Moving along on our race, we’ll spend our third month in Ethiopia, our last country in Africa before moving on to Asia. I was excited about all three African countries when I first learned of this route, but already have a small connection with this country in particular as it holds a little piece of my heart. You see, I’ve had the privilege of sponsoring a beautiful little girl living here since the fall of 2014. International adoption is huge on my heart and something I hope I’m able to do someday, so sponsoring a child is as close as I can get to that for now. 
I had looked into many organizations and was excited when I found local Awake & Alive, founded by two women in Goshen (both with children adopted from Ethiopia!). I still remember looking through the 20-30 pictures of charming little Ethiopian boys and girls wishing I could sponsor them all!
Over the past two years as I’ve learned bits and pieces of Tsion’s life and family, my love for her has grown, along with the country she calls home. She is the age of my oldest niece, and it’s hard for me to fathom all that Tsion has already been through in her short life. She lives in a slum village with her blind mother and at least three other siblings at home (she has six siblings). Her father is also blind and divorced her mother because he hates the oldest three children who are not his (their father died). The youngest child of the family is the result of her mother being raped, which I’m told is a common occurrence for blind women. This is her family’s reality, one I cannot relate to personally.
It’s a big prayer of mine that my team might end up close enough to Tsion and her family that I could meet them. I would love to be able to visit her village and see firsthand all that Awake & Alive is doing to help care for these precious children, and share the love of Jesus Christ with them. Will you pray with me for Tsion and her family, her village, her country, and ultimately our world? We all need Jesus.
Fun and Interesting Facts on Ethiopia
- Capital: Addis Ababa which means “New Flower” sits at 7726 ft above sea level and is the world’s 4th highest capital city
- Population: 102,409,825– 264 people/sq mi
- 1.5x the size of the state of Texas
- Official Language: Amharic, with over 80 languages spoken
- Religions: Ethiopian Orthodox 43.5%, Muslim 33.9%, Protestant 18.5%, traditional 2.7%, Catholic 0.7%, other 0.6% (2007 est.)
- Life Expectancy: ~62 years
- Literacy Rate: 49.1%
- One of the few countries in the world to never have been colonized (Italy
- A typical dish consists of wot (hot spicy stew made with legumes and some kind of meat or fish) served with injera (sour flatbread made from fermented teff flour) which is used in place of utensils to scoop up food
- Average temperature in March is 77° with occasional light rain
- Coffee was first discovered here and it is the world’s 5th largest producer! (There is even a ritualized and ceremonious way to make and drink coffee and it is impolite to refuse a cup so I guess I’ll be learning to drink coffee!)
- It is the only country in the world with a 13 month calendar and they’re roughly 8 years behind the western calendar
- Time is measured from when the sun rises, so when the sun rises at 6 o’clock it is said to be 12 o’clock – the start of the day
- One of the world’s first Christian states
- Ethiopia is mentioned about 40x in the Bible
- Several churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia were carved entirely out single blocks of stone and date back the 12th century
- Children in Ethiopia take their father’s first name as their last name, therefore parents and children do not share a last name
- Ethiopian Abebe Bikila was the first African to win gold in the Olympic Games, running the marathon entirely barefoot
my sweet Tsion
