Today dawned bright and sunny and felt hot very early on. We started our day with delicious pancakes and home-made maple syrup...definitely a good way to start the day!
We set off for the church bible club in the dry and arrived to find that there were 72 children waiting for us!! It has been so encouraging to have so many children coming and today we had 7 children from non-Christian families. We had only prepared enough craft for 50 children, so it was all hands on deck as we created enough for everyone. Thankfully they have a photo-copier, but that soon became obsolete as we lost power (quite a common occurrence over here) and we had to resort to drawing multiple copies by hand.
Their worship was exuberant as always and they were experts at remembering the bible verses we had taught them. Using actions along with the words has really helped them to learn and remember.
We did the story of the Prodigal Son today, and they helped us act out the story again. We are never short of volunteers and they seem to love getting involved. Hopefully, by acting out the story, it will help them to remember it more easily.
We finished early today as one of the little boys was celebrating his 6th birthday. We thought that the English knew how to party, but the Ethiopians definitely do it better. Every child in the room was given a party hat, mask or a party blower and all the party food, drinks and amazing birthday cake were laid out in full view while “Happy Birthday” was sung at least 20 times...accompanied by clapping and dancing. There was a real sense of celebration and even though it was the boy’s special day, it felt like everyone’s party...a real feeling of community. Every child was then given a plate of party food and a drink, but as we were “English guests” we had a whole bottle of fizzy each and a huge platter of party food to share. It was obvious that they had saved the best slices of cake for us and ever since we have been here we have always been looked after and served first...hospitality is done beautifully here and the Ethiopians are a very selfless race. We have a lot to learn from them and they certainly practice what they preach when it comes to Christianity. They don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk.
The afternoon session with the older youth was another “chigga yellum” time! Andy found out that he was without a translator, but thankfully the older kids know a fair amount of English so he just went for it and hoped that they would understand. He wasn’t met with a sea of blank and bemused faces so we presume that his message got across. We then made bracelets with all the children. The boys weren’t keen at first, but soon joined in (as did some of the adults.)
Dodi (the 13 year old daughter of the family we are staying with) has been translating for us in the morning sessions. She has been amazing as she is fluent in both Amharic and English. These 3 weeks would have been much harder without her as the extent of our Amharic is about 10 words. David has a few more as he has learnt quite a few useful football phrases! It has been great to be able to greet people in Amharic, but unfortunately they then think we can converse further...not a chance! At least we are having a go and people are happy that we are trying to speak in their language. It can get a bit confusing though as “ow” means “yes” and when one of the orphans kept squeezing Abi, she automatically shouted “OW!” She meant that she was being hurt but the young boy thought that she was saying “yes..do it again!!” She soon learnt!
Tomorrow is our last session with the children at the church as Friday is a Thanksgiving service, followed by a hike up the mountain. We are praying for an overcast day as we don’t want it too hot. Everyone tells us that the climb is well worth it so it will be a great end to what has been another amazing week.
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