“These days are better than that. Every day I die again and again I’m reborn. Every day I have to find the courage to walk out into the street with arms out, got a love you can’t defeat–neither down nor out, there’s nothing you have that I need.” –U2 “Breathe”

“They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated—the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” Hebrews 11:37-38

I’ve felt this for a little while and the above gave a voice to it. Forgive me for preaching for a second but I got a letter a couple of days ago and I’m fed up. In the past couple of years with being involved with the people and the process of getting Iona my world has been changed for the better, I think. I have the utmost respect and admiration for the staff of America World, the people who work in the Transition Home in Addis Ababa and people like my friend, Robel, who does *alot* for the Kingdom; he is someone I honestly look up to and would aspire to work as hard and is diligently for changing his world for the better. He is just one of many examples of people that we’ve met whose faith, in my opinion, belongs with the people of Hebrews 11 in that they have looked beyond their situation to the larger purpose of what God wants them to do and they are all courageous.

My letter I saw this week was written to, as I could guess, Christians with the sole purpose of casting a specter of fear into the heart of the reader. The letter intended to draw a grand conspiracy by ’someone’ in the past 40 years with the goal of throwing the United States of America into a communist state. There was speculation that everything from removing prayer from school to a vast left wing conspiracy to enthrone Barack Obama as our new Stalinist dictator.

At the end of a day I have a wonderful family I come home to and three great, large examples of stories of the hope that God has given me. I guess I’m appreciating my situation, but praying for another opportunity to step out into God’s big story again. It’s so easy in our culture to be afraid and to protect and if there’s one thing I left Ethiopia with was a lessened fear of things and a walk with God demands a stepping away from fear and self-protection. Among the things God has given as a gift with parenthood is a glimpse into a world without fear where following God means relying solely on him and not me.

With that said, here’s a short list of things that I “should” (according to some people) be afraid of, but I’m not:

– Old age and a perceived accompanying irrelevance, “Middle age”, retirement
– change
– Barack Obama
– a depression, recession, and the economy.
– Who is in the Supreme Court
– People who make different levels of income than me, look different than me, act different than me, or believe differently.
– People who speak another language
– Muslims
– People from different denominations from within Christianity
– Atheists

I suspect my list could get bigger here and I’m planning on revisiting it, but for now, fear is officially put on notice.

I don’t want to spoil the ending:

This was off my radar, but the whitehouse has an official flickr stream and what’s neat is the guy that’s doing the majority of the pictures is really talented. The above picture is the best of the ones I’ve seen, but there are some stunning photos. Click on the picture to see the rest.

I really wanted to give a little time to think about and process
Thursday night’s ‘guy’s night’. Beyond the crazy stories from the
evening, there was one point where the trip became transcendent for me.
But first, the crazy stories from the night:

The evening went like this – we went to a place where ‘the foreigners
go’ and then to a more local place while we waited for the Jazz club to
start up. Urban Addis is really quite different; there were hardly
anyone out wandering the streets (most of the locals are home and only
the foreigners are out past 6 due the costs of ‘being out’). Ironically
enough, everything we did was inexpensive by US standards. I brought 100
birr and it was enough for the evening; 1 birr roughly equals 1 dime.

We had started the evening at an upscale westernized place that was
really cool for atmosphere. Urban Addis reminded me of just about any
other city I’d been in; there was nothing so striking (apart from
language differences) that would suggest we were 8000 miles away from home.

>From there we walked to the Beer Garden Inn. One of the things I had
appreciated about the evening was just getting to know a couple of
people that I would hang out with if we were in college together. So,
off we set for the beer garden inn. This particular place sold a variety
of beers in 3.0 liter containers for 55 Birr. Too bad I hate beer…lol.

After that, off to the Jazz club. As we were walking back, it was fairly
brisk outside and we were walking down a darker street in front of some
embassies. I wasn’t paying attention, but one of the guards in a guard
shack needed a little exercise and decided to jump out behind us and do
some jumping jacks; I about jumped out of my skin! Robel casually looked
behind and said “everybody needs to warm up”.

The Jazz club was amazing and it was my moment for the trip for me. I
grew up listening to Jazz alot in Danville. I had always associated it
with late night, sweaty clubs in European or exotic locals (essentially,
this place). So, we sat for a while on a couch in the place and
listened. It hit me at that point what time it was in Illinois (around
noon) and that people were headed out to lunch and here I was at the end
of my day. Time, for me, had become arbitrary and I had fully disengaged
with it. Most of the week I was waking up at 5 and blogging or going to
bed around 7 and here I was sitting at 9 p.m. listening to Jazz.

So much of the trip was themed around that. We had traveled to Afica, we
were in the thick of obedience and we were about to embark on this
beatiful, new thing that had been created in our family and here I was
sitting listening to Jazz. Mind you, I was pretty tired at this point
and music really amps up emotions for me when I’m tired and instantly
becomes that much more gorgeous and my favorite music for that moment; I
know I’m not explaining it well, but it may be that you just have to be
me to understand. The world had become smaller in that club. Robel had
told us that at this particular place, the band plays until there is no
one in the room; this usually goes to about 1 or 2 in the morning.

We spent about an hour there and found out some of Robel’s friends were
coming in from the states to do some street kid ministry with him later.
I will preface this part of the story with the notion that I don’t think
Robel sleeps. He is a man who has a finger in so many good things and
ministries in Addis that he’s pretty busy. His friends had arrived at
the airport and we walked over to there from where we were at (it’s
about a mile or so down the road). I didn’t have my passport with me and
you need to present ID in order to get into the airport at the only
thing I had was my driver’s license. My friend, Austin, had his passport
and Robel had his ID with him. As we went inside I sheepishly handed the
security my license to which I was returned a look of bemusement from
the security guard (silly american…). By the way, it may be noted at
this poin that the airport required an admission charge (lol) to get in.
It was around 2 birr, if I remember corectly.

After we’d looked around for a little while, Robel called his friends
and found out that they were “just outside the airport” and that we
needed to catch up with them because the driver needed to be back at the
airport in 20 minutes. So, off we ran, yes ran. Now, mind you, Robel
does running in Addis and Addis is 8000 feet above sea level and is
filled with smog so Robel’s lungs are made of cast Iron and his blood
vessels are as wide as mine are long. While Robel was galloping along
and Austin was keeping up with him I was not. I’m not really out of
shape (in my opinion) because I bike daily, get moderate exercise, but
man, that was a real eye opener!

We made it to the van and my heart was hating me (lol) at that time and
off we went to the Addis View hotel. We got a chance to visit with
Robel’s friends and check out the normal location for families while
they are in Addis. It was a really nice hybrid bed and breakfast (part
hotel, part B and B) and I was shocked at how centrally located the
Addis View is; it was far closer to everything that mattered to us (the
embassy, the TH, the Orphanages, etc.).

We were planning on taking a taxi back to the Guest House. A note on
Taxis in Addis; it’s a negotiated rate. You find a driver, negotiate a
rate and tell him where you want to go. Robel had mentioned that they
would drop us off a couple of streets over and then we would walk, but
we were so uncertain where we were at that we weren’t sure how to get
home even from a street over. The Addis driver ended up taking us back
to our place (we got a little lost at one point…and ended up driving
around a gravel road trying to find which ‘exit’ to take to that region
of the city.

So we finally got home after seeing some of Addis (fun!) and I was
really appreciative of the time to get to know some of the guys a little
better.