This past month has been really busy.
Rudy has been working really hard at the hospital training colleagues and getting ready for his research to start. He has also been going to the youth meetings at Burayu Church. He has led the discussion several times and has challenged the youth to think about very important issues in their lives. He travelled back to the states for a week. He has a great time seeing everyone and doing everything. He felt like there wasn’t enough time to get everything done, but was happy to be back in Georgia for a week.
The boys are still really enjoying school. They have been busy making friends, taking art class and riding horses. They had a week off in October for fall break. So, we took the boys and flew into Nairobi, Kenya and then drove 5 ½ hours southwest around the Great Rift Valley to Masai Mara National Park to go on a safari for a few days! It was AMAZING!!! We stayed at Sarova Mara Tented Camp. Yes, we stayed in a tent…..I am not a tent person but this is not the basic tent. We saw lots of elephants, lion, gazelles, wildebeest, giraffes, buffalo, rhino, and many, many more animals it was amazing. During that week Lawson turned 6! It was a blast. A birthday he will never forget. Eli has started asked what we are going to do for his birthday!!!
The girls are doing great. They are getting big. They love their nanny Tsion. She is great with them. In fact, we left them with her here in Ethiopia when we flew to Kenya for the Safari. Most days the girls hang out around the house and neighborhood, but there are some great parks for them to go to. Unfortunately it is hard to navigate the car in so many places each day. The boys’ school had a fall festival and the girls dressed up as superwoman and a princess. They looked so cute!!!
I have been really busy with guardian training, teaching English classes, learning Amharic and taking horseback riding lessons. I head out to Burayu three days a week to teach English in 8 classes from KG-Grade and to meet with several guardian groups. The guardian training has been going really well. Over the past couple of months we have been talking about what it looks like to be a servant model and how Jesus is a perfect example for us. In the next couple of week we will be starting some hands on skills and business training with the guardians.
It is great to see the children in the classrooms. Thanks to Sanctuary in Him for the donations for the school. They have been so helpful for me to teach English. This week I met with the director and teachers to of the school to show them how to use all the teaching tool that have been sent. They were so excited to have these resources to use in there classrooms. They have never had these types of resources.
This month our friend Christine from Georgia who is currently working in South Sudan had some R&R and came to visit us in Ethiopia. It was great to have a visitor. We had so much fun! We had a couple of bazaars the weekend she came and drove to the Portuguese Bridge. During the week we went out to Burayu for training and had the opportunity to visit the home of some guardians. There are many pictures below.
The holidays are coming and they will definitely be different this year. We were in search of a turkey this week and we are out of luck. If we wanted to embassy to get us one we had to order it awhile back so we missed out, the chicken lady (the women order chicken from regularly) had turkey’s but she is sold out (out of luck again). I heard there are other places we could get a turkey but it usually has the head and claws attached…..NO thank you!! So chicken it will be. Black Friday shopping will not be at the mall this year…..but at the German Church Bazaar, NGO Bazaar, and the Tropical Gardens Bazaar.
As usual I have included some pictures. We hope you enjoy them.
