Wednesday - Trees of Glory

We got to venture out of the city today to Trees of Glory care point.  This is about 2 hours north of Addis on a very curvy mountain road.  As we began to ascend the mountain, the city slowly fell away to rolling countryside.  It was beautiful.  I felt like we were able to take in the beauty of Ethiopia.  This area is also mostly farmers and farmland.  We passed countless herds of cattle and sheep along the way.  Interestingly, we also passed several groups of runners in training.  Our guide told us that people come from many places to train here.  He also said that many of these runners we were passing were gold medal winners.  Wow!!

We arrived at Trees of Glory and got to see the kids.  They were all in their classrooms.  The kindergarten class had a little boy holding a stick that was at least twice his size up to point at the letters on the board of the Amharic language.  Our guide said there are over 200 letters in the Amharic alphabet.  That's a lot of letters!

We got to take a tour of the property.  It was previously a compound for a Japanese construction crew that had been abandoned.  There are several buildings that they are working on to be updated.  

Once again I was honored to be loving on these children and sharing Jesus' love for them.

Some children by the fruit stand.  The children here are fascinated by cameras and love to have their pictures taken.  They like to pose and then run to see what the photo looks like on the back of the  camera.

A fruit market we stopped at to buy some fruit fot he kids.  We were able to buy over 100 bananas and oranges for $20.

A herd of cattle we stopped to look at along the road.  There aren't any fences.  The shepherds just walk along the road with their herds.

One of the incredible views of the Ethiopian countryside.

This little guy is helping teach his class the Amharic letters of the alphabet.

True beauty of Ethiopia........

Shepherd boys who were very interested in what we were doing.  Loved having their photos taken!

Some of the buildings and land of Trees of Glory.