On Friday afternoon, I boarded a small plane in Cedar Rapids, IA to meet the rest of the group in Chicago. My amazing new friends from Iowa City (where I lived this summer during my internship in Cedar Rapids) drove me to the airport and had some great words of wisdom as they had both previously done international mission work.
After finally meeting the group in person, we all entered the United Airlines waiting line, eight of us in total carrying two 50lb. pieces of luggage plus a carry-on. After a great experience with the lady behind the counter not weighing and not charging us for any of our luggage (Praise God because a few of the bags were questionable on the 50lb. cutoff!), we made it through security and found our gate. We had a double-decker plane from Chicago to Frankfurt. We landed, had to go back through a security screening, nearly missed our connecting flight, but at long last, we were on the plane to Addis Ababa. Thanks to our great team member, Mark, we had a good idea of when to sleep and when to stay awake as to adjust to being 8 hours ahead.
Due to a large group of people all wearing the same shirt, we had a lot of people ask us about our trip and what we were doing. It was a great opportunity to tell others about our mission to do God's work and glorify His name in Ethiopia!
We arrived in Addis late Saturday night, and after using a local's cell phone, we located our Blessing the Children International contacts and transportation to Debre Zeit. We road the BCI Academy bus that takes the children to and from school. At long last, we pulled up to the Guest House and unloaded our luggage. After getting sheets on our mattresses and situating things, our leader, Jessica called us downstairs for a quick de-briefing. We discussed who was going to which church the next morning and she handed us a surprise she had been working on the past few weeks. Each of us had an envelope of letters / notes of encouragement written by our friends and family back home!!! My amazing sister wrote me letters for every single day, and I had countless other notes and loving prayers from my parents and family friends!!
In all, our traveling went very well and our excitement was beyond measure as we laid down for the first night in Ethiopia!
Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love. - Ephesians 5:1-2
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