I'm back!

I'm back in Ethiopia! It was great to be in Denmark and catch up with friends and family. You don't realize how much you've missed them until you see their faces (and not just on a computer monitor!) I got to experience the first days of spring which was wonderful. I can't believe I am lucky enough to get to live in Ethiopia, and still get to experience spring! I know I've said all along that I would've rather had a full year here rather than traveling back and forth so much, and I still think that, but I can't say that I want to complain about experiencing the joy of the first day of spring. I am always surprised at how happy it makes me. I hadn't even lived through a dark winter this year, and yet I was but I was still really excited to feel the warmth of spring on my face. It's a different warmth than the one we have here. It feels lighter, and maybe a bit cleaner too (probably because there isn't so much dust!)

 

Not quite spring yet, but still a couple of wonderful siblings!

 

And now I'm back. I forgot how many sounds that are here constantly, especially how different they are from the ones in Denmark. Instead of cars, ambulances and church bells there are hyenas, birds, cicadas, grasshoppers and orthodox churches. I must admit it was hard to fall asleep the first night back in my own bed. It probably wasn't just the sounds that kept sleep away, I'm sure the heat, and time difference played into it as well. There are only two hours of time difference between Denmark and Ethiopia, and yet I always feel like it takes me a couple of days to fall back into the right rhythm. I'm so thankful that I don't live in Cambodia, or come from the States!


It was with mixed feelings that I returned to Hawassa, it wasn't that I didn't want to go back or that I didn't miss the people here. I just wasn't quite sure what to expect, and I guess I had forgotten a bit about why I love living here so much. Consequently there were many thoughts flying around in my head when it hit the pillow (probably another reason why I had a tough time sleeping). But this morning that changed, I planned the day's lessons, I saw the kids and I remembered.
I may love the country, I may think it is exciting to live someplace different than my home country, I may feel like I have Africa in my blood. But the real reason why leaving this place makes my ache is because I love, love, LOVE the kids that I teach. I love their quirky personalities and their funny questions and their honest ponderings. I love teaching them and spending every day with them. One of them said to me today: “I was starting to miss you,” and my heart melted. Another said when asked about how it was to be taught by her mother: “it was good, but you're good too.” It wasn't grand praises or long speeches but it came from their honest hearts and I cherish it more than any prize or grade or praise that I have ever received. I don't always think it is easy to live here, I don't think it is easy to travel between continents (at all), I don't always feel like I'm doing job teaching them. But seeing these kids every day (even on their (and my) bad days), through the grace of God, makes it all worth it. I don't always see it, and I'm thankful I have parents I can call when things get tough, but I belong to a great God and I am so thankful for every minute I get to spend with these incredible kids.

 

"My" kids!

 

 

What you can learn from a yelling man on the street

Sometimes things happen here that make me reflect, and I like that, even if I can't decide whether I'm a fan of the guy I'm about to tell you about or not.
I was walking from the Retreat Place (where I live) to Tabor yesterday late afternoon when I walk past a older gentleman. He looks me so straight in the eye that I greet him with my very limited Amharic. Then we walk past eachother. When I'm about three meters away from him he turns around and shouts (in Amharic): "Do you speak Amharic?" I answer him: "Tenesh, Tenesh (very Little)" and keep walking. When we're about 5 meters from eachother he yells Again: "What is your name?". I answer him and expect this to be his last comment since I can hardly hear him by now. But, when we're about 7 meters from eachother (I'm at the top of the hill and he is at the bottom) he yells Again: "Are you a Christian? Do you know Jesus Christ?" I yelled: "Yes" back and kept walking. But afterward it's made me think. I liked how low key his question was. If I was going to someone that I'd have to know them really well and be in a very safe enviroment, but he just yelled. I really like how it was so important to him, that he just had to ask me. However, I do wonder what his response would've been if I yelled no instead of yes. Would he have had any opppertunity to share about Jesus with me, or would he just have said: "okay, that's fine."

All in all I think this man has made me look at my own timidness when it comes to sharing the good news with new eyes, but it has also made me see the complexity of talking about God and faith. Like so much else in the world, it isn't black or white.

This Picture has nothing to do with the above mentioned, but shows a Little bit of what we do when we get bored at creative Club!

  

Ethiopian Roadblock!

Wait, why is the entire side of road blocked? Oh yes, there's a wedding an they needed to take their pictures here, right in the middle of the road, no biggie! Sometimes you have to shake your head and laugh! I thought the most amazing thing was that noone honked or yelled, they were surprisingly calm and okay with this block. I guess everyone who owns a car has had or been in a wedding at some point!

Video tour of our new house!

As some of you might know, Malene and I recently moved to the compound where the MK school is. Here is a short tour of our new home! For those of you who don't speak Danish, I'm sorry, but we made the video mainly for Malenes Family.

The courageous women of Ethiopia

We've recently gone on a trip to Jinka over New Years (more pictures will follow later I promise), we saw many, many different things on our trip but one of the things that really stayed with me was the women. You have to drive for two days in order to get to Jinka and all along the way we saw women. Women carrying so much firewood or corn or water that I wondered how they could even stand upright let alone walk. We saw women cleaning and cooking and looking after their babies, and not just women, young girls were working too. We met a woman who had just lost her third in a row in labor, and another who had given birth to an abnormal child. As well as several others who were waiting patiently for their babies to arrive. Not to mention the missionaries we visited, both of them have been here, on their own, 15 years or more. When I look at these courageous women I find myself looking at my life and feeling a little guilty. My problems don't seem so big anymore. I would love to learn from these women where their strength comes from. How do you find the willpower and the joy to go on, to get up every morning, to simply live. I'm not implying that my life is so much better than theirs or that they would be so much happier if their lives were just more carefree or sheltered. I'm simply fascinated and humbled.

Sometimes it's easy to feel like I'm a mature adult who's learned a good deal about life and how to live it, I mean I do live in Ethiopia without my parents right?! But meeting these women I realize that I have a long way to go. It also gives me hope, hope because although these women were all very very different and although I didn't really get to know many of them very well, they were all living their life, most of them with a smile on their lips. It gives me hope that one day I will be able to live a courageous life as woman. That maybe one day I will find my place in the world where I honor God and serve other people. It also gives me hope that if God really is calling me to be a single missionary, then, with the power and strength that comes through him, I can do it. All in all our trip to Jinka gave me a renewed respect in the women of Ethiopia, both the lokals and the expats and it made me realize how much I can learn from them, and how much I want to.

”I'm dreaming of a green Christmas...”

We sang this on the way home from school today. Partly because we were being silly and partly because it is a bit weird for us to be celebrating christmas in this weather. Although I've done the whole “Christmas in the heat” thing before, it's different when you're at home in the cold, drinking hot chocolate (Because that's all anyone does in Scandinavia when it's december, right?!!). Malene took a picture when we lit the first advent candle because we lit it on our porch with a very green garden around it. We've been watching a Christmas calender (for those of you who don't know this is, it's basically a Christmas TV show that stretches over the first 24 days of December), at Jeanette and Christians house. They already have their Christmas tree up, so it always feels very christmassy to come over to their place.

One thing that has become very big for me this past week is how absolutely absurd the Christmas story really is. First of all Mary gets pregnant through the Holy Spirit, how weird is that?! Secondly, God in all his majesty is born as a little baby. I've heard the Christmas story about a thousand times and I've thought about it about a thousand times more, but never before has it dawned on me just how crazy it is! I mean seriously, God sent his own son to the earth as a baby! Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, had to learn to walk and talk and eat! I can't even begin to fathom a love like that, a love that makes you 

willing to risk your own son's life in order to save a bunch of people who do you wrong every day. I must admit, I don't quite understand the Christmas story. I think it is crazy and weird and sometimes maybe even a bit farfetched, but I also think that that's part of why it is so incredible. What God has done for me, for every human being on this planet, is so great that my little mind can't even begin to understand it. It's hard to comprehend that God loves me so much that he would set out this grand scheme just to save me. To be honest I don't think that the fact that we're having a green Christmas has that much to do with my little epiphany, I still get hung up on insignificant things like decorations, and which Christmas cookies to bake. But I am very, very thankful that I now can grasp just a teeny bit more of just how grand the Christmas miracle really is.

It's December!

Happy first of December! It's good to be back in Hawassa and we're doing our best to make our house feel a bit more Christmassy. Which isn't that tough when you have a roommate like the one I have! I got home to the image below. And yes, that is an advent calender with a gift for each day I feel pretty lucky. We're doing our best to keep up with the date on our advent candle, so far it's not going too great!