Day 6 in Ethiopia

Ezra reading his Bible for the first time!

Day 6

• We had another night of decent sleep and visited the National Museum today. It was ok, but we had the Orthodox church chanting incantations the whole day, and it nearly gave us a headache.
• We are all fairly tired and if there was a flight leaving Addis on Thursday night, we would have taken it, but Luftansa has no flights leaving on Thursday, so our normal schedule it is.
• We had a dinner with our adoption coordinator and the other families adopting from our agency. I have attached a few pictures of what we ate. It wasn't that bad, though it wouldn't be top on my list. The ladies (mom and Heidi) stayed home with Ezra, so I represented our family. The ladies went to sleep and Ezra got 12 hours of sleep…a record!!!
• The highlight of the evening was having the opportunity to talk with Eyob (the head administrator for our adoption agency here in Ethiopia). I asked him some questions about our son and he opened up a great story to me...
  
  He said that Abera (Ezra's Ethiopian name) came to the Addis Ababa care home early February of this year. After he got to the care home, he tested positive for HIV and everyone at the care home was brokenhearted because they had come to love this boy. Eyob said he remembers the day very specifically. Before Abera was taken to AHOPE, all of the care workers gathered and prayed 'that God would allow for the HIV to be taken away so that this boy Abera could get a home and be adopted.' Well, several months passed by and after a few months Abera was retested and tested negative. The care workers, staff, and Eyob were praising the Lord in thankfulness for His mighty work. Eyob said that CWA has had 250 children adopted from Ethiopia this year. I asked him how many children he has known who have tested positive and then tested negative? He said, "Abera has been the only one." It was really touching to hear him tell this story and I could see zeal upon his lips and tears of thankfulness filling his eyes. Just guess how I was responding?
• We are hoping to visit AHOPE tomorrow sometime to see place they care for AIDS orphans. Ezra Abera spent a few months there, so we want to stop by and thank them and extend our greetings to them.
• Our flight leaves Addis Ababa at 10:55 pm. Please pray for a smooth trip, espcially with Ezra and the long long flights.
• This will probably be the last post until we arrive in Spokane Saturday evening at 7:55 pm if everything goes as scheduled.

Here's a meal in Injera. Any guesses as to what it is?

This man is collecting garbage from the muddy river...