Top Ten List!

After each trip, I put together a list of the most interesting/fun/significant events for my "followers".  This time, it was especially difficult to distill it down to only 10.  But, with apologies to David Letterman, here goes...

10. Discovering that Ethiopia's wonderful natural carbonated spring water, Ambo, has introduced delicious fruit flavors!

9. Spending a great day of R&R at the Wondo Genet School of Forestry with Bob and Nancy, Judy's Peace Corps friends.  Beautiful scenery, lots of wildlife, and delicious home-cooked food!

8. Meeting people in small communities like Waryo, the 35-yr-old 7th grader who came back to school after 20 years and is now active in the school WASH club, and Amina, the proud and fiesty woman who told us how this project had "saved the lives of our children."

7. Holding Tahitina, the beautiful 3-month-old daughter of Mesfin, our translator and dear brother in Christ.  She was born 3 weeks after my last trip!

6. Seeing several of my close friends among our participants "in action" as we visited the communities in which they serve, and seeing the respect and affection that the community members have for them (as do I!)

5. Meeting my running hero, Haile Gebrselassie, the world record holder in the marathon and perhaps the greatest distance runner of all time - and learning that he is a friendly, humble, and gracious champion in all senses of the word.

4. Becoming close friends with our new participants, including Misrak, the charismatic new team leader for the South Ethiopia Synod, and Solomon, Feyisa, and Kasim, the Three Stooges of Wabe Batu.

3. Witnessing our community "teach-backs", in which our participants taught the lessons that we had taught to them, and realizing once again that we were leaving this work in the best of hands.

2. Hearing Arima, one of the community women in those teach-backs, describe how the knowledge that the participants had brought them was "worth more than a busload of money" because it would last forever as it was passed on to their children and their grandchildren.

And the number one experience for this amazing trip...

1. Being blessed with the unique opportunity to share in the entire scope of this project, by seeing our training come alive in the project communities, witnessing the holistic transformation of lives and communities that this ministry brings, and being forever transformed myself by the experience.

Home

What a joy to be home - to be with Cindy again, to sleep in a comfortable bed (of adequate length), to have an unlimited choice of foods...  But it does feel a little strange at times, like there is some color missing from the picture.  I think I miss the sheer joy we experience every day on these trips.  Life in the US has lost a bit of its wonder, and cynicism and complaint seem rampant.  We can learn a lot from a culture that is as loving and hopeful as what I've seen in Ethiopia.  We have so much to be joyful and thankful for, and so little worth complaining and worrying about.  I vow to try to learn to celebrate more and gripe less, to seek common ground rather than focusing on differences, and to thank God for His blessings instead of asking Him why He isn't doing things my way.  With those attitudes, I think I'll feel at home wherever God leads me.  And right now, He's led me back to Cincinnati.  So, it's time to use what I've learned and experienced overseas in my life and ministry here, beginning tonight as I lead our Bible study with Chinese students.  I truly do have hope for the world, and I'll try to bring that message of hope to everyone I meet.

Transitions

We arrived back in Addis on Friday afternoon.  Bob and Cindy flew on to Oman for a few days, so it’s back to just Judy and me again.  I always find this last couple of days to be the most challenging of the trip.  Home is now so close that I can taste it – and there are a LOT of tastes that I’m looking forward to again, like salad and ice cream (not necessarily together, but  right now I wouldn’t be picky!)  Tomorrow will mark 4 weeks since I left Cincinnati, so it’s time to go home.  Yet I’m not ready to let go of this place yet.  I know that it may be hard for many of you to understand, but this is truly home for me.  Because we’ve moved so many times in the US, I have not put down deep roots in any one community.  But here my heart is truly invested, and pulling out those roots always leaves something precious behind.  We had dinner last night with Getu’s family, including Samy (17-yr-old son) and Beza (15-yr-old daughter).   I refer to them as my niece and nephew, and that is not just to be cute – I really do feel that close to them.  When we said goodbye last night, Beza squeezed me so hard for so long that I was struggling to hold back the tears.  No matter what MY plans and dreams might be, there is never a guarantee that I will return here again.  Every goodbye could be the last.  And with extremely limited communication, that goodbye is more final than most Americans with cell phones, email, and Facebook can ever imagine.  So today, as we experience the joy and sorrow of meeting Mesfin’s new baby and saying goodbye shortly after, we will experience an emotional tug-of-war.  It’s the price we pay for the opportunity to have the incredible experiences that these Lifewater trips afford.  It’s worth every emotional penny, but it strains the wallet nonetheless.

Goodbye?

The final day of training is always bittersweet, but the flavors are even stronger when you have been with the many of the same participants three times, as Judy and I have on this project.  To make it even tougher, this is the last training of the current phase of this project.  While there is a chance that there will be one more training later during a second phase (for which approval is pending), there is no guarantee even then that the same participants – or trainers – would return.  So as we conducted our “graduation” ceremony this morning, there were many, many tears.  Three of us choked up completely while reading a scripture passage and sharing a personal message, and there were piles of used tissues under the participants’ chairs.  Even so, no one would address the “elephant in the room” – that we may never see each other again.  It’s just too painful to consider right now.  I have more close emotional ties to people in that group, including some with poor to negligible English, than I do in Cincinnati!  Because no matter the ethnic, cultural, or socio-economic differences between us, our hearts beat as one.  We are passionate about the same things.  We have learned, worked, laughed, cried, and, most of all, loved together for over a year now.  We have mourned together over the loss of a dear colleague, and we have rejoiced together over the birth of Mesfin’s baby daughter.  We have experienced the presence and power of God in astonishing and marvelous ways.  As I told them this morning, nothing – not time, not distance – will ever separate our hearts.  I will love each of them forever.

A Busload of Money

We had a wildly successful second community visit today.  At the end of the lessons with the women community members, Misrak asked if they had any questions.  One woman asked if we had brought anything for them.  While Misrak was considering how to answer, an older woman named Arima said, “Today we have learned that water is life.   We will pass on the knowledge you have given us to our children and our grandchildren.”  She then pointed to our bus parked nearby, in the midst of the goats and donkeys.  “This knowledge is worth more than if you filled that whole bus with money.  The money would soon disappear, but the knowledge will last forever.” 

Would you trade a whole busload of money for the knowledge of how to make and keep your water safe, or how to properly dispose of your own waste to prevent illness in your family and community?  Please consider Arima’s words the next time you get a glass of pure, safe water from your tap or flush your toilet or think your water bill is too expensive.  As for me, I learned a valuable lesson from Arima today – about what is truly priceless.

I Love it When a Plan Comes Together!

We just got back from our first day of community visits, where our participants trained groups of men, women, and primary school students on the sanitation and hygiene lessons that we presented to them this week.  The day was a spectacular success!  There is no greater experience for a volunteer field trainer than to watch the people that you have trained use the tools that you have given them to bring about change in a community.  Bob and I sat in on the session with the students, and it was so cool to see how these grown men engaged and entertained the children, learning from them as they taught to them.  From the very start of this project a year ago, we emphasized (and hopefully modeled) that it was important to have “big ears and small mouth” when you work in a community.  And we all definitely learned a lot from these children today!  The trip home on the bus was like a soccer team returning home from a victorious road game – laughing, singing, high-fives and fist-bumps – and praise to God.  The only glitch was when the bus was waved over by a policeman, and it turned out that the driver had no license!  But with 24 negotiators climbing off the bus, we were finally waved on.  We’ll definitely ask for documentation before we leave again Monday morning!  Tomorrow they will practice their second set of lessons in teach-backs, and then everyone (including US) will get a well-deserved day off on Sunday!  As team leader, I’ve “ordered” the team that there will be no lesson preparation that day – only fun, good food, and rest are allowed!

Cross-Cultural Chain Yanking

The purpose of our training this time is to demonstrate hygiene lessons that our participants can use in the communities that they serve.   The challenge is that these are very smart and experienced professionals, and the lessons are designed for community members with no training at all.  Yesterday, I asked them all to close their eyes and imagine the first time they visited one of their communities, and to pick out a face in the crowd.  Then I asked them to play the role of that person for the remainder of the lessons.  I also used the metaphor of “switching hats”, taking off my Lifewater hat and putting on my friend Mahammad’s hat.  Thus I became a community worker and Mahammed became a community member.  Well, they got the message – maybe a little too well!  In the afternoon, I was facilitating a lesson on the water cycle (rain, surface water, evaporation, etc.).  I was getting totally blank stares and strange questions that really flustered me.  Finally, I asked for a volunteer to tape a label of “rain” onto the diagram Tiffany had drawn for me.  Wako volunteered, walked up to the drawing, and looked very puzzled.  Eventually he taped it underground.  Next he moved it to the middle of a lake.  At that point I finally got suspicious and looked at the rest of the people in the circle and saw that they were trying to hide their grins.  As it turns out, they had decided together that they would show me how great their acting ability was and would portray the dimmest community members ever!   After we all had a great laugh, they agreed to cut me a break and let the lesson continue.  Now do you see why I love working here so much?

Awassa

March 5

Arrived safe and sound about 6:30 AM your time.  We have 3 rooms on 3 different floors.  I'm up on 5 (6 by US definition) with a spectacular view of the lake and on the back side away from the night club across the street.  Should be nice digs for the next 13 nights!

Internet is slow but ok.  Going out to look for monkeys with Getu in a few minutes.  We get down to work after devotions and breakfast tomorrow.  Everyone is excited and eager to get started. 

Go to Lifewater's facebook page for more pictures!
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=10150105031780843&set=pu.9835380842&theater

Jim

Awassa Bound

March 4

Our team is complete!  Judy arrived Tuesday night, and Bob and Cindy arrived about an hour ago.  We’ll leave tomorrow morning for Awassa, where our training will begin first thing Monday morning.  It’s the first trip for Bob and Cindy, and it’s always fun to see this great country through the eyes of a new observer.  Everything seems even more beautiful and interesting.  We have our list of participants, and Judy and I are disappointed by a few names that are missing – good friends whose jobs have changed so that their responsibilities would no longer bring them to this training.  We’re hoping that a couple of them might show up at the last minute, since that tends to be a flexible arrangement (like so many things here.)  Everyone is healthy, happy, and eager to get started!  Please be praying for us as we travel tomorrow, and as we prepare to start the training.  If you want to pray in “real time”, remember that we’re 8 hours ahead of the US east coast.  Ciao!  (yes, many people say that here because of the Italian influence from the occupation during World War II!)