It was our mission today was to teach teenagers about making healthy choices. So we went to the Yerer Preaching Center which is very hard to get to in the rainy season. We drove for an hour then got out of the van and walked to it. The natives say it is a 45 min walk while it took us Americans 1 hour 45 minutes. It was a very taxing walk which was up and down hills, valleys and over little streams. We had mud all over our shoes and pants! As we walked there our group grow large because we had kids join us. They helped us and practiced their English. We heard all about their schooling and dreams.
The walk was hard but very beautiful. The countryside is very green and lush with all the rain. The soil is very heavy and sticks to our shoes. The farmers are planting their wheat, teff, tomatoes, cabbage and chickpeas. Their methods are very similar to biblical times- oxen, one shovel plow, hand seeding and spraying. It is not the productive ways of the American farmers! We have seen two tractors here but nothing to do with people. It was used for hauling people in Addis.
We were greeted at the preaching center with drums and kids singing for us. We listened to their program and did ours. We were amazed who attended- young to old! The topics were:
Good Godly decision making
Sharing Gods love
Financial decisions
The talks were well received and they even asked a question or two.
After play time with the kids and giving our drama play, we headed back to the van. Yes it was over the hill and down the valley. It was not as wet because the sun dried up some water. We found out it was a 8 mile hike for us! We celebrated with pizza!
Sunday
We visited a Lutheran church in town. It was a wonderful service which was 3 1/2 hours. It was a service with lots of singing, praying, two offerings and a very loud sermon. The preacher had the speakers on loud and kept everyone awake. The theme of the sermon wS the church need to be cleansed of their sin and to be holy. He spoke with passion and energy. There was 300 people there. Afterwards we had lunch at a local restaurant which served traditional dishes. All of us had a"sheep" dish which was excellent. We think we had goat.
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