Ethiopia Adventure Part 2

We arrived in Addis Ababa around 8:30am on Sunday, February 22nd needing a shower and feeling quite delirious. We waited for about 20 minutes to get our Ethiopian visa, changed our 300 dollars for Ethiopian birr, collected our luggage and sailed through the nonexistent customs to meet Robel and the driver from our hotel. We will talk more about Robel later, but he is a super fun, kind, resourceful, faithful saint who was our guide during our time in Addis. On the way to our hotel, we had our first up close glimpse of our son's country, but we were in such a sleep-deprived delirium that I don't remember much.



Robel invited us to go to his church with him and another family that had already arrived, the Chans. Chris decided we should go and he was right, but I confess - I was definitely more in favor of sleep. We met the Chans, William and Shelley, who are from Texas. Great people - we love them! The worship service was glorious and refreshing. I am so glad we went. It is an international church in which over 70 countries are represented. The service was in English, but there were also services in French and Korean, I think. Anyway, it was wonderful to worship with the saints! So funny - we met a gentlemen who used to work as a dean at Monte Vista (this is where Chris works). How "random" is that?

Afterward Robel took us to lunch at a traditional Ethiopian restaurant with the Chans and our driver Alizar (sp?). The lunch was very good - we love Ethiopian food. We went to back our hotel and Chris went straight to sleep until about 10pm and then woke up for good at 2am. I slept intermittenly until about 5am. We went upstairs to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast. The coffee and the morning view of Addis were both amazing. It was such a peaceful, beautiful morning! What a gift from God as we prepared to meet our boy that day. We were still in a daze - it was so unreal that we were in Ethiopia, for one, and that we were there to pick up our son. Our minds couldn't quite wrap themselves around it, even after several cups of glorious Ethiopian coffee.

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