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
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