Our Trip to Ethiopia, Day 5

 Monday, July 4, 2022

This morning after breakfast, a few of us went with Bisrat (Bizzy) to buy Bibles before going to the AGCI and Tim Tebow Foundation House of Hope. At the House of Hope, they take girls off the streets and provide them with trauma-informed care before reuniting them with their families. A lot of times, girls travel from the countryside into the city to find work, but find out soon enough that there is no work for them. They end up on the streets, so AGCI takes them in and provides therapy and reunification services. 

At the House of Hope, we took a tour, gave each of the girls and special mothers a rose, painted the girls' fingernails, and gave them each a Bible. They were very thankful and sang songs for us. Photography of the girls or kids at orphanages is prohibited, so I can't post photos here.

After lunch, we went to Kibebe Tsehay orphanage to drop off donations, and then continued on to Kechene. We first visited this orphanage in 2015, and I have several close friends who live here. One of the girls texts me almost every day, and several of them call me mom. It was SO good to see them again! H gave us a tour and showed us her bedroom and beautiful artwork. She gave each of our family members a bracelet. 

This is my precious H, who texts me every day. 💝

We hugged the girls tightly when it was time to go. One of them will be moving to a new orphanage in 6 months, and she cried because she's afraid she will never see me again. 😢

The AGCI staff took us out for dinner at Gusto Italian Restaurant. It was VERY fancy. I sat by Meti, who started working for AGCI not long ago. It was good to see Weldye again, too. He gave us some bags of coffee to bring home.

Back at the guest house, we found that the staff had made us a 4th of July sign and bought us sparklers! We got out the glow sticks we had brought and had a party on the roof. We got good views of the city, sang patriotic songs which were enjoyed by the people on the street below, and made the guest house staff very nervous. They told us that no one else had ever been up on the roof before. (The very next morning, however, they had changed the Ordinary Hero profile picture on Facebook to a photo that I had taken of the kids on the roof with sparklers. 😉) Back inside, the girls made s'mores and scotcheroos for everyone.