A Time In Africa

Getting back in the groove of school and life has been crazy for me so please forgive the lateness of this post. I was so blessed to have been able to go to Africa over spring break, specifically Ethiopia. I currently am having a little Africa withdraw, I want to be back there with the Ethiopian people so much. But I am back in the states now and will be using my experience from this trip to hopefully further my ministry.

First: Thank you everyone who prayed and supported me financially on this trip, none of this happens without you!

Cultural Context: They spoke the language Amharic. The people are very poor or very rich I didn't see a middle class. Traffic is crazy. I could not get over that they made there scaffolding from sticks. People are very friendly and easy to talk to, though a lot of them hoped to get something from you. People's day's started early in the morning because it got dark around 7:30pm.

What did we do?

Day 1: Flying into Ethiopia was crazy. Our travels and time zone changes meant that we skipped a day getting there. We arrived Tuesday (3am) went to bed then woke up on Tuesday (7am). Once that happened there was no hope for me knowing what day it was. The first thing I noticed about Ethiopia is that the sun is very bright at 6 in the morning. That first day was really cool because I was able to walk in the city a little bit, we were driven around the city a little bit and we got to speak to the whole nation. i.e. we had a news conference to talk about the tournament we were playing in and got to explain a bit of why we were really there in Addis Ababa the capitol of Ethiopia. In summary, culture shock and spoke to a nation.

Days 2-5: From Wednesday through Saturday we got this awesome opportunity to play Ethiopian professional basketball teams at the YMCA in Addis Ababa each day. Before we played these games we had awesome opportunities to go to local schools and play there teams and talk with the students at each of these schools. It was neat to see all the people that we were able to reach an talk to through the language of basketball. I feel like there are some that do not believe in using sports as a ministry but our team was able to go places and have immediate common ground with people that we maybe would not have been able to talk with or go to without using the sport of Basketball as our common language. The last day of the tournament we had a cool opportunity to go out to eat with the some of the players from the Ethiopian "dream team" and just get to know them and speak with them.

Day 6: Sunday morning we traveled from the Capitol, Addis Ababa, to Axum a very religious city. We were able to tour around Axum a bit before leaving to Shire (pronounced Shee-reh) an hour or so away. Axum is the city that has a temple which claims to contain the Arc of the Covenant. Also we visited the ruins of the Queen of Sheba's palace and some tombs. When we arrived in Shire we immediately went over to their outdoor court to play the local team there in Shire and were able to very quickly make relationships with kids and the people there in Shire. I was blown away by God's creation on this day.

Days 7-8: This day we went out to see a school that was run by two women who help orphans, abandoned, refugee children, and lone women. Our team fell in love with the kids of this school that we decided to help them out by splitting our group into a small build group to build a basketball court for them. While the rest of the group was able to put on a basketball clinic for the people in Shire. Another thing we did on these days was to visit a local church where our chaplain for the trip did some pastor training, some of the team did Sunday school teacher training, and we were able to worship with the church in one of their services.

Day 9: We took about 10 hours of our day to travel to and from a refugee camp for the Eritrean people. I wish we could have spent more time actually in the camp but due to the nature of the roads we had to leave rather soon after we got there. We were able to eat a meal there with a local missionary pastor in the refugee camps and then we were able to worship with the Christian refugees there and some from our team were able to share some encouraging words to the church there.

Day 10: Thursday we finished up the basketball court for Abraham's Oasis on this day. We ran into a lot of snags and setbacks in the process of building these hoops but God was in it and we finally were able to have a court for the kids.

Day 11-12: Friday we flew back to  Addis Ababa and we visited some more schools in the area. On Saturday we were able to visit a marketplace and rest up most of the day. We went to the airport around 11pm to fly back to Istanbul, Turkey and then home to Chicago.

Day 13: All Sunday we spent flying back to Chicago. We had a long layover in Istanbul so a group went on a mini tour of the city before our flight back to Chicago. We finally arrived back around 8pm Chicago time.

Phew, With all that said I don't even know how to explain everything we did because there is so much more that this but I now want to talk about the impact this trip has had on me.

I am so blessed by all those who prayed and supported me financially on this trip. So I want to say thank you a thousand times over. You made it possible for me to go to Ethiopia this spring break and therefore it is because of you that I have been able to be so blessed encouraged and grow so much by this trip.

First thing that happened from this trip was a great growth between myself and my team in relation to one another. The closeness and experiences shared between us will never be the same, we were sick together, talked together, laughed together, and reached out to the Ethiopian people together. I am so thankful to have been able to know my team members better due to this trip.

Next, it was amazing to see our national missionaries Bekalu and Jordan work along side us, and how patient they were with us. I was blessed by the Christians already in Ethiopia who served us without asking for anything  in return. And I was blessed by the people of Ethiopia even those who tried to get us relentlessly to by their sunglasses, or belts, or maps. They are beautiful images of God and my heart goes out to them.

Bekalu, our missionary who helped us all two weeks, told us that we had been a great encouragement to the Christians and churches where we were ministering. Our goal was to to come serve the people of Ethiopia by the name of Jesus Christ, we were able to do that but I feel like so much more that the people, Christians, and churches of Ethiopia served me so much more than I ever could repay. It was amazing just to see the mountains and the rest of God's creation in Ethiopia that this trip would have been impacted

I have learned so much and am still taking in and processing sights, sounds and other such things from this trip. I praise God for the opportunity I had in Ethiopia, I am finding hard to just write out the impacts it has had on my life.

Thank you all again for your prayer and support feel free to contact me if you would like to know more about what we did in, what I saw and felt, etc.