March 24, 2007
Ethiopia snuck up on me. As our plane landed at two this morning, all I could see were straight lines of streetlights. It didn’t look like Africa. It looked like any number of cities I’ve flown into in the United States.

The drive to the hotel was quick, and the dark streets were empty. My sleep-deprived mind processed little. Dark buildings. Road signs. Flickering orange lights lined the sidewalks.

But this morning, Ethiopia woke up, long before I opened my gauzy hotel curtains. A slum spread out below me. It must have been asleep last night—sleeping off the day of hunger, disease and poverty.

On the drive to lunch, I said little, my eyes trained on the streets teeming with people. I tried not to stare. I averted my eyes as people peered into our van—ashamed at my comfortable clothes, wallet full of wrinkled cash, even the color of my skin. But the sights kept drawing me back. The old men, their bodies twisted, dragging themselves along the sidewalks. The women, regal in their colorful dresses, heads held high. The children—so many children! They darted in front of cars, their dusty bodies gray in the bright sunshine.

I couldn’t shake the images. As I sat with my two new Ethiopian friends, the sound of their foreign words bouncing off my still tired brain, the city spread out below us, my mind continued to feebly process.

“You’re too quiet,” my friends teased. I just smiled at their observation. I couldn’t process it all.

Gradually, the initial—not shock, but lack of understanding—begin to clear. “Pace yourself,” I told myself as I sipped thick papaya juice. “It’s just your first day.”

So here I sit, at the pool at my hotel. Naked children scream and splash. My white skin stands out less here. But I know that just on the other side of the dense green trees and shrubs that shield me, there is another world. One rife with poverty.

A country of people whose story I am to tell.

A country of people who have already crept into my heart.

March 22, 2007
10:30 a.m.
Denver International Airport

I could get used to traveling first-class. Hanging out at the Admiral’s Club. Reading the Wall Street Journal.

Our flight to Chicago is already delayed, but thankfully we had a three-hour layover, so hopefully we’ll be fine. Missing the flight to London would royally suck (get it, London, royally. You know I’m funny.)

It’s funny to me that 36 hours ago, I wasn’t even sure if this trip was going to happen. Some issues came up, some doubts were cast, and I was left in limbo, my emotions protesting at the yanking around they had dealt with. I don’t think they’ll stop complaining until our plane touches down in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia!

I always like to process before a trip…try to figure out what my expectations are, preparing myself emotionally and spiritually. This trip encompasses so many firsts for me. My first time to Africa. My first trip with Compassion. My first encounter with unbelievable poverty. I’ve seen poverty before. I saw it in the tiny cinderblock houses in Brazil, in the long extension cords that shared electricity from the house of the most “wealthy” to the least.

But I didn’t see poverty like expect to see in Ethiopia. I didn’t see children whose stomachs were bloated with hunger. I didn’t see mothers dying of AIDS. I didn’t see houses of cardboard and dung.

Part of me is scared that my heart is hard, that this poverty will just bounce off of it. But then, the other part of me is scared that I won’t be able to handle it. That my heart will implode under the weight of what I will see.

When I shared those fears with my prayer group, the most succinct way I could think to pray was that God will break my heart while keeping me together enough to do what He’s called me there to do. To tell the stories of these beautiful mothers who are doing all they can to raise their children. To serve with dedicated Compassion workers who spend countless hours traveling to distant villages and patiently teaching mothers how to keep their children healthy, their homes clean and their stomachs full. To open my eyes to the ministry of Compassion, and see first-hand the lives that are being changed, even saved.

Well, that’s entry number one. I’m curious to see how this will compare to the entry I will surely write when I return to Denver. Maybe I’ll sit in this very same chair, with the people of Ethiopia embedded firmly in my heart and their stories flowing through my fingers.