First church, then travel

Tom Wade and two of our Ethiopia friends load up the luggage for our trip to Awassa, where we will be painting rooms at the Bethzatha orphanage there. But this was Sunday, so first we went to church. We went to the You-Go City Church, which is in a large building that formerly housed the Yugoslavia Night Club. The service was in the Amharic language, and congregation members who knew English were pressed into service as translators. They let us know generally what the pastor was talking about, and we recognize the words for God, holy, Lord and "I give you praise." The music, also sung in Amharic, needed no interpreter for us to understand the passion behind the singing and the praise. All the members knew the words, too, without the aid of a hymnal or words projected on a screen.

After the two-and-a-half-hour service, it was lunch on the bus and then a four-hour drive south to Awassa. It was quite an experience to see animals and vehicles sharing the road and the large number of people seemingly in the middle of nowhere who were walking along the roadside. Where did they come from and where were they going?

We felt the adversary at work when we got to Awassa. First the driver had trouble in the dark finding the orphanage, where we wanted to drop off painting supplies for tomorrow. Most everyone was tired and cranky when we arrived at the Oasis Hotel, where there was difficulty with some of the room reservations and the dinner arrangements. We had a time of prayer before dinner and after we ate everyone headed to their rooms for a good night's sleep before our busy day tomorrow.