Greetings from Ethiopia!

I am in Addis Ababa tonight!  We arrived on Tuesday and picked up my niece right away.  She is sooo wonderful.  She is a great baby and fairly predictable.  My sister is doing great too! Today we are finally feeling normal today which was bad due to about 36 hours without much if any sleep.

There will be no pictures from here as I am on a dial up connection and have a cell phone almost exactly like I had in 1990.  Once I get home I will post plenty of photos with details so that you can see what it is like.

Having planned to come here, I read books, watched videos, and saw literally thousands of photos.  I can tell the in person experience can not be captured in a photo or in words.  It is something that you must experience yourself.

I will share a little of my day with you today.  We awoke at 6 a.m. Thursday in Addis which is 10 p.m. est Wednesday.  We are staying in a guest house that can accomidate 4 families.  Since we came early - we are the only ones here which is very nice. We started our day with pancakes make from wheat flour and peanut butter- just like home as I did not have to cook or clean up! We then were picked up by the driver who takes us to the other guest house to pick up another family.

The city is very busy- kind of like Chicago or New York except there are no traffic lights.  Somehow the traffic stays orderly for the most part.  There is a lot of honking and our driver is quite amazing trying things I would never do.

We went to the Ethiopia National Museum.  There is many artifacts from the history of Ethiopia.  It was interesting but having just gone to Paris- it is hard to compare.

After that we were able to go to the lion cage!  It is literally a lion cage in the middle of the city.  We hit feeding time just perfectly.  There were about 150 small school age children there too.  They were very friendly and I think we were as interesting as the lions.  They waved to us and us to them.  The lions were literally 18 inches from us through medal bars and chain link fence.  I was something you would not see in the US!  If the lions became aggressive they would squirt them with hoses.

We have lunch at a nice restaurant.  It was around 234 burr for 2 adults.  That is around $18.  Interestingly the restaurant was filled with foreigners.  The food is good here and our guest house owners are amazing.

In the afternoon we returned to the guest house around 2:30 p.m. and about 15 children from the orphan home that you guest house owners run were here.  A social worker from our agency was also here to observe and gather data on the 4 children still in need of a home.  It was heartbreaking and glorious all at the same time.  They reminded me so much of my own children.  A 10 year girl is the same no matter where you are!

The children so love life and did same amazing dancing and games for us as the social worker gathered the information from our guest house owner who also helps her husband with this ministry.  Elliott my niece loved them too.

 They also feed 400 children every Saturday and started a social services for children to stay with their families.  720 are in that program today receiving medical care, schooling, clothes, and food for $1 USD a day sponsorship from foreigners.  Next time you think you have too much to do consider the mission of these two individuals.  Of course they have help- but they are truly amazing people.

Tonight we have a traditional Ethiopian meal and it was very good.  Tomorrow early we leave for a 5 hour journey to Awassa where Elliott was born and first came into care. Send us positive thoughts as it is a long journey by most peoples standards through the countryside and safety while there.

We will return to Addis on Sunday to begin our final legal preparation to leave Ethiopia.