Back to Canada...

Well here we are, back in Canada. It's very bitter-sweet. We love those kids and the people of Ethiopia, yet it is nice to be home too. And of course the climate is a little different. Thank you all for all your support in prayer and donation, we could not have done what we did without you and most importantly without Jesus by our side every step of the way. He has taught us a lot through this trip and I can only hope we left a lasting mark on the people we met there, as they did on us. Now to return to CLBI and debrief. Yet we will always remember our time in Ethiopia and the people there. I pray we never forget the valuable lessons we have learned. Hey, maybe one day I'll go back and visit!
Grayson

Harar

Harar! And Awasa!

So we did not bring our laptop on our trip to Harar so sorry about the lack of blog in the past week. For those who don't know, Harar is about 5 hours east of Addis and is a very old city with remnants of a castle in it. We got to see the epic countryside of the Rift Valley and Harar, as well as a national park called Awash and lake called Awasa. So we started by leaving early on monday and driving the long trip to Harar. The next day we visited the orphanage there and got to see a good amount of the city and the ruins, as well as a couple other historical sites. Wednesday we started painting and got a lot of it done, and during the evening we got to feed hyenas by holding a stick in our mouths with meat hanging off of it! It was pretty intense, they're like fat coyotes on steroids. Thursday we finished painting and played with the kids. We gave them a ball from Canada and a bunch of pillow case dresses. Friday we went to Dire Dawa and visited the orphanage there and then drove to Awasa. Then today we got up and saw the lake, took a boat tour and saw some hippos, and got to eat freshly caught talapia! It was so good! One guy gave Erik and I some raw fish and it wasn't that bad except the spices on it was probably the rankest thing I've had this trip. It was so spicy it felt like someone had driven a stake through my tongue. It's so sad to think it's almost over...but God has shown us so many cool things and I can only hope we have done as much as we could have while here. Thank you so much for your support! We're taking lots of pictures so here's some...
Grayson

Painting and Cornrows and Crowds, oh my!

Well, these have been a crazy last few days! Thanks to everyone who was praying for us; after our bout with sickness, we're all feeling back to normal - well, as back to normal as you can in a foreign country! I took a little longer to recover than everyone else, but by Friday we were all back at the orphanage, painting away.  And in between all the painting we got to spend more time with the kids there. I would have thought at first that the language barrier would make playing together difficult - and once in a while, it definitely would be nice to understand the stories they tell us! - but it really doesn't. Turns out, hide and seek comes in lots of languages, and the kids absolutely love it.
Our main contact at the orphanage, Alex, is always very adamant that we do lots of cultural things so we will have "lots of stories for home!" And they have a hairdressing school connected with the orphanage that teaches women so that they can support their families. So what to do in Ethiopia but try some traditional hairstyles? Good life choice or not, Erik, Monika and I all got cornrows. I had no idea how difficult they are to put in! There is a LOT of skill involved, and the ladies did an amazing job.
Then, to round out our cultural experiences for the weekend, we went to the Epiphany celebration that the Orthodox churches here put on. It started on Saturday with a huge parade - Marcos said there were more than 40,000 people there, and that was just one church! All over the city, other churches were doing the same thing. The next day we went to the ceremony with their holy water. We don't know much about it, because we went guide-less, (and we're not quite fluent in Amheric yet!) but there was a huge crowd there too. Everyone, for the most part, was gathered around the priests, and then everyone was trying to get even closer when they started spraying the crowd with the holy water. It was very cool to go and see, especially because this celebration - which celebrates Jesus' baptism - is one of the most important days in the Ethiopian calendar. So it was a big event!
What we're really looking forward to now is our trip to Harar, where we'll be hopefully for the next week. The sister orphanage to the one we're working at now is there, and we're going to keep going with our painting skills...or keep trying to get painting skills... :) So if you could pray for that trip - for all the details working out, and for all the experiences we'll have, and that we would stay healthy - that would be wonderful!
Thanks so much for following this crazy journey we're on!
Tina

Painting!

Cannot believe that we are already half way through, crazy to think of all the memories that we have created and the adventures that we are waiting to embark on. These last few days have been filled with a lot of painting and sleeping, for starters on Monday we began our main project at Abenezer Orphanage, this consists of us painting both the inside and the outside of the main buildings. Surprisingly this project is going quite quickly and tomorrow we will be starting the outside walls, we are enjoying getting to know Alex and learning more about the culture and its customs, he is very knowledgeable and has many stories to share with us. Unfortunately on Monday night we ate some bad eggs and were hit with some food poisoning pretty badly, this led to us having to stay at the guest house all day on Tuesday just sleeping, drinking Gatorade, and trying to get back to normal. We all rested and by the next day were ready to take on some more painting and playing with kids, Tina though was unable to join us because she was still feeling uneasy and pretty weak. Prayers that we would all gain back our energy and be able to take on whatever tasks are thrown our way would be appreciated! As a team we are really starting to get accustomed to life here in Africa, it is a laid back culture that really just focuses on building strong connections between people. We have all felt so welcomed and cared for, especially by our new friend Tilahun who has been kind enough to show us around Addis a little bit and invite us into his home and Church. He is a great example of a young man loving on the least of these and he was able to tell us a little bit of his own personal story of being a street kid who was rescued, on Sunday afternoon after we went to Church with him, he brought us back to his home and we watched a documentary called 'Man Up & Go' half of this documentary was filmed right here is Addis, in a district that is called Korah. This area of Addis is one of the poorest and this is where Tilahun's Church is and where he spent many nights as a young teen. As we watched this is was hard for us to believe that Korah, where many kids, teens, and adults are living was only 20 minutes away from us. An area that is basically a trash dump that these people live in, how we can justify this just astounds me. Our hearts where very heavy after we left but God was so faithful in helping us process as a team and personally, we were convicted in a way that brought us to understand even more so how this trip is not about us but that it is about serving others and serving God with all that we have. We are thankful for this opportunity  though for our eyes to be opened, we know that this is part of us growing and learning.
-Monika

Time is Flyin!

So it has officially been 1 week since we landed in Ethiopia! To me it seems like we landed yesterday, but to some of the others they say it feels like we've been here for a month. But whatever the time feels like to us we have not been more privileged to be part of the things we have done and the things we have seen. Yesterday, Marcos, (our taxi driver/tour guide/linguistics teacher/translator/friend) took us to Merkato, Africa's largest open air market. That is one crazy place. It is so large that each 'block', I guess you could say, was a different section. And each section was specific to different things. Such as spices, shoes, women's fashion (bad mistake to stop there, really challenged us guys with our patience) traditional things, and many more. Because of its enormity, we had to choose two or three sections that we wanted to spend some time in. Bargaining is big in this culture. So, I had some fun trying out this new style of buying things. It kind of makes shopping fun. We have a competition between the team to see who can get the best deal. I hold the lead with bringing down the price 50%. Marcos says with his strong Amharic accent "you know right price". Though we have fun trying to bargain, we leave the real bargaining to Marcos.
Today we had a blast. We rented a coaster bus, (mini grayhound) and took the kids and staff of the orphanage out on a field trip. The kids were apparently so excited the evening prior to the 'big day' they barely slept. I think their excitement may have been different if they had known entertaining level of a museum is quite low. But they had a lot of fun running around and taking millions of photos with our camera's. Though a museum may be hard place to lose energy, the kids found a way to get exhausted and it was only 1 in the afternoon. So, with the field trip over sooner than we thought, we decided to take the bus we rented for the day up to Entoto - a mountaintop viewpoint where Emperor Menelik II first saw the land in which he would found Addis. And the view was one fit for an.... Emperor. There is a little village up there that surrounds an ancient temple and palace. Life on Entoto looks tough. We passed countless women carrying massive amounts of wood on their backs down the mountain and water jugs up. Even though, everyday we get more and more acclimatized to this foreign land we are visiting, it is still tough to see so many people in hard life situations. I wish that I had so much more to give them. God is good, he is alive and he is working. Thank you for continuing to pray for us and following our journey. Ciao!
- Erik

Field Trip!

So this is Christmas. In Ethiopia. We started out the day by meeting a friend Riley had met when he was here and enlisting ourselves to help him serve food to 95 homeless boys. The food in question was a goat, freshly slaughtered, Ingura bread, and lots of spices. LOTS of spices. The video is us trying the spicy goat with the bread, and it's amazing to me how these homeless kids can eat a whole meal of this stuff and not even break a sweat. Next we delivered the leftovers to homeless people around the neighborhood. It is so cool to me just driving around Addis and looking at everything. Even the driving is vastly different. Alex, the guy in charge of the orphanage at the moment, calls it "freestyle." Basically, anything goes and if you haven't used your horn in less than a minute, you're doing something wrong. Nevertheless, I would bet they are way better drivers than we are, because they drive under truly unpredictable conditions. One other thing I have learned about driving is that though in Canada pedestrians have the right of way, here it is the opposite. So keep your head on a swivel. After that we went to the orphanage and celebrated and played with the kids because it was, of course, their Christmas. The kids were really fun and though there was the obvious language barrier, we still had a lot of fun and I think they did too. Tomorrow we will start work at the orphanage, but having today to make some friends there was awesome! Even though we didn't technically "work", the time we had with the kids made a big impact on all of us, and it would not have been possible without your guys' prayers and support. Thank you so much! Ahmesugenalew! (Thank you in Amheric, took us a good two days to get the hang of)
Grayson

Ready to serve....literally!

Hello! Day two in Addis, and it's already feeling much more comfortable. We learned a new word - ahmesugenalew, which means "thank you." I'm not sure how proud of this fact we should be though, because it took us two days :) Slowly but surely, right? Below we posted photos of our first coffee ceremony. It's about an hour long, and involves three cups of coffee and popcorn. The grass, flowers and popcorn on the floor are for decoration. The orange and white circle is actually steamed bread, which they make for special occasions. It is a very common custom here, and it's a lot of fun to be a part of! We were able to meet another family staying here, and it was really great to spend time with them and their kids. Thanks for keeping us in your prayers. Tomorrow we're going to visit the orphanage, which we are really excited about. If you want to pray for anything specific, please pray that God keep working out the details of our trip, and that we will continue to stay healthy and well rested.
God bless!
Tina

Our First Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony!

We have arrived in Addis Ababa, safe and sound! Our last flight going to Addis was about 11 and a half hours long, the majority of the time we slept, ate, and watched movies haha It hasn't really sunk in to me yet that we are here but after a few days hopefully we will be a little bit more adapted and used to the culture change. One aspect that surprised me was how many people there are, people are everywhere, it might take a little while to just adjust to that but we have a month and that should be enough time :p We are looking forward to going to Abenezer Orphanage and meeting all the staff and kids, also something that we found out before we boarded our plane in Edmonton was that January 7th is Christmas here in Ethiopia!! So cool!! It will be amazing to see and hear how they celebrate, we are hoping to make some connections before so that we can really be involved in the joyous occasion!! Thanks again for walking beside us through this journey!
God Bless,
Monika

So we are currently in Washington and I can now say I have been to Dunkin Donuts and Timmy's is still better. Nevertheless, we are done 2/3 flights, however the last one will be the longest one. Hopefully we will sleep, maybe the extra-strength drowsy gravol will help with that. Thanks for everyone's prayer and support! If you want anything specific to pray about, just pray that we are reminded we are here to serve. And that hopefully we won't get burnt and mosquito bitten too badly.
Grayson