Here's a depressing fact for your day: By the time the average American is 75 years-old, he or she will have spent nine years of his/her life watching TV (Myer's Psychology). That is crazy. And sick. Just think what you could do with nine extra years if you stopped watching TV.
Anywho.
As if Day Four wasn't exciting enough with seeing Fikre Addis and Mekdes, God decided to throw in a little extra surprise because He hadn't done enough already. Let me go back just a little...
Last year, several guys from our team raised money to pay for a well to be dug in a little remote village about an hour away from Addis Ababa. Everything was going well until the well drillers hit a stubborn layer of rock. Without the money or the tools to blast through the rock, the well digging had to halt, and an unfinished well sits there to this day. Even though that progress had to be stalled, something even better was going on. MAKBC, the church we spent most of our time working with, planted a smaller church in another district of Addis. In turn, the smaller church sent two evangelists to plant an even smaller church... in the village.
That was the story Mike and Fikadu shared with us during lunch that Saturday. As we bumped along the gravel roads up to the village, crammed into the Land Cruiser, our guide decided to share a little more about the village. I guess they figured that now that we were stuck in the car with absolutely no possibility of turning back, they could tell us the whole story. He turned around to look at us sweating in the back seat. "So, they worship a tree." I guess he decided that was the best way to break it to us. Whaaaaa? "You will see a big tree as we enter the village - that's the one they worship. There's a witch doctor in the village who claims that the tree speaks through him. He is possessed with a demon and goes into rages in which he goes out and grazes in the field by the tree. After his fits, he claims that what he said was the tree speaking through him." Um, whoa. I bet the Travel Channel has never seen something like this.
The rest of my journey up to the village was spent wallowing in self-pity and sweat. I was intrigued about the village, but I was, I regret to admit, too distracted by the heat and the squished-ness of the Land Cruiser to think any more of it. I was broken out of my selfish reverie by the sudden appearance of a giant, lofty tree in the middle of a field. "That's the tree," our guide said.
Anywho.
As if Day Four wasn't exciting enough with seeing Fikre Addis and Mekdes, God decided to throw in a little extra surprise because He hadn't done enough already. Let me go back just a little...
Last year, several guys from our team raised money to pay for a well to be dug in a little remote village about an hour away from Addis Ababa. Everything was going well until the well drillers hit a stubborn layer of rock. Without the money or the tools to blast through the rock, the well digging had to halt, and an unfinished well sits there to this day. Even though that progress had to be stalled, something even better was going on. MAKBC, the church we spent most of our time working with, planted a smaller church in another district of Addis. In turn, the smaller church sent two evangelists to plant an even smaller church... in the village.
That was the story Mike and Fikadu shared with us during lunch that Saturday. As we bumped along the gravel roads up to the village, crammed into the Land Cruiser, our guide decided to share a little more about the village. I guess they figured that now that we were stuck in the car with absolutely no possibility of turning back, they could tell us the whole story. He turned around to look at us sweating in the back seat. "So, they worship a tree." I guess he decided that was the best way to break it to us. Whaaaaa? "You will see a big tree as we enter the village - that's the one they worship. There's a witch doctor in the village who claims that the tree speaks through him. He is possessed with a demon and goes into rages in which he goes out and grazes in the field by the tree. After his fits, he claims that what he said was the tree speaking through him." Um, whoa. I bet the Travel Channel has never seen something like this.
The rest of my journey up to the village was spent wallowing in self-pity and sweat. I was intrigued about the village, but I was, I regret to admit, too distracted by the heat and the squished-ness of the Land Cruiser to think any more of it. I was broken out of my selfish reverie by the sudden appearance of a giant, lofty tree in the middle of a field. "That's the tree," our guide said.
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