Letter from Satu

Hi David!

An other beautiful day in Addis! We went to church with Alayu and Kidist today, the church they usually go to, Arat Kilo. They had a kids service today. Actually the kids that are part of the Compassion program sang and one girl ‘preached’. It was quite lively and I felt God Spirit in the service even that I did not understand everything. Alayu sat beside us and translated some. We were the only white faced people besides one other woman. (whom I did not get a chance to talk to). Little kids call us foreigners….they are very curious and always hand out for money. Even in the church one boy wanted to have the offering money in Erik’s hand. We are just hanging out today. Perhaps we’ll go for a walk and shop for our groceries. We’ll make our own meals on Sundays.

Yesterday, we went on a shopping expedition (that is what it is) with our very dear friend, Mesi, she is a young Ethiopian girl (24) married to this very nice and fun American missionary Douglas. They are staying here while they were getting her visitors visa to US. They will stay ‘til the 17th.. God is so good, He knows what we needed. We have had a great encouragement from them and fellowship. We have a devotional time every evening together and a time of prayer. We have also learnt quite a lot from them about the culture and discovered a little of the ‘inside’ track of being a missionary here. It’s only two of them that are working there in the country side of Tigra.

It can be quite disturbing to go out on the streets here…walking or shopping….you really stick out. Lots of poor people have their hand out for money. Yes, I was telling you how we went shopping yesterday with Mesi and our driver. When you hire a driver here, you also hire a body guard. Anyways, we went to couple of markets. At the first one we bought a Masinko, one string violin and a nice bowl shaped wooden drum, some wooden orthodox crosses and trinket necklaces. In Ethiopia, they don’t have a fixed price for the foreigners. It is usually 3 times more for us….but you know me….they didn’t know what hit them when I got there. One vendor told Mesi she is impressed by my ability to bargain…usually foreigners just agree to any price they ask. Even if I paid their asking price it would still be quite cheap.

You have to be quite careful about giving alms to the poor, especially to the kids. One day we were walking with Mesi and Doug and had bought some bread in order to give it out to some needy ones. I made a mistake of giving some bread to a young boy and soon had the whole crowd of school kids around me pushing and shoving. Mesi and I were surrounded by them….I had to tell them firmly to ‘stop’, which they understood and froze for a little while. Good thing Doug was with us and put them in order.

In Addis area there are lots of places you can get some aid. Alayu said these people on the street have other options but they often just get used to getting their income by begging.
Alayu is a wonderful man….he is very humble and wise with lots of insight of people and life in general. I think he could be easily taken for granted. He has many brothers and sisters. He is the oldest one and ended up putting many of his brothers and sisters through school. His next brother is a supervisor for the Compassion Ethiopia. We met him today at the church. I still don’t know what our ‘job’ here is. We’ll have a tour of some of their work on Tuesday.

Before I close I would like to ask you to add to your list of things to bring over Metamusal (a fibre supplement)…Alayu’s wife, Kidist, has a really painful problem with her digestion. Even the doctors in US couldn’t find the problem. I gave her the oatmeal, chammomile tea and an other couple here gave her Metamusal and that seem to help her little. I told her I’ll ask our church to pray for her. She is in pain most of the time and her tummy swells up in your eyes if she tries to do some physical exercise. Would you let me know if can do that. Buy the Metamusal without sugar so there would not be so much useless bulk to bring.

I must go…we are having a coffee ceremony at 4pm.

Love you so much and I miss you.
Satusi