Hello and welcome to Ethiopia! Its been a while since my last blog!! But for good reason! We are about 3 hours away from the nearest wifi!! This blog will just be an introduction to my life here! More blogs to come! I promise. But here’s just a general blog about life here in Ethiopia!
My life:
We live with widows and orphans at a place called HOPEthiopia. HOPEthiopia is founded on the basic principals that it is a home of prayer, peace and protection for the women and children living here. There is a faith well that provides hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh, drinkable water for the town. There are 28 kids with ages ranging from 3 to 18. They live in 6 little houses and we live in the guest house. We are smack in the middle of the African bush with mountains surrounding us and grasslands for miles. Our neighbors are donkeys, cows and their owners. It’s surprisingly cold here! The average temp is 60 degrees in the morn and 75-80 in the afternoon. My ministry looks a little different week to week. For the first few weeks we were here, my team and I cut grass in the morning! They don’t have lawn mowers here so we take a knife to the grass. It’s a long process, but a really fun one! In the afternoon, all we do is love on the kids here. And they are so easy to love – wow.
Upon arrival, we drove from Addis Ababa (the capitol) all the way to a little village called Harbu Chulule. So tiny that you cant even find it on a map. The town has about 10,000 people in it. We are placed in a compound just outside of town. There is one road through the whole thing. If you walk out of our compound, to the right is the town were there is a market every Monday, Thursday and Saturday. A corner store with things like socks, apple cookies and coke. And the church. If you walk to the left, there is the mud hut village. And you can read about that in a soon to be posted blog!
Days here are slow and simple. There isn’t much to do so our only options are to either spend time with the Lord or spend time with people. So its been a very relational 2 months. I’ve spent more time with the Lord here than I ever have in my life. He’s been revealing a lot of stuff to me about him and about myself. Its been really cool and intentional time with him. He is faithful. And you can read more about than in ANOTHER soon to be posted blog.
More about life here: The staff here is WONDERFUL! We have two cooks- Eldana and Zanit. They are the BEST!! Eldana is a spunky lady who is very similar to me in many ways. She loves me really well and we laugh a lot together. Zanit is sweet and gentle and always gives me hugs and kisses. They both don’t speak a lot of English so we talk through expression and love!! There is Menge, Megursa, Dagi and Milto. Menge is a social worker. He is SO funny and unique. He always greets me with a smile and loves to laugh with me! Megursa is incharge of the village. He’s super gentle and kindhearted. Dagi is the healthcare worker. She is so crazy! I love her so much. She is very young and sassy but a very kind woman. Milto is in charge of all of the teams that come to HOPEthiopia. She is one of my best friends here. She comes to the village with us and hangs out with me a lot! She is a great lady who loves the lord and serves others really well. For each children’ss house, there is a house mom. They are women from the village who are either divorced, widowed or need a job. They are such great ladies!!! They cook, clean and do laundry for the kids in their houses. They are an inspiration for what strong women look like.
Thats basically my life here! Its been really, really good. The Lord has healed a lot and redeemed a lot and spoken a lot to me and I can’t wait to share with you what he’s done! More blogs to come! Thanks for reading this one!!
With love,
Eliza
