sing praise songs with them and lead them in prayer. They even prayed for other sick kids. Then the kids started to play with my camera and all had a blast. We went without an agenda. We just wanted to bring joy to them, or as Dorothy put it, “just love them.”

For lunch, the younger missionary couple, Mike and his wife wanted to try Korean food! We definitely didn’t mind but we felt so spoiled! But since they don’t get to try different foods often and they were really wanting to try it out, we went to the Korean restaurant. The food was okay, but I was glad that Mike’s family and Dorothy enjoyed the food so much! On the way back, we picked up an Orthodox brother by the name of Samson.

After some rest, we had dinner with Rob and his wife from The Outreach Foundation. They had already been here for two weeks catching up on the status and updates. Rob’s organization supports the missionaries, planting and building churches, and equipping the leaders for the global church. This also meant that he was interested in our church, Pathways, as it’s related to church planting! They shared numerous stories like the one about walking for an hour through the mud to get to a church! Or how they started to give the local rural pastors money to invest in oxens to plow the field and generate more income so that they could be self-sustainable.  It also turned out that Dr. Weingartner would be in Houston in middle of August (8/16-18) and he really wanted to visit our church for worship. It is just amazing how God opens up doors of all kids all around us.

Now, I mentioned a man by the name of Samson who is just starting up a NGO that would help the poor elderly folks. He was rather a humble young man only a year older than I was who felt the calling to take care of the elderly who are alone, too poor to feed themselves, and need love.

Now, the day is nearly over and just continue to pray for Christine that Satan may not have a hold on her and that her physical health will catch up to her spiritual health. She was glad to come despite her condition because it also helped the local Ethiopians to open up their eyes to see that not all Americans are healthy and that she understands their pain and suffering because she does.