Our Next Ten Weeks...

This summer will be busy!  We leave for Ethiopia on Thursday evening, May 22.  Our first leg of the journey is a 12 hour flight from Houston to Istanbul, Turkey.  After a 3 hour layover, we will board a 6 hour flight from Istanbul to the capital city of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.  We arrive in Addis at 12:15 AM on Saturday morning.  Ethiopia is 8 hours ahead of Central Time, so that is 4:15 PM on Friday in Houston.  Needless to say, we will all be very tired after 21 hours of travel.  We will spend our first few days in the capital city of Addis Ababa at a guest house as we acclimate the boys to Ethiopia, rest from traveling, and prepare to move out to the village of Bantu. 

Our first couple of weeks in Bantu will be busy, and each day will bring something new.  U.S. teams arrive for mission service during late May to mid-June.  During those weeks, we’ll get to visit with teams from East Texas Baptist University, FBC Athens, The Woodlands FBC, and Hope Springs Water.  Some of the ministries the teams will work with include Vacation Bible School in a new village, women’s ministry, church construction, water well rehabilitation and installation, and the Rural Pastors’ Bible Institute.  Most days we will head out with the teams as they serve in and around Bantu.  This will give us a wonderful opportunity to meet  people and participate in ministry with our local pastors.  The boys and I will head back home most days for Matthew’s nap and the boys’ school.  We want to preserve that time as much as we possibly can so that the boys can get the rest they need to stay healthy.  We’ll have dinner and fellowship with the teams in the evenings.  We are excited about the time we will have to spend with good friends (both from home and Ethiopia) and with Larry’s brother-in-law, Russell, who is coming with the FBC Athens team.  We know seeing familiar faces will be a big encouragement for us. 

Late June and the month of July will look quite  a bit different for us.  After The Woodlands’ team leaves, we’ll be on our own in Bantu.  I imagine our days will be a little quieter, and this will be a good opportunity to get to know many people, make new friends, and learn more about the Oromo cultural traditions.  We hope that this will be a good time for fellowship with our Ethiopian brothers and sisters in Christ.  We plan to visit the new church plants in the surrounding villages and help facilitate some of the ongoing TEAM Network ministries.  We also hope to explore new areas and villages for future mission work.  Larry’s mother, Linda, is going to visit us the end of June through the first week in July.  We know this is going to be a wonderful refresher for the boys and us at the halfway point, and we are so excited that she will get to experience Ethiopia with us.  We are looking forward to both the excitement and company the first few weeks will bring, as well as the time we will spend as a family in Bantu for the remaining part of the summer. 

We will head back into Addis about once a week to wash clothes, buy supplies, and connect to the Internet.  While we will have cell phone service in Bantu, we will only be able to get online in the city.  We’ll check emails, post a blog update, and get in some much needed FaceTime as often as we can.  Most of our trips to the city will be during the week so that we can be home for worship with the Bantu church over the weekend.  We return back home on July 28^th.  God is doing amazing things with His church in Ethiopia, and we are so excited to share in it this summer!