Laughner's Journey to Ethiopia

Our sponsor child Kalkidan home visit.

Our wonderful team!

Kombolcha, Ethiopia 2013 Make a video - it's fun, easy and free! www.onetruemedia.com

Tuesday We slept from 11pm to 4:30am and then it was back to the airport at 5:30. We met a really nice couple from Florida coming back from India. They were on our flight to JFK. They took Benjamin and me under their wings and helped us through the Dubai airport which is very large. They helped us get through passport checks, to find our gate, and even had breakfast with us. I truly believe God knew exactly what we needed and placed them with us. They even sat right in front of us on the plane. Our flight taking off from Dubai, was late. We had 4 crying babies on our section of the plane. We started taxing off and got to the run way, when they discovered that we were carrying bags for a passenger that never boarded. So they took us back to the gate to remove the bags. We were then up in the air. They told us hours later that there was a passenger having medical problems and that we were going to need to make an emergency medical landing in Munich, which soon changed to Amst...

Monday Monday morning, we loaded up all of our stuff and said good bye to the staff at the guest house. We were off to visit Kind Hearts where our other sponsor child attends. Fikre, Zellalem, and the new driver Joe picked us oup. We stopped by the bank to exchange money, bought Addis tea, 200 bananas, and 200 mangos. The bananas and mangos cost 840 birr, about $44 in US money. Can you imagine buying all that fruit in the US for that amount of money? We then continued our journey to Kind Hearts. It had rained the night before. Some of the dirt roads were mud pits. I can't believe that we made it there without getting stuck. When we arrived at Kind Hearts (another care point center), where our sponsor son Yibeltal is, the kids were smiling and waiting for us. They were all lined up and holding a poster that said happy birthday Benjamin on one side in English with our date and one side in Amharic with their date. Ethiopia is one of the only countries that do not follow our cale...

Sunday, Sunday morning, I finally woke Benjamin up after 13 ½ hours of sleep. He had a quick breakfast of bananas and water melon. We then loaded up the van and headed off to church. We went to the Beza International Church, the English service. We started out with an hour of praise songs. We were in a large beautiful building, praising God with people from all over the world. Everyone was smiling and worshiping one God. If was beautiful. What an amazing God, we all worship! After about an hour of singing, they collected offering and dismissed the kids to childrens church. Benjamin decided to join the kids and went outside with them to a tent in the parking lot. I was proud of him for going. I have to say that I was more nervous about him going than he was. The service was good, there were a few things that were said that didn't sit quite right with our group. It made for an interesting chat after the service. We then had a picnic lunch of rice and vegetables and rice an...

Our drive back to Addis. We were up and on the bus by 6:30. We made a few stops in nature for bath room breaks. At one of our stops that was supposed to be a very short stop Rob Tennant, our leader and pastor, said to Benjamin, (while standing behind the bus) I will race you to the top of this mountain. Ready? Well Benjamin just started to run, I yelled stop, you are in the road, Rob grabbed him. Thank goodness, because there was a car coming. They then walked to the other side of the road and said go. They ran about half way up the hill and then had to walk the rest of the way. I was getting nervous, it was a pretty good size mountain. They made it to the top and smiled for a quick picture. Well let's say going up was much easier than coming down. I was really scared that they were going to fall down the mountain. Well Rob did manage to fall a little and come back with a need for a few bandages. I finally asked Fikre to go and save my son. Rob later gave me a hard time a...