Monday, 23 February 2009

A new week began with more new experiences!  This is our week at the Horn of Africa Field Strategy Office. We started with a meeting with Ermias Choloye and his wife Mulu and learned a great deal about their lives and the progress of the Nazarene Church in Ethiopia and Sudan in the last few years. Both Ermias and Mulu have been teachers and he has also held a leadership role in the school district in Addis.  God showed them both that they were needed in roles that He directed them too, even though they thought they weren’t qualified. How inspiring it was to be with them!  They were very interested in our stories as well, how God has been working in our lives, directing our paths through our professional careers, our personal lives, and the “open doors” He is providing in volunteer missions.

  It feels like we know them well already, with this sharing of lives. Ermias and Mulu joined hands with us and prayed for us, thanking God for all He is doing. What a joy it is to realize that we could be an answer to their prayers, half a world away from our daily lives!

The rest of the morning was spent getting acquainted with some of the accounting transactions and reports from the last few months, as Mulu is learning bookkeeping and procedures.  We have been given the key to an unused conference room as our office. Dan has a number of things to investigate - replacing a power supply for one of the wireless hubs, installing a computer in the radio room, learning how to reset the video conferencing equipment, sort through things in the communications/storage room, and all other duties assigned…   We’ve also learned that, in a few days, we will be able to access the contributions made on our behalf, for expenses here.

My afternoon was spent with Aynadis, the young woman who has been doing the accounting for Nazarene Area 2 of HOA, the country of Ethiopia, for several years. Many businesses in Ethiopia use Peachtree, but she is using QuickBooks, and is eager to learn more about the software and what more it can do for her record-keeping. She is very curious, especially, about how payroll works in the U.S.  She is amazed that people take checks to the bank - it’s so different from Ethiopia where the total of the monthly payroll, less income tax and deductions, is withdrawn from the bank account by one person and distributed to the employees in cash.  She keeps asking, “By the way, how... ?”  or “By the way, why...?” It’s gratifying that she is willing to ask questions and to modify her routine, adding more details so her reports will be excellent and her transactions easier to track.


The Internet was sketchy during the day so, when it got better at the end of the workday, we stayed in the conference room for a while to check e-mail and keep up with messages from family and friends.

Sani runs her household very well, and she needs to be a good manager, with several children and household help, not to mention guests like us, who are staying for 6 weeks (and often another 1 or 2 guests for a few days at a time)!  Tonight’s dinner preparations were Kuku’s turn, and I found out that tomorrow night it’s my turn (with Sani’s help) to prepare dinner. She’s thinking about rice, vegetables, hmmm; I said, maybe add some chicken?  I must remember to ask Dan to stop at the market on our way home tomorrow so we can buy some chicken and we’ll make a new dish!