Team 1, Day 2 in Ethiopia

We had a great day 2 in ET!! 

 Check out these sheep that we will be giving out soon, thanks to so many of you :)

 Did I mention what a great team this is?

 I love that we don't even leave for our destination without them all interacting with the street children right outside our gate of the guest home. They have all made some great new friends. Those same smiling faces are there everyday....standing....waiting for our guest home doors to open.

 Check out the most awesome trip guides in the world!! If you have followed this blog for very long then you recognize the familiar faces of Bizzy and Maste. I wouldn't go anywhere without them.

 The first place we went for the day was to Yezelelem Minch. It is a program that feeds and cares for street children and some of those in the community that struggle. They also have an orphanage. This place was especially great for Zack because he got to meet his sweet sponsored child for the first time.

 We then walked over to the place where they have their feeding program and got to meet some of the kids and help and play games with them.

 Rachel got put in the middle in duck duck goose.

 Everyone made lots of new friends.

 This is a wonderful feeding program that brings hope to so many.

 Some of the guys headed to the field for a game of soccer.

 Elizabeth made some friends along the way too.

 Go Maste!

 What a special time for Zack and a wonderful morning for OH with these sweeties at Yezelalem.

 Next we headed over to Restoration. I had to post this pic and show all of you Brentwood folks this boy we stopped on the street. He was a sponsored Korah kid and had on a Brentwood Academy jersey just walking down the road. I think he said his sponsors name is Chris?? I can't really remember, sorry. But he knew exactly who it was. The world gets smaller everyday :)

 Restoration is really mind blowing compared to what I saw the last time I was there. It was so amazing to walk through that place, knowing what a difference so many of you have made in the lives of these kids because of your donations and support. A million times, thank you!! The kids looked soooo much better. The little baby I have posted a partial pic of in the past that looked like a skeleton has gained weight and looks great, along with so many of them! Thanks to your support and Ashli over there on the ground, lives are being changed.

 The team LOVED these kids. These kids have so much love that just pours out of them.

 I got to give two waiting sisters a gift that someone had put together and sent for them. These two sisters have been waiting a long time. They see so many come and go and get gifts from their soon to be families and the reality is that it is never them. So a sweet blog follower sent them a gift along with a couple of others and they just lit up! They loved their new things and it was very special to them.

 One of them gave me a big hug to thank me. Now we just need to find them a family.

 Everyone on the team connected with the kids in different ways.

 It was great to see Ashli in action, pouring out her love to these sweet kids. What a calling this girl has on her life!

 Sweet Sammy was there ready to serve us some coffee. This was the boy that Ashli met last year on our trip, living on the streets. She has since sponsored him and he is her little side kick.

 He is the cutest kid and starts school in the fall.

 We all enjoyed our time at Restoration, especially me, knowing the huge difference and all the lives being drastically changed. I can't thank Ashli enough for making sure their needs are being met. I asked her what was one of the current needs and she mentioned needing an ongoing budget for a driver. She takes all these kids to the Dr regularly, especially the 15 or more babies she has there currently. She wants to start taking them on field trips once a week to get them outside the 4 walls they remain in. If you would like to give monthly or one time for her driver budget that would be awesome. You can go to the donate tab on our right sidebar and type in driver fund in the memo line and tell us if it is one time or monthly. Any type of support for that will be a blessing to her.

 We went back to the guest house for the guys to shower before dinner. Clay ended up passing out jerseys to the street boys outside our gate. They couldn't have been more thrilled.

 Deborah got her pic with them as well, and then Zack ran into one of his friends he had been hanging with before the team arrived that was so glad to see him.

 We ended the night at an awesome restaurant. Food that tastes good to Americans here is hard to come by, but everyone really enjoyed this place.

Thanks for following along on our exciting Ethiopia team adventures. Next blog post is Day 3...Beza Church, street soccer, market and dinner with some of our sponsored kids and my son's birth family. Great things ahead!!

Ethiopia Team 1, Day 1

I am so thrilled with what a great team I have! Pictured above is our Nashville group that met up to fly out together in the Nashville airport. In this group are some folks from Brentwood, Franklin, Hopkinsville, and Murfreesboro. This was almost half our group right here :)

 We flew out to DC where we landed that night and had to spend the night at a hotel in order to make the direct flight to Addis at noon the next day. We met up with three others that had to do the same thing. Of course they told us we couldn't check our bags straight through so you should have see all of us  trying to man handle all these 39 bags of donations between the 13 of us, with each bag weighing 50 lbs :) We had to take it all with us on the shuttle over to the hotel. Ohhhhh, the joys of traveling :)

 Our four guys on this leg of the trip were our champs!! They handled the bags like it was no problem and even stayed behind and waited for the second shuttle to come back and get them while we went ahead. I took this pic above as we were getting ready to pull off on the first trip to the hotel while they manned the rest of the bags that wouldn't fit and stayed behind.

 So we got it all back to the airport and got all checked in and then met up with everyone else coming in from the other locations. It was so great to finally meet everyone in person from all over this country, going on our trip. I loved seeing all the black OH crews showing up from all over the place. Above we have Kim.

 LeAnne, Ashley, Kelley

 Elizabeth, Ali, Vanessa

 Tucker, Clay, Kortnie

 Andy, Amy, Christian

 Lisa and Holli

 Chris, Rachel, Ashley

 Becky and Ashley

 Kenya and Deborah

 Brooklyn fell asleep before we even took off :)

 Kristi

 We landed in Ethiopia 12 hours after we took off from DC at 8am ready to start our day.

Again, I loved seeing all the OH crew come piling off that plane ready to change some lives. 

 Our day at the airport didn't go exactly as planned. We ended up there many hours longer than we anticipated. We decided to just hang at the guest house and rest up for the next day. I love how God even had a purpose in that. I heard laughing and kids voices outside while I was unpacking and I looked out the balcony to find several from our group who had already started interacting with the street kids just outside our guest house. The guys in our group had already struck up a soccer game with them in the street. Kortnie, pictured above took one little guy she met and had a heart for and brought him in to give him some new shoes. All he had on were plastic flip flops that were ripped and falling off his feet. His clothes had holes all over them. She led him by the hand inside where she grabbed a pair of the aqua shoes that some of you paid for and put them on him. She then gave him a new jersey shirt and a new pair of pants.

 After we got him all dressed up he was all smiles. It is amazing that it wasn't the toys that brightened his day it was the simple things we all take for granted like a new pair of shoes and clothes. He was so cute and grateful.

 When he went outside he lit up showing his friends and then he didn't stay with them he immediately walked away with a smile on his face. How much you wanna bet he wanted to go show whatever family member he had his new clothes. Imagine him walking through the door of one of the tin roofed huts that surrounded us with his big grin, looking like a new man :)

 Andy had a great soccer game going with the kids outside.

 I started seeing the team connecting with all the different kids. Such joy these kids bring.

 I went up to take LeAnne's pic with this little cutie and I told them both to look at me and smile and he quickly turned and planted a kiss on her cheek....so cute!

 Elizabeth, our 16 yr old on the trip enjoyed getting to know this little guy. I expect God to do big things in Elizabeth :)

We finally had Lauren and Zack join us at the end of the day. It was so good to see my daughter after three weeks of her being here early. It was great to see Ashli after all these months, and meet Zack as well.  I will post more pics after our stops to two different orphanages today. Busy day today ahead....and of course I'm up WELL before daylight because I can't get used to the time change. It always takes me a couple of days to adjust but it is prime blogging time :) Can't wait to see what Day 2 brings.