Travel Updates

During our time in Ethiopia we had limited internet access, and we decided the easiest way to keep in touch was via Facebook. These are updates we sent out along the way. Enjoy!

May 21- Vince

Well we finally feel like we are on our way. Autumn and I showed up at our hotel today for to begin briefing. Today was just staff, we looked over our projects finances, had a risk management session, and got a bunch of great materials to help our students assess how their experiencing their time in Ethiopia. Tomorrow morning our students will be arriving here at 11am. Please be praying for their safe travel, as some of them are coming from as far at south dakota. Please pray for patience and attentiveness as we have a lot of stuff to bombard their brains with, and then as soon as we are done with that we will fly for 18 hours. And pray that the Lord would intercede and gel our team together quickly. Also, today is the day we began taking our malaria meds, it gave autumn a sore shoulder and then she fell asleep, it made me feel a little shaky (however i was also watching the mavs), but please pray that us and our students don't have problems with that because we will be on it 24/7. Hopefully we will be able to hop on here tomorrow and Monday before our flight leaves, but if not then look for our updates. We'll post as often as we have internet access which looks to be spotty 56k at best....yeah you remember that noise.

May 22- Vince

Met our students today, they all got here safely and on time. We love our students, they get along great, are alot of fun, and are really excited to see what God is going to do. Thank you so much for praying for their support, every single student raised their amount and then some, which is the first time in 5 years that every student on a project did this. Praise God. Pretty much what we did today was cover all kinds of info from expectations to goals, and alot of get to know you stuff. We fly tomorrow. Please pray for safe traveling, and we'll update you in a couple days or more, whenever we have the chance.

May 23- Vince

We are waiting at the airport about to fly! Next post we will be in Ethiopia! Thanks for your prayers!!

May 25- Autumn

Hey friends! We are here! We right now it is 645 at night on Wednesday. We got in at 9:00 last night, after a full 24 hours of travel, and although we are all worn out, thankfully we made it with no problems, and everyone feeling good! Today we spent time with the Campus staff in the capitol city, Addis Ababa. We really enjoyed the day, and we had a complete variety of new experiences! We had some amazing coffee (and I don't even like coffee!) and we enjoyed the local food. We also spent most of the day getting some training on the culture, and adjusting the the 8 hour time difference. Little known fact that you might enjoy: today the date in Ethiopia is actually 2003. They have a different calendar with 13 months, and are obviously a few years behind!
Please pray for us as we are still adjusting to the jet lag, and we have another flight tomorrow morning that we have to leave the hotel for at 4:30 am. We will be heading to Bahir Dar which is our final place, and thankfully the end of our travel.
Thanks for your prayers, we literally feel them here! We will be sharing more as we can!

May 28- Autumn

Selam!That means peace and is a greeting in Amharic. Hello from Bahir Dar! We finally made it to our destination, and the whole team is relieved. We enjoyed Addis, but are very happy to be in Bahir Dar. The city is much smaller (244,000 in Bahir Dar to 4 million in Addis) and we feel very comfortable here. The staff from The Great Commission Ministry(Campus Crusade in Ethiopia) have been incredibly hospitable! We are so thankful for Dires and Kassahun who are staff that are making sure we feel welcome and safe. After a morning of prayer, today was our first day to go out and do ministry, and it was exciting, but very different than in America. We are excited to see how the Lord is at work here! In a city of 244,000 we have been told that only 4,000 are protestant Christians, so most people we meet do not understand a personal relationship with Jesus, though they know about him. Please pray for us to be able to explain the gospel clearly. Also, they are teaching us the language, but it is still hard to be able to communicate. I pretty much know how to say thank you, hello, bathroom, (which translates to toilet house! ha!) coffee, tea, and water. I am limited to say the least, but actually really enjoying learning a new language. As far as our team, everyone is doing fine, and recovering from jet lag finally, but this morning quite a few, myself included are a little under the weather- we think it is just adjusting to eating all kinds of new food. Please say a prayer for us to be entirely well, or at least to not be distracted by our tummies! We spent yesterday with the team, and prayed, trained, and got to hear each others stories. It was fantastic and God used that time to really develop good team unity. We are all clinging to the Lord, and that is a beautiful thing! Also, it is finals time here for the colleges and universities, so we have very few translators. Please pray that we God would provide more translators, brothers and sisters from the ministry, to help us be able to communicate clearly. Fortunately, many here also speak at least a limited amount of English, so we are able to communicate some.
We appreciate you taking time to pray for us on our journey. We are so thankful for you all in our lives!
And moms, we finally got working cell phones, so be expecting a quick call to day hello!!

May 30- Vince

Hello! We are having a great time in Barhir Dar. Today was our second day out sharing our faith. We had a good number of translators to helps us today and it seems that our students had a great time (we are still at an internet cafe and i haven't talked to them all). I have already heard a couple stories of people trusting in Christ which brings the total to like 7 or 8. We are experiencing just a different culture. The people here are open to talking about religion, and truly are seeking out the truth. They really like talking to Americans and want our email addresses so they can email us after we leave. It's exciting to see their reaction when they hear that you can can have eternal life by grace alone. Today we shared the Gospel with 2 coptic orthodox guys. They were very interested in what we were talking about, and we are hopeful to sit down with them again. The orthodox religion claims the Bible but never reads it, so when they hear us quoting the Bible they often want to go and read it for themselves. We also met an underground orthodox priest. This is basically an orthodox person who trusts in Christ, but stays in the orthodox church secretly so that others may know Him as well. Our team is getting along great, it seems like someone new is sick everyday with some sort of stomach issues or allergies. Please pray that we'll continue to share the Gospel boldly, and that we recover from feeling bad. We appreciate you and your prayers very much.

June 1- Autumn

Hey friends! We are seeing God do incredible things here! So far, as a team we have initiated 82 conversations about the gospel, and have 13 new brothers or sisters in Christ! Praise the Lord! That does not include the ministry we did today, and we will get to hear more from our students tonight about what the Lord did during our outreach time today! In addition, we have many many appointments with people for the coming few days who we got to share the Gospel with, but wanted time to consider or read the scripture in their own Bible. Please please pray that those students who we have appointments with in the coming days would place their faith in Christ. So many people here know so much about religion, even Jesus, but have never read a Bible, and believe that it is works that save you. My heart breaks every time that I ask someone if they think they will go to Heaven, and they shake their head no. But praise to our gracious Heavenly Father that His good news saves! Tomorrow I will meet with a girl at 3 pm our time that is a conversation just like that, she heard the Gospel for the first time, but needs to think about it. Please pray for her.
Our team is feeling better, but Vince has a sinus infection that is giving him a hard time. I wish you could know all our students, and the amazing staff that is here in Ethiopia. They truly shine Christ in all they do, and we are so blessed by them! I have gotten to build a special relationship with the woman who is our cook, and I spent an afternoon hand-washing and line drying laundry with her. She is a believer, and an incredible blessing in my life!
Vince also asked me to share that he is recording the Mavs back in Dallas, and would prefer to not know the game scores or updates... you know how he is.
Thank you again for your prayers! We will update again soon!

June 2- Vince

Today was an interesting day. We are seeing God do a lot of things in the lives of the Ethiopians and in our students. This morning at the guest house, which is where we are staying was a Bible Study morning. We are studying 2 Corinthians with our students and it is very applicable to what they are experiencing here. I went with one of our students, Derick, to an appointment early today and that appointment summed up my day. The overwhelming faith here is Orthodox, and basically they believe they can go to heaven by doing good, but they don't know how much good, and the don't know anything about what the believe. They only know what their priests tell them. They also aren't allowed to read the Bible so when we share with them, it's definitely the first time they've heard it. So today was a day full of sharing with Orthodox believers for the first time that the Bible says "its by grace that you are saved through faith, not from works....". It literally blows their mind bc they would say that they think the Bible is true. A couple of the guys I talked to wanted to go read in the Bible on their own, and I'll see them next week. Another guy wanted to see it in an orthodox bible, and a protestant bible so we ran around town trying to find an orthodox which included an interesting argument in Amharic with 2 priests about why they would let their own orthodox believer see an orthodox bible. We also got kicked out of a couple cafes today which is a lot of fun, that happens regularly....they are starting to catch on to the white people...they call us frenchies, which means white foreigner. Yesterday we had 2 people trust in Christ, and today I've already heard of a couple more. Everyone is feeling much better, just a couple cases of upset stomach but overall very well. Thanks for praying for us we appreciate you very much! As always, please don't tell me anything about the mavs i have it dvr'd.

June 5- Vince

We've had a great last couple of days in the city. I think our students are learning a lot about their culture and a lot about what the orthodox faith believes. Gaining knowledge and experience in these areas have really helped them when sharing the Gospel to know which questions to ask, and to better communicate the Bible. Yesterday Autumn and I sat down with a man outside of a cafe, and through our translator shared the Gospel with him. At one point the man was insisting that he believed he could get to heaven bc of God but didn't think the Jesus was anything special, and that He wasn't anything more than a man. There was another guy who happened to be sitting near by who took the liberty to butt in and in amharic tell the guy we were talking to that Jesus was Lord, and he believed him. Soon after that this man placed his faith in Christ. We have so many other stories of how God has divinely placed us, our students, and other in our path so that people may place their faith in Christ. To date we have had 33 people receive Christ, and have taken 45 others to the point of decision where they have to accept or reject Christ, and have either rejected or said they need to think of it. We are all mostly in good health, there seems to be a case of upset stomach or fever with a person or two everyday but nothing that bad. Today we took and break and went out on lake Tana, which is the biggest lake in Ethiopia. It's also the lake that feeds the beginning of the Blue Nile, so we went there too and it was awesome. We also went to another part of the lake where the orthodox monasteries are, and toured them. We saw building and paintings from the 12 century. It was very interesting, but sad to see such devotion to relics and things other than Christ. We have just a few more days of sharing n the before we head back to the US. Please continue to pray for us and our team, thanks!

June 6- Autumn

Hey guys! We had another awesome day today! I got to go out sharing, and I was with 2 of our students, and 2 translators. We began to talk with a tour guide, who spoke wonderful English, and he was so excited to talk with us. He was eager to talk about God, and asked us to share what we thought. He, like so many people, did not think he could possibly go to Heaven or have a relationship with God since he thought he was not a good person. We got to talk with him about the Gospel for nearly an hour, and he was so excited that Jesus had died on the cross for him, and he invited Christ into his life. We are going to meet with him again on Wed, and are going to give him a Bible. He wants one in English, which might be really hard to find, so please pray that we can get our hands on one. If not, he can always have mine! He was so thankful for us sharing with him, and we are so grateful that the Lord was a work in his life! During this time, his friend came and sat with us, and after 7 years of believing in God, he had hit a really hard time and decided that God wasn't real and didn't love him. We also got a chance to share with him about how much God does love him, and even stories from our own lives about how when we know from the Bible that God will always be with us, even in the hard times. He got a little choked up, but asked to keep the booklet with the verses that we shared with him. We are praying for him, that he would truly understand God's love. After that, we went to another cafe. I have been going to the same place nearly every day, and I have begun to build a relationship with the 2 waitresses and the 2 baristas. Though they don't speak English, we have always seemed to enjoy seeing each other. Today, I talked with them through a translator, and told them that I have really enjoyed seeing them. I told them that I am here because I love God, and I want everyone to know God. Since they were working I asked if I could leave a book with them, and then they could read it and we could talk the next day. They seemed excited, and 1 girl even started to read the booklet right away. Usually the cafe owners are not excited for us to be talking about God, and honestly we have been asked to leave many, so I was worried as the seeming owner walked up, but he just smiled and seemed to give the Ok. I am really hoping that the next time we share that the girls will be there, and that it wont be busy so I can have a chance to tall them about what has completely changed my life!
If you are still reading this, thanks, I am long-winded today! But honestly, this is just a tiny glimpse into what God has been doing here. I would love for each of you to sit around the table with us, and hear stories from each day. Of course not all want to know God, but we can see and feel Him at work.
We know you are praying and feel your prayers. Thank you so much!
Tomorrow we are going to get to see the Blue Nile Falls, which is the beginning of the river that used to be called the Gihon river, which is mentioned in Genesis. We are really looking forward to seeing a place that God created and talked about so many years ago!
Thanks again for your prayers!!!

June 9- Autumn

Hey! Thanks so much for being part of this journey with us, your prayers mean so much to us! Yesterday was our last day of outreaching, and it was a fantastic day. One of our girls got to share the gospel with 14 people, and 8 trusted in Christ! And that is just one person! We are so amazed to see God's hand at work, and to see how he has been working in the lives of our students. Today we have been de-briefing the experience that we have had here in Ethiopia, and preparing for the transition back to the US. We are flying back to Addis Ababa tomorrow, and the following day we will begin of 24 hour trek back home. We are all so very sad to be leaving, as we have built such deep relationships with people here, especially the student translators who have been with us every day. It may have only been a few weeks, but it feels in so many ways like we have been here forever. Last night a few of the translators came to the home we are staying in to honor us by doing a traditional coffee ceremony. They are such servants, and we were so blessed to get to celebrate what the Lord has done together, and to get to say goodbye. It was especially touching to see Vince interact with his translator Samuel. They have such an awesome relationship and have seen so much together. Please continue to pray for us as we say our goodbyes, and also for us as we travel home. We are looking forward to seeing you all soon!

June 13- Vince

Made it back yesterday evening safely to dfw! thanks so much for praying for us. After resting for a couple days we'll update you on all God did in Ethiopia. We are so thankful that we made it back, everyone healthy, and not only did God use us to change lives in Ethiopia, but He changed us and our students as well.