Ethiopia, Dec 2012, Day 2 ~ Entoto & Hope 4 The Hopeless

Our day 2 started with us heading up to Entoto Mountain. 

This is always so heart wrenching to see the women, most of the time elderly, walking for miles and miles and miles down a mountain with a load of sticks on their backs that weigh over 100 pounds. 

 We always search for the elderly women and stop to help them carry their burden. 

 We were able to give some of them shoes. 

 We found this elderly woman resting on the side of the road and Cherie jumped out of the van to give her some Birr (money). These women walk for miles with these loads to earn less than a dollar. 

Cherie gave her some birr to spare her many trips up and down that mountain and she was so thankful.

After kissing cherie's hands repeatedly, she kept raising her hands up to thank the Lord. 

 It really breaks your heart to see the sweet, young girls already starting to carry the wood, knowing that they just expect a life of doing this until they are one of the elderly ones. 

 After loading the wood on top of the van, we took this sweet woman down the mountain. 

She said she was 40 years old and has 6 children. She had sweat dripping from her face but in the midst of her hard life she had a smile of gold and was very thankful for our help. 

 We spotted some little cuties and stopped on the side of the road to give some Blessing Bags. 

THANK YOU to all of you who pack and send us blessing bags. 

They are so important to our trips and these little ones. 

 We left the mountain and headed over to the Entoto outreach. 

The sights are always humbling on the drives across the city. 

 The tin door below is the bathroom for an entire community. 

 We love this outreach that was started through the Beza Outreach program. They take women who were struggling to survive with HIV and give them a job making this beautiful jewelry. 

Their smiles say it all. 

We stopped for lunch at one of our favorite spots, Island Breeze. 

We then headed over to another favorite spot, Hope 4 The Hopeless.

These boys loved their new bags and Christmas devotionals we gave them. 

Thanks, Chris Baxter, for your awesome devotionals that are available through our OH Store this month, free with every purchase. 

Jordan got to see some of her friends from the summer. 

I love this boy! We found him living on the street during one of our summer team trips and brought him to this shelter. They tell us he is doing SO great! He was so glad to see us. 

This little guy was yet another young boy we found living on the streets in the country and brought to the shelter. He is doing absolutely awesome and LOVED getting a gift from his sponsor, Ashley!

Lincoln got caught up with some of his buddies from the summer. 

Thank you Leigh Anne for sending all these shoes that were given from a sweet grandmother who passed away. The girls at the shelter loved them! 

I can't tell you what an awesome ministry H4H is. They pull the most vulnerable victims off the streets, pull the street out of them, and pour Jesus in them in a way that is unbelievably transforming. 

They have many sponsorship needs still available. 

Please email Deborah@ordinaryhero.org to inquire of children to sponsor through H4H.