church and country music sold separately

first things first, i'm sorry for leaving you hanging on day #2 of my retro diary! life happened fast upon my return and put the diary (errr, i mean, "man journal") on the back burner. however, i am putting on the front burner and writing about day #3 today! get excited and get lots in the words...

day number three started out without some good ol' bible verses blowing my mind. check out isaiah 58:6-10 and you'll see how it related to all things ethiopia and the work we were setting out to do.

with those words in my heart we headed off to church. yoseph, our translator, was taking us to the church that he attended. i was trying to prepare myself for an all amharic service... but my expectations were not enough to prepare for the passion and joy resounding throughout the building. i guess you could say that no one knows how to worship better than the africans!

i didn't understand a single word (except the amharic word for "thank you") but i was still moved by the mighty power of a worldwide God. incredible, really. my feeble words would not do the experience justice.

however, another thing that i'll take away from attending church in ethiopia is this: their pastor broke out a solo in the middle of the sermon (apparently this is quite common) and i plan on adding this to my preaching repertoire in the future. stay on the edge of your seat in anticipation for that one!

after spending a few hours at church, and having yoseph usher us out early (because "he didn't know when the service might end"), we headed back to the guest home. while there we spent our time playing and interacting with the local kids. what a blast! soccer, football, circus moves, vocab lessons. and then from there we headed to an ethiopian restaurant for dinner. no one spoke any english there (and we were without our translator!) so we said we'd like pasta. they knew the word pasta and wrote down 10 orders of pasta. a few minutes later they came back and said they didn't have pasta. in the end, they had pasta. typical ethiopian exchange, to say the least. all the while we laughed and smiled.

then our pasta arrived! spicy meat sauce but absolutely delicious. although, our dinner was the best part of our evening. while we were eating there was ethiopian techno music playing in the background and then out of nowhere clint back is blasting through the speakers (check it out!)! a special country music gift just for us...

you can't help but love ethiopian hospitality.