July 9, 2010

11:00PM

Whew – girls finally in bed after a looooong day. We have a lot of those here! I think it’s the blessing and the curse of knowing you only have a short time somewhere – you pack things in, because your departure is always right around the corner.

Fridays are our “team days” usually. Class at ETC for rainy season class is M-Thur.

On past Fridays we have spent the day out of the city breathing clean(er) air…we’ve hiked in the Entoto Hills and seen lots of goats, sheep, a jungle of eucalyptus trees and mountain huts, hung out at Bubagaya Retreat Center/Crater Lake all day and hiked out through fields and mud to a really really old tree, and everyone but me and the girls hiked a mountain last week (I can’t remember the name) enjoying some true Ethiopian countryside (while they were gone, the girls and I enjoyed a fun day with Ramonda!) – the Friday dinner meal is reserved for the team as well, so since we had VBS today, we didn’t breathe clean(er) air, but we did take a big breath of relief that the week is drawing to a close.

Jeremiah actually stayed home today, super sick on the couch (this week WAS killer – sinus infection and fever has him out for the count), and went to the nurse at SIM to get some meds this afternoon.

So the girls and I braved VBS on our own today…it’s safe to say the whole fam is wasted.

But it’s Friday so it’s team dinner night…so tonight we had injera with the team at the Anderson’s home, along with two young families who are full-time missionaries in Ethiopia and who are also DTS grads. One couple had a 4 week old baby boy (that she delivered here – C section – bless her!) and the other had a 18 month old boy. It was nice that our children weren’t the only ones making lots of noise at team dinners/meetings. :)

It was a fun dinner with injera and some SPICY duro wat – a mix of onions, chicken, and lots of spice. I hope that we were able to be an encouragement to these two families/new friends.

Our poor girls, though, this has been such a busy week that I’m sure they will soon come down with the full-on yuck that Jeremiah has :(

At least it’s at the end of our trip and not the beginning! And how amazing is it that for the entire trip Josie has had ZERO breathing issues?!? Thank you to any and all of you that were praying for her about that! We were just commenting tonight on how incredible it is, especially considering the high altitude and polluted air here, that Josie’s lungs have held up so well. We are so thankful!!