Meet Bisrat!
He is our guide and translator and basically our main man in Ethiopia. He has the biggest servants heart you have ever seen. I would never lead a team without him.
He has always told us about where he is from so we decided to take a day and have an Ethiopian countryside adventure with the team. Bissy took us to his hometown village way up in the mountains. We just went ahead and named it BISSYLAND!
This place has the most gorgeous views I have seen yet in Ethiopia. Rolling mountains, valleys, and streams surround you in the most beautiful scenery.
Before we left for the mountains about half of the team woke and left at 5am to take blankets and the donation combos out to some of the homeless sleeping on the streets.
Some were sleeping in corners with nothing. No shoes, no blanket....nothing. It was rainy and it was cold. We showed up and covered them in the blankets and gave them shoes. They were so grateful.
Many of them thanked God that we were there.
It was a very humbling and eye opening experience for our team. These donations of blankets and shoes and rain coats help sooooo much! We quickly ran out because there were so many people.
We left for the mountainside, otherwise known as BISSYLAND!
The kids were feeling adventurous and having a blast! No worries, they only rode about the last quarter mile this way.....very slow :-)
We arrived at a monastery way up at the top of Bissyland!
This place was like you just entered the Holy of Holies!
For example....Here were the rules that they made each of us read before we were allowed to enter.
INTERESTING!!!???
The place was beautiful!
The monk showed us around and took us on the tour. He explained that monks pray all day, every day 24/7. So I asked "Are you a monk?" He said, "Yes". So I said "So you pray 24/7, like you are praying right now?" He just smiled real big and said, "Well, I am human." :-)
The countryside was beautiful!
We took our lunch and all sat on the mountainside while Bissy told us his story.
Bissy has an amazing story that I will share on my blog at some point. God has brought him a long way, down many roads.
My two cuties were having fun on the mountain :-)
So neat to have part of my family with me on these trips.
After lunch we hiked up a trail that led to a monk's cave.
We arrived on the top and found this monk who claims to pray 24/7 and lives in a cave.
He was a sweet man.
We found some kiddos to give some Blessing Bags to.
Our team got our exercise on the mountain!
Our team loved our day exploring Bissyland!
On our way out of Bissyland we stopped at an orphanage and passed out some Blessing Bags and shoes to the kids. They had lots of kiddos here.
Ok, this is just funny! Deborah told them all to "say cheese" for the picture and everyone of them tilted their head by habit, haha!
Wait, lets try this again. Straighten it up, girls! Ha!
We had an awesome day in Bissyland and then headed back to the Ethiopian restaurant for dinner that night.
It's always an awesome experience to teach you the culture and allow you to see the dances and taste the food.
Several of our team members are great dancers and decided to give it a try.
They were hilarious. We had a lot of fun.
Collin decided to give it a whirl when the dancer came out into the audience.
What a fun night and perfect end to a fabulous day!!
Next blog we are headed to Entoto Mountain!
This brings back so many memories of our trip with Bisy!!!! Thank you so much for sharing this!
ReplyDeleteWe love Bisrat! It is great to see this post. What an amazing man he is and we loved being able to get together with him for the months that we were in ET. If you see him again this trip tell him that Adam and Heather and all of our girls (from house 4) say hi.
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