Kids at play

  Hello all you faithful readers. I have just recently managed to share some new videos with my technical advisor/blog administrater. Boy is she great. I hope to learn some new computer skills while she and Guy and Zapata visit us this month. In the mean time I continue to rely on her for our technical support regarding the blog. Oh Yeah the Blog.

 These are just two of  the  games the kids often play on Saturdays during our free time between breakfast and english class. I have yet to translate what they are saying but I’m working on it. They are really fun to watch especially our little girls like Biqiltu and Lydia and Aster.  I never fail to feel my heart lifted when I watch them at their simple games. Our kids at home have pretty well forgotten the art of imagination in their play. The toys do all that for them. Here a simple piece of paper becomes a propeller on a plane and Hunde’s Imagination takes off in full flight . Sandy and I are astounded at the resourcefulness of some of our kids like Biza and his brother Hunde. If  I had a ton of money I would by 2 bijas for those boys when when they grow up and start them up with a taxi service . I can just see them darting about town in three wheeled taxis.  

  Well the power just went out and I’m typing in the dark. I have enough trouble pecking at the keys in the light.  I will close this episode of our blog  praying for grace and peace to all of you.  <><  CW

GGI Kids playing

Slide show

Bus ride to Piassa, another intrepid adventure with Sandy and Carole

On Monday  Sandy and I decided to take the bus to Piassa as we are accustomed to doing but just for fun we thought we should also find our way home by bus also instead of having Trusty Dawiit drive us .  The adventure begins, we climb aboard the Higer bus  and off we go .  When we get to the area that has many butcher shops we see a dead hyena on the road. We have been told that they are rarely seen near town but this is the second one we have seen dead in the road in this same place. I’m not sure “rare” means the same thing in oromo that it means in english.

Next we come to the detour around the new road construction, We’ve been stuck on this hill before.  Our fearless bus driver determines not to wait for the the traffic jam on the hill to disperse and instead he turns down a narrow side street.  Ok this doesnt look so good, it is so tight that only about a foot of space was between the bus and the walls of the compounds lining the street. The bus rounds a tighter corner and comes to a stop.  We are caught between a rock and a hard place quite literally. Some men get off the bus and I decide to try to get some film of the problem.

I climb up to the front of the bus and shoot some film, now there is a large group of men in the street and they are chanting what sounds like an old work chant.  I managed to squeeze out the door just in time to catch a few frames of the crowd and the road is cleared. Back on the bus , a few more tight squeezes and our bus is back on route for Piassa.

We arrive at our destination without further troubles and disembark the bus to wander happily about the charming treets of Piassa. We tried a new cafe for lunch and were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food and the the cleanliness of the establishment.  We even found our way to the Blue Supermarket and Shoa Store for our much needed supplies .

Only one challenge left, where do we catch the bus back to burayu?  Well ask a total stranger of course.  Wasn’t it Scarlet O’Hara who said ” I have always depended on the kindness of strangers”. A nice gentleman in line  with us at the Shoa store gave us excellent directions. Just go straight up that really steep hill and cross over to the corner. No problemo! Have I mentioned the elevation here is over 8000 ft. Huffing a little we crest the hill, find our bus and off we go for home  with all our delightful purchases in hand. We have been cautioned about the buses but I must say that we always meet very friendly people on them and  have adventures we would not want to miss. I encourage any intrepid traveler to take full advantage of the inexpensive Higer Buses. Just dont be in a hurry to get anywhere. And pray.  happily serving our LORD and SAVIOUR in Burayu, Carole and Sandy.

Lost in Translation

    Hello faithful blog readers. I am sorry it took me so long to write a new post.We have had many distractions and spiritual battles on several fronts.  Dont Lose Hope The Battle is The Lords.

   We must always remember that our adversary never sleeps and is constantly seeking to spread chaos, after all he is the author of confusion.

   This morning in my devotions I was uplifted by the words of the 27th psalm. ‘ Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; Though war may rise against me, in this I will be confident.  One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek; That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavillion; In the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock. And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me. Therefore I will offer sacrifices of joy in His tabernacle; I will sing , yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.

  After my uplifting morning devotions I spent 2 hours pouring over 3 different English to Oromo books just to come up with one sentence that could be understood by an ” interpreter’ who could then explain to our friend Buse. What time , day and place we could meet her. It took about 20 minutes of broken english and my very poor pronunciations of Oromo to convey that information.

    I often find myself mentally wore out  and it is difficult to find the time and space I need to get spiritually  recharged and ready to go back in for the next round. Praise God for the patience of those who are  faithfully serving Him here.

   It is not just a matter of a new language to learn, that is challenging  enough. We must also use the Ethiopian calender year, month and day and even the way time is kept is different.  So explaining to someone that you would like to meet them at 9 am on Friday morning  Jan. 29 th  at our home  becomes an incredible undertaking. Up until now we have relied on ‘ interpreters ‘ for this communication but we are never where we are supposed to be when we are supposed to be there.

  You see today is not Jan. 27 2010 by the Ethiopian calender.And it is not 2 pm in the afternoon. It is Amajjii 20 th 2002 at  8 o clock in the afternoon. Now if I could throw away my gregorian calender and my international time watch  and live on Ethiopian time things would be somewhat simpler but our responsibilities to churches, families and GGI prevent that luxury.

   I suppose that it sounds like I am whining, but I love my life and work here and wouldn’t trade it for anything.  Please keep Sandy and I in your prayers , the daily challenges can quickly become overwhelming.   Your sister in Christ, Carole

Tough Day

We had a tough day yesterday.  It started out great. Spent the morning cooking food for some of our poorest kids and when we got to the last delivery we found Dinka’s mom so sick we thought she might die if she didn’t get care immediately. We did not know what to do and we didn’t have an interpreter so we began to pray for God to help us and oh boy did he answer big time!

Our friend Getachew was looking for us and managed to track us down by asking if anyone saw where the two white women went.  He is a church elder and knows everyone.  He and I went to look for the doctor and left Sandy with Dinka’s mom.

We walked across town to the clinic. Not there. Then to his home. Not there. Then on the phone but there was no phone service – that happens a lot.  Back across to Dinka’s on foot of course.  Getachew left to find a taxi and I walked back across town to our house because we  were supposed to meet Samson and Enat at 4 pm.

We eventually got Sirne into a budja (taxi) and to the clinic and Dr Feyissa eventually got there also.  She is better today and they even sent her home this afternoon. She has no money to pay the medical bill so we are going to pay for her drugs and Dr Feyissa is not charging for the time in the clinic.  Praise God!

Please continue to pray our GGI families.  God can do mighty things when we pray!

This is a picture of me and Dinka taken a while back.

Christmas in Burayu

January 6

Its Christmas eve on the Ethiopian calendar. We had an awesome time with our GGI kids. The sunday school teacher put on a great program with her kids and a song by our kids. Then we got to give our kids a gift bag for each one with all kinds of fun goodies. You would have thought the gift bags were full of gold the way their faces looked when they opened them up.

Then after all the kids’ performances the worship leader led a spirit filled time of worship that must have lasted about 45 minutes. The whole church was jumping and clapping and all the kids were on the stage dancing and jumping even Sandy got up there with our kids. It was the most fun I ever had in church.

Teaching at Bereket School

Several weeks ago Sandy and I were invited to volunteer some of our time teaching conversational English at Bereket School. Well, after getting settled in the new house here and  a bout with the crud we are finally able to take on this new project. Sandy got a head start on me (she got over the crud quicker). I got my feet wet last week and met my students and began to learn the ropes.

We had hoped that we would get some training, orientation or curriculum, but we are pretty much just winging it. We bought some  books to help us with ideas for lesson plans. Last week was easy I just tried to engage the kids with questions and once the ice broke I had a lot of fun learning about their favorite things and telling them some of mine.

This week its down to serious business. I had my plan, teach the long and short vowel sounds. I entered my class room fearlessly, knowing I was armed with a full lesson plan. That went well with my 8th grade class and surprisingly good with my very big 5th grade class and even the 6th grade went smooth. Ahhh, sigh of relief only one period left and its the 7th graders, it’s a small class only about 14 students. This will be a breeze, I’ll just sail right through and in no time I’ll be home taking a well earned nap. Hah! My class had an entirely different agenda. It became readily apparent that they had very little interest in my lesson plan. What to do, how could I regain their attention……. after some quick  thinking I devised a new strategy.  I know I’ll take some photos of the class. Ok, those of you who actually are trained teachers can probably  see the flaw in my plan but naively  I charged on. Total chaos rapidly ensued. But we sure had fun and I’m reasonably certain they did learn a few words like ’silence!’ ‘Be Quiet!’  and ‘Sit down!’

What a great time I had, and the photos I have to say are some of my favorites! I plan to resume a more structured line of teaching first thing next week. Luckily I have an extra day or two to get prepared.  p.s. if you have any helpful ideas please feel free to post a comment on the blog.     <><  CW

Beginning our Home Visit Ministry

Now that Sandy and I are feeling strong again we ‘ve gotten right to the  business of visiting our GGI children at their homes.  Tuesday after our classes at the Bereket school we went with Pastor Emanuel to see Danye and his sister Mirat.

They live with their very elderly paternal Grandparents in an older house. It was very poorly lit and the furniture looked as tired as the grandparents.  Danye’s grandfather is a dairy farmer and their compound is big, for being in town, but he explained to Sandy and I that the city confiscated his fields for development and left him only the compound for his cattle and home.

He supports his family by selling milk from his cows. I only saw one cow and calf and a couple of sheep in the yard. His wife is very weak and suffers from a respiratory illness. I can not imagine how they manage two young and active children at their age; although it was very clear to us that they love their grandkids and make every effort to provide a loving home for them.

Danye and Mirat’s father has passed away. Their mother has a new husband who won’t let the her children live with them. That leaves them in the care of very poor and elderly grandparents.

Danye is a bright boy and well behaved at our Saturday GGI program. I enjoy his sweet smile and quiet demeanor. I don’t know much about Mirat.  She has only come to our program twice that I’m aware of. She is shy like her brother and is a very cute little girl. I am often a bit overwhelmed by the poverty of our children and yet I am amazed by the resiliency of their characters and the joy they have in the simplest of things.

It is know wonder to me that Jesus tells us to be like them and that ‘of such is the Kingdom of Heaven made.’  I am praying for sponsors for all 25 of our program kids.   Cw

A visit to Busayu’s home

Thursday afternoon we went for a drive with Emanuel and Girma (he’s an architechtural engineer). After seeing one of his construction sites we headed west out of Burayu and then turned onto a main highway going south by south east towards Addis. We drove through beautiful grazing land, rolling hils and broad flat fields  with small herds of cattle, sheep and horses  scattered here and there.

After a few kilometers we started to see more homes and some businesses and an area of industrial development. Girma explained that this area was under the authority of Burayu and the Oromo people and that a large complex is being built to be a trading center for grain and other commodities from rural parts of Oromo.

We stopped the car and crossed the road to vist a small chapel planted by Pastor Emanuel and Girma, then took a short walk to some compounds nearby.  Thats when Emanuel mentioned that we would visit Busayu’s home.

We entered the clean and grassy compound through a tin gate and approached a rustic stick and mud hut. A small but strong looking woman came out to greet us with a warm smile. She invited us into her modest home, just one room, a few chairs, a bed and some sacks of milled grain near the door. She makes injeura from the grain and sells it to support her and Busayu. I was surprised to find out how far Busayu lives from Burayu and yet still makes it to our Saturday program. We have been giving her money for the bujas [small  3 wheeed taxis] but we really had no idea  how far she was traveling. She is one of my best students on Saturday and just has the kindest face you can imagine.

I hope you will enjoy reading about our home visits as we continue  the process of  interviewing  the families and guardians of these great kids.

Joyfully serving our Lord in Burayu, Carole

Christmas with New Friends

After a bout with a lousy cold Sandy and I are up and blogging again. We were finally able to have a house warming/ Christmas dinner for a few of our new friends. So you might ask what do to american missionaries serve to their Ethiopian/German landlord and all their ethiopian friends?  Spaghetti of course! With alot of garlic bread and apple pie for dessert.

We wanted to serve a classic american meal and after much deliberation agreed on spaghetti  [I know its italian] but it was really all we could find all the ingredients for. The apples were a big splurge and I’m not going to tell you what we payed for them. The next big challenge was finding a pie plate. OK. We asked a few in the know folks and decided the mercado district  was our primary hunting  ground.

Now all we had to do was explain to our trusty driver,Dawitt, what a pie plate was so that he could interpret to potential merchants just what we had in mind. Well it would help if people here ate pie; but then it wouldn’t be something new for them and that would take all the fun out of our quest. We finally settled on a skillet.  BTW  I ended up using a broiler tray because the skillet was to small for a pie for 12.

On the way home from shopping we encoutered a few minor technical difficulties with the car and after being pushed a few blocks by some very kind gentlemen we were off to Burayu. Not so fast , Dawitt explains that we need fuel.  Gas station crowded , people filling  up all sorts of unsafe cotainers with fuel, we get through all the crowd, get our fuel and are about to pull onto the street when a big truck tries to pull into the station, needless to say there is no way that truck ,our car and a half dozen other cars are going to navigate this space all at once. Well Dawitt being the kind soul he is backs up to let the truck in from the street. That was good until the truck driver turns to short and binds the rear quarter panel of our car up in his wheel well. I thought Dawit was about to cry,  or worse, all he wanted was to safely get Sandy and I home to Burayu .  He was able to flag down a cotract taxi  and give him directions and we were on our way.  We did finally make it home  with our packages intact.

Ok what  was this blog going to be about ? Oh yeah, Christmas with friends.  Sandy and I and Shaweye set about cleaning the house and making decorations. An old newspaper, some glue , a little string, a treasured piece of tin foil,some paint and of course good ol’ fashioned american ingenuity and soon the house was festooned with paper chain garlands , snow flakes and a sparkling silver star  over the table. Shaweye proved to be superior paper chain maker under Sandy’s diligent instruction. Sandy set a beautiful table complete with fresh flowers from Kifley’s garden.  Oh by the way this is a day after the shopping trip.

Right on schedule our guests arrived , Pastor Emanuel and wife Marge [ pronounced mar gay] Samson and Enat husband and wife owner /directors of Bereket school , Balacho  from church and our dear friend Getachew also from church and of course Kifley and Sumbutta from upstairs. It took a little convincing to get Shaweye to come join the conversation but in the end all our guests were engaged in a delightful mix of english and oromifa. Enat enjoyed reading the blog, and her husband Samson and Kifley were deep in a conversation that I’m certain solved all our worlds troubles.

I think everyone liked the meal. Marge seemed especally fond of the toffees on the coffee table and  thats perfectly acceptable for a woman who is 6 months pregnant. It was  great fun to share our home and meal with the people we are working with, to build  rapor and strengthen the bonds of  fellowship.  There is a lot of work to do here and I hope that  this will help to lay the foundation for our future cooperation.

All of you faithful blog readers be sure to blog in next week when we celebrate  The Ethiopian traditional  Christmas Holiday.   Merry Christmas and a   Happy Birthday to our Lord and Saviour , Jesus Christ.       CW