Tuesday was the beginning of Timkat, a national holiday celebrating the Epiphany (Christ's baptism); it goes through Wednesday, so the kids were on break from school (though Melaku had a half day in the morning - he goes to school at Layla House).
We went to Layla in the morning to hang out with the kids, and got to see one of Melaku's classes -
Earlier he had shown me his school notebooks from his classes, like English, Math, Science, and Amharic. He was so proud, looking at us to see our reactions and comments on his work. :) He had a notebook from music class too, with lyrics written out to songs as diverse as If I Had a Hammer, Seasons in the Sun, This Little Light of Mine, and I'm Yours! I asked him to sing some that he knew, and he sang If I Had a Hammer - it was so cute - he has a sweet little voice.
Because it's a holiday, the girls at boarding school (including Meseret, Z's sister) were on break, and were coming to Layla to spend the night, so Lindsay and Zerihun went with the van to pick them up. We walked down to a restaurant for lunch, and soon after we got there the van dropped the three of them off. It was pretty emotional meeting Meseret. She is so sweet, and is beautiful; she speaks English pretty well too. Darren started talking to her, letting her know how hard it was for us when we found out she was too old, and how we wanted to help her however we could and that we consider her a part of our family too. We were all crying - it was really heart-wrenching. Please pray with us that we can find a way to bring her over too!
After lunch a group of us took the older girls and boys from Layla and the boarding school out to see some of the holiday celebrations. There is an ancient Ethiopian tradition that the actual Ark of the Covenant is here at a church in Ethiopia. On this holiday, replicas of the Ark are carried out in procession from 8 different churches to a body of water, where they celebrate Christ's baptism and pray all night, then they are carried back in procession the next day. We walked to one of the churches where an Ark is carried out. That's a simple statement - but it was a long walk! No one told us how far it would be. :) It probably took about an hour and a half! And it was hot. But it was really cool to see the procession. Everyone is dressed in white, or with white head coverings, singing songs, and they all jump up and down and ululate when the Ark passes them. Then they all fall in behind to join the procession. This picture is one we took the next day from higher up - the Ark replica is under the umbrellas:
Lindsay and I went back to Layla after that to rest a bit, but Darren and Alex stayed and hung out with the kids. We came back later, and when we walked in we saw them hanging out in Zerihun's room - Darren was playing songs on his laptop and the younger boys (including Melaku) were showing off their dance moves. They were so funny! Melaku was just laughing and laughing, especially when Lindsay and Alex would join in.
It is getting harder and harder to walk away from these boys every day, leaving them there. When we left that evening, Zerihun walked us to the door, and it was SO hard not to take him with us! I can tell it's really hard for him too. Being one of the older boys, who has been there so long and seen so many kids leave, you can tell that he is just so ready to go. He asks us when we'll be back to take them home - he thinks it will only be a couple of weeks, but it will probably be more like 6-8 weeks, which is going to be hard! Pray that all goes smoothly with the extra documents needed, no glitches with the court or the U.S. Embassy!
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