Retroactive Part 2

Each day we were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was an amazing experience.

It included conversation with our host, Dr. John, to walking the streets looking for hidden shops, to riding in a taxi-van with a lot of other people, seeing goat and sheep herders moving their animals across 6 lanes of traffic, to the Lexus and Audi cars being driven on those same streets by the people working in the high rise buildings. Amazing!

4 December 2010. After a night of restful sleep we woke to get ready for our day. Breakfast was served to us by Salish, the woman who manages Dr. John's household! She is a terrific cook; we never left the table hungry! After breakfast we went online to inform our families in the states that all was well and to quickly post on Facebook, too! The computer system was very slow and could have disconnected at any time, another experience!

John told us that his other mission responsibility north of the city may be receiving a shipment of dental supplies and he would need to be there to oversee the unloading, etc. If that happens he asked if we could teach his class at the Bible school. We would be in charge of two sessions...video's...no teaching!!! We said sure, another experience?

After some coffee and more conversation we went to our room to study and rest. About 11 am we walked to the local market with Dr. John. The city closes the street to vehicle traffic and the vendors display their items right on the road! Lot's of things from T-shirts, shoes, leather goods, kitchen things; like a flea market in the States. That taxi-van ride I mentioned earlier? That's how we got back to John's house!

That evening we attended the first ever missions convention the local churches held. It was very exciting to see so many people there, eat their food, and sing their songs. One thing about the food in Ethiopia is a special dish they serve...raw meat! Yup...uncooked beef! They love it! But, because they knew us westerner's wouldn't eat it they served other delicious food like lasagna! The evening was great. Many pastors pledged a month's salary towards missions...amazing experience.

We were back to John's by about 9:30 pm to visit some more and then go to sleep. The next day Bill will be preaching two services to two very large crowds...an experience for sure!