Wednesday our team shrunk by one as Michelle wasn’t feeling
well and stayed behind while the rest of the team headed out of Addis to the
Hope for the Hopeless boarding school.
We stopped to pick up the Hope for the Hopeless director,
Frikado (there’s about a 5% chance I spelled that correctly) and drove over 40
minutes out to the countryside.
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| There are a lot of kids in the area, many who waited for us outside the gate of the school |
When we arrived at the school we were met by some of the
students who live there and given a tour of the grounds. They have lots of land
to expand on. They already have a building set up for holding chickens and a
building (with no chairs or desks) for school.
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| Getting a tour of the grounds |
They also had buildings for the kids to stay in, one for the
boys and one for the girls.
The kids were very happy to show us where they stayed.
After the tour we were shown the rooms that we were planning
on painting for H4H. I left with Frikado and the driver to go pick up the paint
supplies in town (about 5 minutes down the road) while the rest of the team
stayed behind to clear the rooms out so we could paint.
Buying the paint and supplies was a very African experience,
what should have taken ten minutes took almost 30 as the hardware store was
running to other stores to try and find roller brushes for us to us.
We were only able to find two rollers so we ended up buying
paint brushes that looked like something Tom Sawyer would use.
By the time I arrived back at the school the rooms were
cleared out and ready to be painted.
As the team started to paint the rooms it began to
rain outside. Because of the rain most of the kids decided to all pack into the
two rooms where we were and before we knew it the kids had taken over all of
the painting!
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| Becky and Abby painting |
We (well, mostly the kids) finished up the rooms and as we
were about to leave they had all of the kids gather in a circle to pray for us. They then had
our team go to the middle of the circle and they sang a song for us thanking us
for coming.
Every kid I’ve ever encountered at H4H, whether at the drop
house in the city or here at the boarding school, has been so kind and sweet.
On the drive back to Addis we decided to stop at the new
drop house that Ordinary Hero helped H4H buy. The house is BEAUTIFUL and a huge
upgrade from where the kids in the city are currently staying.
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| Beautiful new H4H house |
Next week we are going to surprise the Hope for the Hopeless
kids by driving them to the house and then telling them this is their new home.
I’m very excited to get to see that.
Thursday Michelle was feeling good enough again to join the
team. We decided to head to Korah to visit Kore Beth Coffee. It was very cool to see a business up and running that was started by the Beth Vendable Fund.
After we bought some coffee we headed to the leprosy hospital in the middle of Korah. Here is where men and women who have leprosy are taught to make clothes and items to sell. We spent some time there shopping in their store and buying quite a few items.
After leaving Korah and having lunch we headed over to
the H4H drop house near downtown
We got there just after they had started their English
class. We were able to sit in on the class, it was really cool to see them
learning our language for the main reason of communicating better with OH
teams.
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| English Class at H4H |
After the class we were able to hang out with the kids, I
showed them videos on my phone of our van ride after the soccer game on Sunday.
Turns out many of the boys were out in the square celebrating with the rest of
Addis.
We then headed out to dinner at a new restaurant that Bissy
knew of. Luckily we didn’t argue with his choice and enjoyed a great meal at a nice restaurant
and had a great time hanging out with each other.
Friday I woke up very early to attempt to watch game 7 of
the NBA finals but alas our Internet wasn’t good enough to stream the game. So
I spent most of the morning following the gamecast of the game and getting
updates from a good friend via facebook chat.
Friday turned out to be my day to feel under the weather and stay at the guest house.
The rest of the team woke up early and headed out to find a family living with
just a tarp as a home. Michelle had more gifts she wanted to bless a family
with and Bissy knew of this family and their situation so he took the team
there to bless them.
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| Michelle with the very grateful mother we blessed |
We had then planned to go visit a government orphanage but
the director wasn’t there so they turned the team away. Since the team had some
extra time they decided to finish up some last minute shopping before heading
home.
After dinner we all played cards before we headed to the airport
to drop off Lorrie, Becky and Destin. The van ride to the airport we all sang
and laughed the entire time, it was a perfect way to end a fantastic week.
Michelle, Kenya, Abby and myself are now just waiting and
prepping for the next team to arrive Sunday morning!
-Ryan
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