DAY 2: First day in-country!

    HFTF: After landing in Addis close to midnight Monday night, most of our team was moving pretty slowly this morning as we began our first day here in Ethiopia. Yet, despite the tired, crusty eyes and lots of yawning, we all pushed through the exhaustion and enjoyed a wonderful day of orientation, training and VBS unpacking and sorting. 

Vacation Bible School begins Wednesday morning, so we had the privilege of unpacking and sorting all the incredible items that were donated for VBS and as gifts for the Hope For The Fatherless children. It truly was beautiful! Thanks to everyone who contributed to our collection efforts! The Lord blessed your generosity is a big way, and it was very special for us to have a front row seat to God’s amazing provision for the HFTF ministries. After all the items were properly organized, we had the extreme honor of visiting Faith and Hope Houses where we were able to distribute clothes, toiletries, shoes and gifts to the children living there. 

It was such a joy to see the reactions of the children when they saw the gifts that had been left on their beds—squeals of laughter and excitement, tears of joy, and a few looks of disbelief. It was a great reminder to me that our Heavenly Father truly does delight in giving good gifts to his children, and, like the kids modeled for us today, we should be just as free to squeal with delighted excitement, let our tears of gratitude run down our cheeks, or just stand  amazed before our good, good Father as he continues to care for us. 

Thank you for your support—keep praying for us!

- Mandy 

    Ready to Learn: For the next few days, our team split into two groups. While the first group remained at Hope for the Fatherless for the day, a few of us (Greta, Ashley, Chris, Sydney, Samantha, and Janel) headed to Ready to Learn and jumped right into our first day! Ready to Learn is a learning center that prepares children with autism to succeed in traditional classrooms. There is a huge need for quality special education services in Ethiopia, and Ready to Learn seeks to fill those gaps. It was created and is led by our good friend Koki, whose husband Belay is the founder of Hope for the Fatherless.

It’s safe to say that going from a long travel day to being thrown into a special education school of forty students was a pretty crazy turnaround, but our team had so much fun learning the ropes! It was amazing to see the way the Ready to Learn staff pour into these children in ways that are absolutely life changing for them and their families. 

We were able to help out in a variety of ways — being paired with students who needed extra support and also learning how to run some of the skills stations. It was awesome to see how this type of ministry looks in a very different cultural context than what we are used to. 

Tomorrow we have another full day at the center and then we will take what we’ve learned to the government orphanage to run the same program with them on Friday. Working with kids with special needs is always incredibly meaningful as well as incredibly challenging, and so we would love your prayers for strength and joy as we go all in on this for the next two days! Thank you for all your support! 

• Sydney