Time travel is real! (what another 3 months in 2012 has been like)

Ha! sike! Well kind of… 

Let me explain.

First of I just want to put it out there that I am not a mad scientist so I am not saying time travel does or does not exist. Maybe time travel does exist, who knows? 

All that aside, I didn’t time travel. I think.

I am merely in Ethiopia, a land that is still in 2012. For some odd reason that humans probably actually do know (I don’t necessarily), Ethiopia follows their own calendar. So literally Ethiopia is in a different year, a different month and a different day. Fun fact, they even celebrate Christmas on a different day, 13 days later than the rest of the world, Jan 8th. This means that as I have been in Ethiopia for the last month I have experienced 1 more month of my life in 2012. I even got to celebrate christmas twice. kind of dope right? 

At any rate, without further ado, let’s look at what I have been up to in 2012 as of late.

Arriving in 201- I mean Ethiopia, I was not sure what to expect. experiences from other racers along with my limited knowledge of what we were getting into where starting to get jumbled up in my mind. Although everything differed one thing was for certain, I was going to be in the middle of nowhere. (okay so I had a vague idea what to expect). 

The first few days were crazy. As two squads where in Ethiopia at the same time, we were to meet up together in what is called an awakening. During our experience of a 9 hour time change we met up with 40 more crazy people who had decided to take a year and travel all over the world as missionaries. We had worship sessions, we played soccer, and got to know so many new faces all in a crazy sleep-deprived blur of 3 days. 

Shout out to 11in11 W squad, although I only saw you guys for 3 days, you guys were some of the most dope people I have known. (Not to belittle anyone else, you guys are just as dope).

After adjusting to going back in time, we began to settle down into routine. This involved cutting grass with a curved knife thing called a sickle for multiple hours, and then depending on your status, (we actually got to choose) teaching Ethiopians english, playing games and teaching kids at the orphanage, (Oh yeah forgot to mention we live on an orphanage), or cutting more grass. I signed up for cutting grass under the false promise of helping with reforestation projects. 

Alongside doing all that we spend our free time hanging out with the kids. So in my case after cutting all that grass for 4 hours each day, I grab some of the kids and try and teach them spanish. What can I say, I missed spanish after being in Guatemala for 3 months. I also came up to God with the question of “What is your purpose for me here in Ethiopia?” Pretty much he was like “You keep accidentally teaching the kids spanish, and I put that desire in you for a reason so just keep doing that”. Okay I can’t say that those were his audible words but it basically went down something like that.

So there is that, just going about life in 2012 loving people like Jesus, teaching Ethiopian people spanish, team leading all 4 of the freaking amazing guys on our squad (#MENOFGOD), and cutting grass, so that the people who would normally be doing that can spend more time with the kids teaching them about God and just being dope role models.

I would agree with the saying told to us many times by or leader Ralf, “These kids are going to be the next future leaders and Prime Ministers of Ethiopia”. They are going to know Spanish too.