Preparation

 Recently I realized, with a mounting feeling of something like panic, that it is almost a month until I go to Ethiopia.  Yikes! Time is flying. Lucky for me, I had an interesting experience last team week which helped me to prepare a little for my time in Ethiopia.
 Last weekend, my team - which also happened to be my outreach team - went to a Confirmation camp in the foothills of Norway where we invested in the youth and talked to them about the Ten Commandments. I have to say that I have not seen so many stars as I did during the nights at the camp in a long time. Nor have I experienced so much cold in a while, since the prison is surprisingly warm. But these things did not exactly prepare me for Ethiopia; rather, it was the place where we, the girls at least, stayed.

The little house looking shack on the left side of the picture is where I and about ten other girls stayed for two nights. It was actually used to store grain about one hundred years ago and we were the first people to be housed in it for over a year. Our room was coated with cobwebs and an even better surprise met us in the mattresses of the bunk beds: mouse poop. Needless to say that in a room shared by five girls panic quickly arose, which died down as we began to take our eyes off of our predicament and thank God for the opportunity to speak into the lives of the young people around us. 
 As I am writing this, I realize that the story sounds a little cheesy. However, I hope that when I encounter things that are less than comfortable in Ethiopia that I can remember the response of placing my eyes on God instead of the mouse poo.