Well here was my view for the last time for a while. I will miss this place. I am so ready to be home but my heart is full with sweet memories of God in this place.
Our Hotel!! We were greeted by some of the street boys this morning!!
Carrie and I as we were about to head out to go shopping for the day!
Just some pics of Ethiopia!! There was so much livestock every where!
Random building!! But I loved the doves!
One of our first stops for shopping was this place. A lady started a business trying to help women and get them off the streets and give them an income. They use old artillery shells and make jewelry from them. We got to sit and watch them for a while. It was fascinating.
About 3 bracelets will supply a full months salary for these women!
The home had about 3 rooms and each room was filled with women working and making these bracelets.
The home the women worked in.
Just a random city view of Ethiopia.
You would see this a lot! Trucks stacked high with stuff and men standing on top while driving! Made me so nervous!
More crazy traffic.
The starbucks of Ethiopia.
Now there is a crazy story to this picture. I will keep it short but it was the first time while we were there that I was scared. It was a moment that made me loose all comfort and peace. All of us girls were taking pictures while we were driving through town, and Kelly who had a huge nice camera was taking lots of them. Well we finally came across our first stop sign and we all thought it was hilarious so Kelly gets out her camera and takes a pic. Then the cars next to us start yelling, we just thought it was because we were americans and then we look up and a guy dressed in full army gear is running toward our van with his gun pointed at us. I was thinking, "Oh no get your passport out, they are going to do a passport check" so he come over to kellys window and says camera camera, kelly is crying and says no and he then grabs her camera and she yanks it back so he then cocks his gun and grabs the camera and takes it. You have to understand that this camera is her life. She has so much on it and did not want to give it up. Well we later find out that you are not suppose to take any pictures of Governmental property which that stop sign was in front of the Prime Ministers home. So the Guard thought we were taking pics of the home and would use it to send to America. Crazy I know, but it is a 3rd world country. So our amazing driver pulls over and tells Kelly we will try to go get your camera back. Honestly looking back they probably shouldn't have. Those guards could have done anything to them, could have thrown them in jail, could have beat them, shot them, and so on. Anyways so yogi and kelly get out and leave the rest of us girls in the van. A few minutes later our white van with no tinted windows and no locks was surrounded by about 4 beggars. They started just trying to talk and beg for money and then they start to tap on our windows and then they tapped on the windows and began to circle our van. I just kept looking at Carrie to see if she was scared. We could no longer see Kelly or Yosi. We had no idea when or if they would be back. We paused and all began to pray. It is truly by His grace that those men did not try to open our van doors. Nothing was keeping them from doing that. About 30 minutes later we could see Yosi and kelly walking up to the van. We couldn't tell if they had the camera or not. Thankfully they did and Yosi got all the men to leave the van. Yosi said the guard was mean and was yelling at them like crazy. He said he wanted to break the camera over their head. At one point Yosi tells us that he took off his glasses before he went because he knew that the guard was going to beat him up and that he just bought those glasses. The guard made her delete her pics and we learned a valuable lesson to not take our cameras out while driving!! =) God was good and He had His hands on us and a whole host of angels! So this is the restaurant we ate at immediately following that incident.
Yosi's pizza!! He deserved it!!
It was a really pretty restaurant! Island Breeze!
Yosi our amazing driver!!!
The street of Ethiopia!!
You would see this a lot!!
Dinner for this guy in front of us!!
Kids playing!
The beautiful mountains!
Our boys from Oneisumus!
The boys house!
These are Able's paintings! Able was a sweet boy we all fell in love with. He has HIV and in order to pay for his meds he finds scraps on the streets and paints and then sells his paintings.
The boys decorated their house with all the stickers we gave them.
Praying over the boys in the house!
Me and Yedeneckachew! This is the little boy we sponsor! He is our African brother!! And we love him and pray for him every night!!
Silly girl!
Able drawing me a picture!
Some OX.
Our last dinner in the guest house!
The power went out and we had to pack and eat in the dark! It was kinda an awesome way to end out time there!
The amazing team!!!!
