[7:23 am] My alarm goes off for the first time
[7:25 am] My alarm goes off for the second time
[7:30 am] I finally get out of bed
[7:32 am] Head to the kitchen and pour a cup of delicious Ethiopian coffee
[7:35 am] Spend time reading my bible
[8:35 am] I get the honor to lead worship in Spanish with my Costa Rican team leader
[8:50 am] The squad spends time in prayer
[9:07 am] Go pour my second cup of coffee
[9:10 am] Read my leisure book (The Name of the Wind)
[9:30 am] Head out to the brickyard with my team to start ministry
[9:35 am] Sift dirt to make it fine enough for bricks (we do this by shoveling up the dirt and throwing it at a screen)
[9:54 am] Head to the brick making machinery!
[10:00 am] Start mixing cement and rocks to make bricks
[10:05 am] Make the first brick of the day
[10:32 am] I finally get a turn manning the heavy machinery
[10:36 am] The machine shuts down because Kim was dancing too hard and hit it
[10:42 am] Our friendly Ethiopian staff fixes the machine ( I keep manning machinery)
[10:53 am] Time to give another person a turn on the levers, I switch to moving bricks from the machine to the pile where they will sit to dry.
[11:25 am] We ran out of concrete and couldn’t continue making bricks, we headed in for lunch
[11:29 am] Hop in the shower before lunch because I was covered in dirt!
[11:34 am] Finished up in the shower
[11:41 am] Read for leisure again while waiting for lunch
[12:22 pm] Andre and Kim finished lunch-pancakes!
[12:37 pm] Our team finished lunch and began clean-up
[12:38 pm] I head into the pantry and take quick inventory of food
[12:41 pm] After gathering the supplies I start preparing guacamole for dinner
[1:15 pm] I finish making the Guacamole
[1:16 pm] Then I help Worke (our amazing house mom) clean the kitchen
[1:30 pm] Took it a step further and cleaned our shelf in the pantry
[1:37 pm] Pulled out and started soaking beans to be cooked tomorrow
[1:45 pm] Finally sat down to read/rest/probably fall asleep
[3:07 pm] I am raised from the dead off the couch to help Jess start her dinner
[4:15 pm] Went to straighten my hair for team pictures (something I haven’t done in SIX months)
[4:45 pm] Let Kayla Strickler put makeup on my face (who am I ?!)
[5:23 pm] Ready and waiting for my team to begin our photo shoot!
[5:30 pm] Started our team pictures with our resident photographer, Amaris Duryea
[6:35 pm] Finished our photo shoot and headed in to make dinner
[6:45 pm] Finished making dinner-BREAKFAST BURRITOS!
[7:30 pm] Team cleaned up dinner, I prepared chili for tomorrow while Andre and Jess made crepes for us
[8:11 pm] We all sat down to look at the BEAUTIFUL photos that Amaris took
[8:40 pm] Ran to take chili off the stove and threw it away because it got burnt while I was too busy looking at pictures
[9:19 pm] Brushed my teeth, washed my face, and got ready for bed
[9:33 pm] Crawled happily into bed and thought about how thrilled I was to do it all again the next day.
Hopefully you enjoyed this glimpse into life at HOPEthiopia. The month was truly jam-packed with joy, laughter, love, and all the other good things. I’ll be sharing a more detailed blog post soon so stay tuned!
Kristen
