I want you to picture something:
A small, rickety van that may just lose a tire, bouncing down a seemingly endless gravel road in the middle of nowhere Ethiopia. It’s 3:45am and the van is packed full of World Racers—two of them trying their hand at the impossible task of sleeping in a ball on the floor. There are dozens of backpacks tied down to the roof, teetering back and forth like something out of a Dr.Suess book. The destination is clear, but the time it will take to get there is not.
This is our life at the current moment. It’s not the most glamorous thing to imagine, but it is what it is. We should be arriving at the airport sometime later this morning, and I have high hopes of posting this blog (along with some videos) to show you what we’ve been up to in Ethiopia this past month.
—————
First of all, if your picture of Ethiopia is orphans with bloated bellies, living in mud huts surrounded by dirt as far as the eye can see—you couldn’t be more wrong. Well, I guess Ethiopia is a pretty big place and it could be like that somewhere but that is very far from what we experienced! If you don’t believe me, take a look at this:
This is where we have been doing life for the past month. Green grass, blue skies, little brick houses and barbed wire fences stretching out across the horizon. It’s not what we had envisioned Africa being like, that’s for sure!
Over the past few weeks we have been working alongside a ministry called HOPEthiopia. They are involved in multiples different areas here such as reforestation, agriculture, and clean water projects. But their main ministry and focus is the children’s village they have here. The kids (each from various backgrounds and circumstances) are given homes to live in and beds to sleep. Each home has a “house mom” that takes care of them and cooks for them, and each of our teams this month was assigned to a specific house in order to build relationships with the children by teaching English, playing games, learning the Bible, and doing other fun and miscellaneous activities.
This month has been my favorite on the Race so far, and I haven’t been able to honestly say that after every month of the World Race. These children and the relationships we’ve built with them made saying goodbye last night a pretty painful experience. This has without a doubt been the hardest place to leave.
Katherine and I are so thankful for God’s faithfulness to us this month. He has done so much in our lives over these past few weeks in Ethiopia, and we can’t wait to share some of those sweet moments with you.
“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
Psalms 8:3-4
We will be posting a photo blog of Ethiopia soon, so you will be able to see where we have been staying, what we’ve been doing, and the beautiful children at HOPEthiopia.
Lastly, if you haven’t subscribed to the YouTube channel yet, NOW would be the time to do that! This month I started a “somewhat” Daily Vlog, so there will be LOTS of videos coming out when we have enough WiFi to upload them. These videos highlight what God’s doing in our life on the day to day, the ministry we get to do, the children we encounter, and the lives of our teammates. Since there will be so many videos, it’s not practical to post them all here on the blog. A select few will be posted here, but the majority of them will only be put on YouTube, so SUBSCRIBE to the channel here to make sure you don’t miss them:
https://www.youtube.com/kaydanfield
—————
As always, thanks for reading and thanks for supporting us. Katherine and I have been blessed with an incredible group of support and we are forever grateful for that! Please don’t hesitate to leave any comments or questions on this blog page OR the YouTube channel videos. We love hearing from you and interacting with those we love and miss back home. Thank you and please continue to pray for us as we travel to Rwanda today.
– Kaydan
Although we are leaving Ethiopia today, I just got the video uploaded of us traveling TO Ethiopia a month ago. Here it is:
