Reunited At Last

Most mornings in Ethiopia, I was awakened early by a drum.  At first I thought it was some sort of prayer drum because I was expecting the Muslim call to prayer to be the thing to wake me each morning.  Turns out it was just a karate class next door to the guest house.  A very LOUD karate class...that was unfortunate, but it did give me time to journal each morning after falling asleep with pen in hand the night before.  This morning I woke up to the "thump thump thump" and though about seeing Teshome today.

Teshome is our sponsor son who now lives in the shelter in Korah while he waits to go back to boarding school in September.  We have been sponsoring him for two years and have seen so much change during that short time.  It had been one loooong year since we had first met and I could not wait to see him again.  It had rained the previous night as I laid in bed happy that Teshome and I were listening to the same rain falling and thunder rolling.  I was a bit nervous about our meeting that day, wondering if things would be strange between us.  I didn't know if he had learned anymore English and I had only learned about two more Amharic words.

As our van turned off the main road into the side streets of Korah that morning, I saw Teshome walking down the street with his friends.  I waved and he looked stunned and even surprised.  I had told him I was coming, did he not believe me?  As soon as I could get out of the van I saw him and pushed my way through the crowd to throw my arms around him.  We were happy to see each other, but I could tell he was feeling overwhelmed and a bit shy.  He's not one of the kids in Korah who greets each team coming in looking for hugs and cuddles.  He is shy and reserved but anyone that will put the time in quickly finds him to be kind and loving.  We were able to talk a little through his friends because neither of us was very good at the others language...yet.

As our team ate lunch, I had some time to meet our translator, AB.  Through our talk I found out he had also been the leader for the group I had originally planned to come with a month earlier.  As soon as he found out Julie, a woman on that team, and I were friends he quickly got up and asked me to follow him.  He went and found a young woman with a small baby.  He told me I had to take a picture of them, so I did.  Then he excitedly told me that when Julie was in Korah this baby was very sick.  His eyes were crusted over and very infected, but today he looked just fine because Julie had provided medicine for the baby.  Later that day I was able to send an updated picture to Julie for her to see those beautiful healthy eyes.  These are the moments on missions trips where the world seems so small and simple acts from others inspire us to do what we can while we are there.  What a blessing to be able to pass on information. 

Still being in the first few days of our trip, I think a lot of us ended the day still wondering what it was God wanted us to do here.  We were having fun, enjoying meeting people, but why did He call us here?  I suppose a lot of missions trips start out that way and unfortunately there really isn't a way to speed up the process.  We were forced to slow down and enjoy the ride.  Went to bed that night thinking about how nice it was to tell Teshome that I would be back tomorrow morning.