Mission Trip Recap Part 1

Oops forgot about pic order on blogger...sorry the next posts will be better...lol

Our bus, and our luggage...goodness there was alot!
The dome of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church


Our first lunch together in Ethiopia...at a pizza joint...lol

Travelling....

If you have been reading the team blog some of this may be redundant, but I wasn't writing that one, so this one is just from my perspective.

It's been a long couple of days getting myself back into the swing of things and I am still processing it all.

It was an amazing trip!! I think we accomplished everything I thought we would and so much more.

We left on Easter Sunday afternoon. Our flight was to leave early on Monday morning so we all piled into a church van along with a pick up truck holding all of our luggage and headed out. We ended up with 23 pieces all weighing 50lbs or more. It was nuts!

We arrived at our hotel in Washington DC and settled in.

Monday dawned early as we all got up, made our way to the airport and worked our way through baggage claim, security and immigration. We all made it through without a hitch. We boarded our plane and had pretty good seats, all things considered, and the flight wasn't full so there were some that were able to find places to lay down and sleep for a while. The one thing that drove us all crazy was the need for the attendants to wake us up every so often to have us eat or drink or fill out a form. We all joked that we would buy signs that said Do Not Disturb, then decided they probably wouldn't work.

We arrived in Addis about an hour late and had work our way through the Visa line, then the money exchange, and then on to baggage claim. No issues there either. We half expected to have issues working our way through the security in Addis considering the massive amount of formula we were carrying but there were no issues and we finally got to join our counterpart Mark from YWAM, Abebe who is the Ethiopia representative and Yosef who was to be our interpreter.

I can't tell you the feeling I had being back in Addis again. It was so wonderful. I just kept breathing in those smells that I have only found in Addis. :o) They were beautiful!

We arrived at the guest house I thought we would be staying in only to find out that it was not the same place. It was run by the same people but they had moved into a smaller building and smaller rooms. It was beautiful, but wouldn't work for all that we had to do, and sure wasn't going to hold the amount of luggage we had brought with us. So Mark told us of another guest house they usually use and we decided to move there.

Since we were all exhausted we decided to keep the day short and just visit the Ethiopian Orthodox church. I had been there before, but it was cool to go back and see it again with new eyes. It's truly a stunning building. By the time the tour was over though I was falling asleep on my feet. We were all ready for bed early, and ready to get started on some real work Wednesday....