Happy Ethiopian Easter!

Greetings from Ethiopia!

We arrived safely in Ethiopia Saturday evening - after 24 hours of travel time and 4 take offs and 4 landings and not enough sleep. Our flights were smooth and on time. Thanks for all those prayers!!

We were brought to our hotel and had a very good nights sleep. This morning we were picked up by an Adoption Agency Employee and brought to his home for an Ethiopian Easter (which is today) breakfast and Coffee Ceremony. With us also, were 3 beautiful children from our agency's transition home. They were ages 6, 11 and 12. They were just a delight to spend time with today! After breakfast, our Agency Employee brought us about 2 hours north of Addis. The drive was amazing! The Countryside was more beautiful than we imagined, filled with hills and valleys and lots of curving roads. We often had to slow or stop for cows, sheep and donkeys that were being shepherded around the countryside. We spent some time at an Ethiopian Monastary and Museum and had a guide teach us much about this Monastic group and its history. After that, our Agency's Employee took us to his mother's home, which was near the Monastary. She lived in a very poor community, as most of the people who lived there make their living as beggars. When we stopped to park the car to visit her, we were immediately surrounded by all age groups, asking for money. After a short visit with his mother, we then began the drive back to Addis. Addis is a very busy, populated city. Since today was Easter, and the end of a 55 day fasting period, there were goats all over the city. People would pick one, have it slaughtered on the street and go home and make an Easter meal.....talk about a different world! We have seen so many people here who are poor and have nothing - we can't put it into words. We both had times today where we couldn't speak - we were so overwhelmed by the emotions that the poor and forgotten awakened in us........we couldn't believe what we were seeing and our hearts were being continually being broken more and more.

After a short, wonderful nap back at our hotel, we were taken to the family of our nephew's college suitemate, who is from Addis. We had such a wonderful time with his Mom, Dad, Brother and Sister. They shared dinner with us and more coffee. ;-) Our fellowship was warm and sweet and we truly felt like we had made new friends when we had left their home.

We still feel like this is a bit of a surreal experience to be here - it is such a different, wonderful, hurting and amazing place! To all of you who have helped in some way to make it possible for us to be here - we remain humble and forever grateful.

We will probably try to post most days - simply because we want to remember this experience for ourselves and "document" it when it is fresh.

Thanks for your continued prayers~

Dave & Vicki