Ethiopian Adventure Review: DAY FOUR

Wed., July 18, 2008

Today is Berty's 6th birthday...& I'm in AFRICA!
We went to a museum, a historical, national museum. The artwork was 'painful', of war, famine & genital mutilation. There were many ancient artifacts & I was sad to see it displayed in a way that left the items not so well preserved.

We passed 2 palaces today, of a prime minister & a king.

We also passed a beautiful park w/ a nice & new looking playground. But it was empty. Our guide said that no one plays @ the park because they are afraid of terrorists. :-(

We went to the Light & Life 'study center'. It is a center where children come in the middle of the school day for lunch &/or tutoring. All of the children are orphans of Aids. I did not know what to do w/ myself @ first....then we found the kindergartners.

They were taking a nap in this concrete room, on mats, but as soon as they saw us, they lit up. They immediately got up & said hello & began to touch us, hold our hands, hug us & want us to pick them up.

My dd Berty is very physically 'needy', she is very touchy. I felt like her personality had somewhat prepared me for this moment...it was a mob of kindergartners that could not physically get enough. I felt like this was the perfect way to 'celebrate' my dd's birthday, by ministering to these 'littles', in this way.

They loved my hair, they were fascinated by it. @ one point I was bending down & told them they could braid it...so they did, I was surrounded & afraid if I actually sat down, I would never be able to get up again...because they would sit on my lap & be so crowded around me

The children had ill-fitting clothes (school uniforms) w/regular clothes under. Their front teeth had black spots, sores around their mouths...& yet they seemed to be some of the most beautiful children I had ever met.

It was all quite overwhelming & I did not realize how draining until we left. Although, I wished we could have stayed longer. I could have felt content to spend the entire 2 weeks just HUGGING those children & filling up their physical need for love, every day.

Looks like rain again & no electricity in the city today.

We went to a business building to check on the status of our luggage. Brent & Angela went to have coffee...TJ & I walked around & went up these nice stairs...all the way up. We saw an emergency exit & i wished I could exit it & take pix of the view of the city...then we saw one more set of stairs, followed it up & there happened to be a door being held open by a rope. We went out & were on the ROOF! The view was amazing--you could see all of Addis!!! It looked beautiful from afar. I took pix of the bird's eye view.

I learned a few new words today: Jesus getano---Jesus is Lord.