On Sunday morning we assembled on the lawn of Grace Centre HQ for a little cute church service. This was very refreshing. We started with sitting around in lazy chairs singing some songs - lots of Moore Park classics including "Blessed be Your Name" and "Lord I Lift Your Name on high". Ian lead the service while Michael was on preaching duties.
We shared a few stories and then Mark H lead us in prayer. Michael followed with a really good message on 2nd Kings which had several different allegories and applications. This service came the day after the last of the Gondar trips... if I may go back in time. On Friday and Saturday most people at Grace Centre boarded a mini-bus for a 2.5 hour road trip to the city of Gondar. This is a city quite rich with Ethiopian history including a beautiful church (17th Century) filled with, well... beautiful paintings :-). Before this we visited an array of spectacular castles from the times of the Ethiopian Kings. There are some photos of this in the Gondar Gallery on the blog.
The Gondar trip also involved a visit to a "bath" site where one of those Ethiopian Kings had built a "Camp David" style retreat which including a massive (larger than Olympic size) swimming pool with a Palace in the middle of it. He was smart enough to built this in a position ideal for diverting the Blue Nile into his pool for quick filling ;-).
The drive also allowed us to enjoy some more of Ethiopia's spectacular landscape.
As for work at Grace: our projects have been continuing well. Most of the plumbing issues are fixed (kind of). The ditch is having some plastic piping added for increased drainability. Kelisha and I will complete the double step for the kids water tap today. Some timber fences are being built for the big/small kid day care centre. I forgot to mention that Barb (the Canadian mother) was doing some sewing, mending back packs, clothing and other baby accessories.
Steph and Michael had the excellent opportunity of visiting their sponsor child who lives in a town of Bahir Dar. Steph has been sponsoring this girl for a long time (since high school) and it was a nice coincidence that the child and family were living in the same city as the Grace Centre. I won't say anymore here as I don't know the details - but Steph will probably write a blog entry about this.
At the moment we are getting into a good routine of playing a game of soccer with the local boys (there is a soccer field opposite HQ). Dave Fraser, Michael Cox and myself played yesterday for about 45 minutes which is not bad at this altitude. We had an Aussie v Ethiopia match and went down 2 nil which was ridiculous as one of the goals was an own goal (badly defended by GS) and the other was just pure altitude sickness or something.
I should let you know I am heading home on Wednesday, its been a trip. Someone else (maybe Keliesha) will continue the blog for Moore Park after I leave. Cheers. Chow.
