Last month my team and I traveled from Europe to Africa, and our first stop was Ethiopia. Now, I had been excited about Africa in general, but Ethiopia just never seemed that exciting to me. I thought month nine of my race would just be one of those months that I survived, but didn’t thrive. Boy was I wrong!
I came on the race thinking that I would work at orphanages every month. However, you don’t get to pick where you work every month. When I arrived in Ethiopia and found out we were going to be working with the orphanage at HOPEthiopia, I was ecstatic! I was finally getting to do what I love at the end of the Race!
When we arrived to the HOPEthiopia project site, we put our bags in the guest house and walked outside to find the kids. Words can’t even describe the feeling of seeing 19 Ethiopian babies running at full speed toward you with the biggest smiles and arms wide open waiting for hugs from the “faranji’s”! This is the moment I believed in love at first sight.
To say I fell head over heels would be an understatement. The joy it gave me to play, dance, sing, or even just hold their little hands was unimaginable. I was in my element. I felt the Lord so present when I was with these kids. We spent our day’s doing a camp with the kids in the morning and working on painting the new buildings on the compound in the afternoons. We used most spare moments to spend with the kids. Even doing movie nights for the kids at the guest house several times a week.
What I refused to think about during this time is that we were going to have to say goodbye in just a few short weeks. I would even tell my teammates that I refused to leave at the end of the month. When the day came for us to leave, it was one of the hardest days for me so far on the Race. I cried, but the hardest thing was seeing the tears in the kid’s eyes and some of them not understanding what was happening.
Right now I don’t know what God wanted to teach me last month. My heart still hurts so much when I think about how much I miss those kids. I have to rest in the fact that His ways and plans are far greater than mine could ever be.
Please spend some time, even just a few second, and lift these kids up in prayer today. They are with a fantastic organization, but they still have the struggles of being orphans. I know the Lord has BIG things in store for these kids. It wouldn’t surprise me if I see one of them as the president of Ethiopia someday.
