Ethiopia Trip Happenings (From Brett Noble)

The Ethiopia trip is over and team has been back home for about a week now.  I’d like to share with you all some of the highlights.  Let me start by quoting from an e-mail that Pastor Rick sent to the team a few days before the trip: “Pray for protection, for God's direction and guidance, for Divine appointments each place we go, for the church in Dangla and throughout Ethiopia. Please continue to pray for Kari and Aaron each day.”  My friends, God has answered those prayers and many others.
 
None of us were seriously sick, wounded, damaged, lost, shot at, arrested, trampled by hippos, or otherwise incapacitated during the entire trip.  I’m pretty sure that was a miracle.  We had a mission to accomplish, and by God’s grace we were able to see it through.
 
Many things did not go as planned.  Big surprise.  But it was clear that God’s hand was guiding us every day.  Did someone mention Divine appointments?  On Friday the 12th, we were supposed to be in Addis but ended up in Bahar Dar because of a plane ticket mix up.  We took the extra day to travel to an island in the middle of lake Tana to tour a couple of old monasteries, which turned into an opportunity to share the gospel with some of the priests there.  By the testimonies of some of our team and the help of our Ethiopian brothers, several of them received God’s gift of salvation!
 
Kari mentioned to me that she woke up during the night Thursday and felt compelled to pray for us.  With the ten hour time difference, we figured this would have been the very time that our team was talking with the priests, as close as we can tell.  Our team talked on a number of occasions about God using Aaron and Kari as part of the team even though they were not physically present with us, and I believe this is a specific example of how God used them to minister along side us, as part of our team.
 
Our teacher training was an overwhelming success, thanks to five of our team who poured themselves into it.  I believe we’ve been invited back every year to repeat the star performance!
 
We did a whirlwind of work with the Ethiopia Eden project so I won’t try to get into all of those details except to say that it was fun, we truly seemed to provide real help in many ways, and God blessed all that we did.
 
As some of you know, one evening while our team was praying for Aaron and Kari, I received a specific call from God to go to Denver and to pray over Kari for healing, which my wife Shary and I did this last weekend.  Aaron mentioned this in a previous post and described it well – we don’t quite know what happened.  It wasn’t clear what God did or what He will do in Kari’s body.  Yes, I am disappointed that Kari was not healed immediately.  But I continue to trust that God sent me to Denver for a reason.  I did my part as best as I understood from God, and I will leave God’s part in God’s hands, where it belongs.
 
Blessings to you all.
 
Brett Noble