A few extra days in Addis

Last night (Monday night) we arrived at the airport in Addis, Ethiopia to make the trip back to the states. Over the last eight days we’ve had a wonderful time here with Compassion International and our church partners in Nazaret, ET: Nazaret Emmanual United Church. God answered our prayers to put vision in our hearts for our partnership with Emmanuel and for our work with Compassion. It was a wonderful trip. Which leads me to the trip home…

As we walked into the airport I noticed that the first leg of our trip to Frankfurt was not showing up on the monitors. My suspicion was brought to confirmation as we walked up to the Lufthansa Airlines desk and discovered that an earthquake caused a volcano to erupt and spread ash over east Africa. We aggressively tried to reconnect with the Compassion staff in Colorado Springs. We were unable to get the Internet in the airport to work and the local payphone would not recognize an American credit card or an American phone number. Finally we were able to borrow the cell phone of a local person and get in touch with the Country Director for Compassion. For the sake of brevity I will spare all of the details, but it took about two hours to get a hotel voucher and confirmation for a flight the following night (which is now cancelled).  In order to get all this arranged we walked back through customs, out of customs, through security, out of security and waited in a few lines to say the least. By the grace of God we were able to get vouchers for an “Ethiopian Four Star Hotel.” By the time we walked out of the airport the Compassion Int. drivers were waiting for us. They transported thirty minutes across Addis to the Four Start Hotel, the Riviera. When we walked up the hotel lobby was filled with smoke from all of our German friends who had also been displaced and replaced into this hotel. We were the last group to arrive.  Unfortunately, there was no room in the inn for our team.

We were then shuttled to another hotel, The Panorama Hotel. So after traveling over an hour in Addis we reached our destination. They had anticipated our arrival and arranged individual rooms for each of the eight of us traveling in the group. We have two different churches, South Bay Church and Rockbridge Church from Dalton, GA.  I located my room, dropped off my bags then headed back to the lobby to try and make connection with Stacie. It took me almost two hours to get connected, send her an email and get a reply. I finally retired for sleep at 2:30am.

After watching the news I’ve discovered that there are thousands of other displaced people all over the world. Many of them are stuck in airports, sleeping on suitcases. While I’m very disappointed that it may be a couple of extra days before I see Stacie and the boys… I have so much to be grateful for.  A warm shower, a great bed, clean water, electronics that can be charged (ipad, iphone and laptop), books, journal, the bible, and friends here to connect with.  

As I finish this post it’s Tuesday at 4:00pm in Addis, 6:00am back home in California. Our flight for tonight has been cancelled. I don’t know when we will be rescheduled. Compassion has a staff back home working to try and reroute us through other cities. Personally, I’m praying that we get to go through Dubai, but I am left at the mercy of God, the volcano and the airlines. In the midst of my circumstances today, I have a great opportunity to choose gratitude and live in joy.

Please pray that God would help me keep proper perspective and that he would strengthen my wife as she is on day 8 of caring for the boys by herself! Pray that God would protect her and the boys physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

PS, tomorrow is my 30^th birthday. This has the potential to be the most exotic birthday of my life!

A South Bay Church Miracle!!

So sometimes miracles are big and sometimes they are small, and our road to starting South Bay Church has been filed with both. I want to share with you our most recent miracle, but you must humor me and track with a little story so the miracle gets full effect!

So in the process of selecting a web address for South Bay Church it was very important to me and our team that we find a simple url. For example not something like, "www.visitmysouthbaychurch.org" or "thisismysouthbaychurch.com"... So on and so forth. Well when we began to look at web addresses earlier this year southbaychurch.org, .com, and .net were all taken. So knowing that I wanted an easy to find address I called the church who owned soutbaychurch.com asking them to give it up, they would not, and I called them again hoping they would forget I had called, after the 3rd time I figured I'd try for .org. So I entered into negotiation for southbaychurch.org. After having a "domain brokerage" company assess the site they determined that it was worth almost $700. Because this is such an important part of reaching people who are far from God we were willing to pay the $700 to get the site domain. Whatever it takes!! The girl who was working our account stopped returning my calls and emails... Because we were finishing up at Breakthrough and going on family vacation this administrative task was put on hold.

Yesterday after returning from vacation, I called the domain brokerage back to get the ball rolling so we could acquire the site. I finally spoke with a young man named Matt and he assured me that he would help me get everything finalized. Well, within an hour Matt called me back and said that the domain was now available and the company who previously owned the site had let it go! So, I hopped online and purchased the domain for $6.95!!! Don't tell me that wasn't a miracle. Say AMEN! Praise God right now where you are for that one! That was God's mighty hand saving us $693.05 so we could use it on something else to reach people who need Jesus!!

It is a great encouragement to me to see the hand of God at work! I hope you can rejoice with me as we see God grow South Bay Church from a handful of people and big vision to reach the San Francisco Bay Area!