Daniel Seidel’s Weblog

I just wanted to let all of you all know that i am now officially back in the US of A.

I don’t really have much energy to write all that i need to tell you about. But i want you to know that i am so thankful for the experiences i got to have and for the people that i got to be with during that trip.  Thanks you all so much for sending me and blessing me with your support and care and concern.  I can’t wait to give you a really good recap of the trip and hopefully soon i will be able to wrap up the last ten days for you as well.  I love you guys.

Eeeeeeeeevry rose has its thorn.  And Eeeeeeeeeeevry night has its dawn.

that is to say we are getting ready to leave.  and it sucks.  i got asked for the first time when i would be leaving and i had to actually think about it for the first time and this is almost it.  the next four days will be the last four times i will see some of these kids that i have really come to love.  And they are so amazing.

I have found myself connecting with the older kids better than the younger ones probably because my amheric isn’t worth a birr ($ .10 US) and the little kids don’t speak enough english for me to talk with them but the older kids are amazing.  they are so smart some of them have only studied english for a short time yet they can all read and write and speak english close to fluently.  some of them are artists, most of them are athletes, all of them need families to adopt them.

It has been crazy to hear even just short parts of their stories for example i heard from a boy named Kirubel this week about how he used to be living at a place called A-Hope.  the A standing for AIDS and i wondered why he would be staying at Leila House now instead of there.  He explained how he was living there with his five year old sister, she was positive he wasn’t, and then he told me that within the last two months she had died from it.  And it has been on my mind since because i know he isn’t the only one like that.  heisn’t the only one to have tragedy in his miniscule past.  All the kids have it.  It makes me wonder about Nati and Selam and Meret and Biruk and Sise and Rahel and all these kids who i have been spending time with yet all i have shared with them is smiles for the most part.  Yet how many of them must have so many tears built up from all the heartbreak that have gone through.  And on top of painful family pasts a lot of the older ones that i hang out with still don’t have families.  And this brings on a whole other set of issues because they see their friends leaving and they wonder “why does nobody want me?” But a cool thing in all of this is that so many of these kids do have hope.  I spoke that same day with Kirubel and he told me all about how he loves to pray and read the Bible and even when he told me about his sister he told me “she is with Jesus now.”  And that is the God i worship, the God who looks out for the orphans who are sick and dying.  that is where his grace goes, to the 12 year old who has the life experience of a 40 year old.  I have other cool stories of kids just exhorting me to focus on God and not be stupid like when one kid was singing an Amharic worship song and i started dancing like a fool and he said “no. no. these are songs for God.”  Anyways i could obviously talk forever about the place i have gotten to work, it is defintely life changing.

Outside of that i have had some other cool experiences.  i got to experience “Ethiopian Ladies Night” and no it wasn’t what you were thinking. i didn’t purchase any half priced drinks the Ethiopian ladies from our team gave us a gift.  It is called a coffee ceremony and basically they got fresh coffee and then they roasted it in front of us and we then ate some traditional ethiopian breads and stuff and also drank some delicious coffee. during the ceremony there were some performances including a dance to an amharic worship song.  and a couple musical performances too.  it was a sweet night. and they put so much sugar in my coffee that i would call it sweet coffee too.

I don’t know what else to tell you guys, on top of that we have been doing a lot of Bible Study.  If you want to be readig what we are reading than read the Gospel of Luke.  we have been going through it very slowly and looking at not only what Luke was really trying to say but also what it means for our lives and needless to say if you have read it there are a lot of implications for how Christians should be living their lives.  Read it.  I dare you!

There is more and you will get to hear it someday.  Thank you again for all the support and prayers and just interest you all have taken in this whole trip.  it is a blessing for me to know that i am not doing this alone.  keep praying.  love

daniel

I am Ethiopian!

I wish actually that i was.  So it continues to be amazing being here and i think

it is getting better.  So now with another week at my worksite under my belt i

am starting to feel a little more on top of things which is nice. So the adoption

agency i am working at is just a really cool place.  i am starting to get to know

some kids pretty well and that is cool.  i am also getting incredibly buff from

all the kids that i pick up and throw around.  It seems like i can’t take more

than ten steps before some child attaches on to me.

We have had some more cultural experiences as well.  Just two days ago we

went to a healing prayer service for a couple hours and it was very interesting/

slightly frightening for some of the group.  I think i will save the stories for

face to face talks but it was good for us all i think.  one thing that really

shook me during that morning though was to see the desperation so many

people had to be healed.  there were easily more than 3000 people there and

there could have been upwards of 5000 and they were people who literally

had nowhere else to turn because either they couldn’t afford healthcare or the

couldn’t really be treated for what they had.  it was definitely eye opening.

then yesterday we climbed some of Mt. Entoto which is nearby Addis Ababa.

it was beautiful to get up above the city to look around a bit.  the nature is

amazing, you wouldn’t believe how green it is unless you spent a day here,

but then after walking through a ”rain shower” you would understand better.

One thing i want to comment on is the roads, i imagine them to be a lot like

the roads my Godfather Dave wrote about riding on in Afghanistan.  I wish i

could give as good a description as he did but basically they are either

completely dusty or completely muddy and always filled with pot holes that

are of the industrial pot size, not for domestic use.

I think the team is starting to feel a little worn out at this midway point so we

could use prayer for energy i think.  also unity is becoming more and more

work to keep together so pray for relationships among the team, not a big

deal but oculd become a big deal.  pray for our hearts to remain soft to

everything we see and experience. even since the last time i wrote i have

become more hardened to all the poverty here.  i passed a bunch of beggars

on the way here and didn’t really give much of a second though to them until

now.  pray for us to be used too.  I know we are here to learn but there can

definitely be some fruit from our service as well.  That is it i think for now

except for the hundred thousand thing i didn’t get to tell you.  i love you guys

and i can’t wait to get  to share this experience with you.

sorry about the weird spacing of this but it was either doing it this way or

having all my sentences cut short.

Selam!  I am in flippin Addis, Ethiopia right now!

i am sorry that it has taken me so long to write but i think if you saw some of the places i tried to log on at you would understand.  it literally took 30 minutes for me to find out that i wouldn’t be able to log onto my blog to write.  so bear with me.  hopefully from here on out it will be once a week.  let me try to wrap things up on what has been going down.

so we got into Addis early thrusday morning and got to sleep a bit.  then we spent the whole day in the city.  we were given some instructions as to things to try to do but basically the point was to just jump right into things.  and this first day really set the tone for my experiences thus far because i was really feeling overwhelmed when i found out what we were supposed to be doing but then i got introduced to the Ethiopian Hospitality.  i have had countless experiences now of people just being eager to talk with me and help me in any ways they can.  there are certainly some who do this and expect payment and 4 of my american team members had a bad run in with one of these but i have been lucky enough to get to interact with some of the kindest most considerate people.  one funny example of ethiopian hospitality is how in the last 5 days i have been helped across the street countless times by my roommate Bereket, but i am getting ahead of myself.

So we ended up having to days of getting oriented to the city before we met our roommates during which we ate some new things, said some new things and saw many new things.  The first day did shake me with the amount of poverty i saw.  beggars lined the streets and many had different ailments like elephantitis, cataracts, missing limbs which really shook me.  and what also shook me was the look in their eyes (and believe me i am not trying to be poetic right now, you could literally see it in their eyes).  many of these people were simply hopeless.  as i would look them in the eyes they would hold my gaze just long enough to ask me for money once and then immediately drop their eyes to continue asking.  but when they dropped their gaze it was as though they somehow believed themselves to be less than me and it was just a really painful thing to see people who’s spirit’s were so broken.  there is desperate need so pray when you think of it.

the next day we met our roommates.  my roommate is Bereket but i call him either Beck  or Beki.  he is 20 and goes to school about 180 miles north of here.  his has one o the softest hearts i have ever experienced.  i wish you could all listen to him talk about working with street kids because you can really feel how his heart beats with love for them. it made me cry but only just a little.  we have enjoyed many laughs and stories together and i am looking forward to getting to know him more and more.

I don’t know how to segway to this but on monday we finally got to go to our work sites.  i am working with 8 others at an adoption agency in the city.  it is an amazing place.  one slight dissappointment was that all the children are going to american homes which means that i don’t get to practice my amharic very much but  it is really a place of hope.  the have neever had a child get to the age where they can no longer be adopted and so they all really expect to get to find homes.  so in our first week we have done a lot of playing but also we will be doing some teaching and tutoring.  the age range is from 3 months up to 13 year olds so we also get to do a lot of baby holding.  so far i have also split my time with an orphanage that is just across the street that works with special needs children.  half of them are very high functioning kids and half are much less but they are all filled with smiles and joy.  i don’t know how many times i have been called “abibe” or daddy but it does make me long for them to also find homes with people who will love them.

okay that is about all you can handle probably but just so you know:

i love the food it is called injera and we eat it for lunch and dinner everyday.  it is basically a spongy, sour flat bread that is used to pick up the different types of wot (stew kinda).  it is delicious and you always eat it with your hands, which is why i know i am meant to be here.

the weather is crazy everyday it will rain but everyday will have sun as well.  it has really poured a couple times and i learned quickly that my 2 dollar wahlgreens flip flops don’t really do so well on muddy streets.

you can drink the water and eat the food without any side affects except for maybe a little bit of bad gas.  but i can tell you a very funny bathroom story sometime if you want to know.  ask me!

Also though there is desperation in places i have never loved a place so much.  the people here are beautiful. the country is beautiful.  the culture is beautiful.

So all of this to say i love it here yet i don’t know if i can get used to all the poverty and saying know to people when i know that i could easily buy them a meal for nothing.  there have been many laughs mixed with many times of real sort of heart wrenching discomfort mixed with some really good food.  keep praying for all of us.  not everyone feels like i do but we all are really longing to see God move.  pray for those on the trip who are feeling abandoned by God.  pray for us to really make sure to scatter seed.  and just pray for this country.

thank you so much for sending me.  exia beher imesgan!  i am good thanks to God!

daniel

So we are actually here.  two days away from takeoff.  It is two days because we actually are leaving tuesday the eighth now instead of the seventh.

So for those of you who do or do not care over the last couple of weeks i have had various adventures.  I was back in seattle for a spell during which i did my best to visit with as many of the people i love as possible.  it was a great time to be together with 5/6’s of my family and i just enjoyed getting to be.

i also got the opportunity to visit Seattle First Covenant Church a few times.  on one Sunday i even got the opportunity to share a bit about what is on my heart right now and how this Ethiopia trip is connected with that.  It was great for me to get the opportunity to say thank you to the people that really helped to raise me and also it was a blessing to see how excited they are to still be a part of my life. and they made sure to send me off with their support and prayers.

then i got to spend a week in Canada (sometimes called SHAN-ada) enjoying time with the Seidel fam AND with the vast expanses of our extended family who live there. we celebrated a wedding and a 60th anniversary and just the awesomeness of the Lett’s-Lyon’s  combo.

After the celebrations it was time for some R&R which meant me and my cousin Ian playing video game soccer/real soccer with plenty of nothing in between.  Then there was a hectic day of travel on the 4th where i had to smash my bag into one of those little carry on size displays in order to convince the flight attendant that my carry on that i have used for 6 years really was small enough.  I definitely showed her.  And now i am here in Des Moines just finished packing my stuff to go.  tommorrow we have a day of driving to Chicago.  then tuesday will be a day of training and then tuesday night we fly out.  It is all crazy but at the same time not.  it kind of doesn’t seem real but i know it is.

God is good and has been very good to us thus far.  we still need a few more acts of divine intervention to get us all over there so be sure to keep praying even if you don’t believe in all of this, God might just listen anyways.  But as far as i know we will be getting time on the internet so plan on hearing from me once a week.  i would love to get any comments from people too while i am there so don’t be shy.  this is too long so i will end it.  blog to you soon!

so we are getting down to the wire now for the upcoming trip to Addis Ababa.  everyone is really excited and is making sure to get the last minute preparations finished which means for most of us asking for more money.  as of right now i would guess there is still about $5,000 of need among the 15 of us students.  i am so grateful for all that you people have done but i still just want to ask because to not let you know about our need would be selfish of me.  so i will give the details one more time on how to give.

i will be able to pick up mail in seattle until july 4th so keep that in mind.  if it is going to be close you can mail to the IA address. So make out checks to Intervarsity and in the memo put Ethiopia and then send them to:

Daniel Seidel, 1536 NE 91 St., Seattle WA 98115

or

Daniel Seidel 4315 Urbandale Ave., Urbandale, IA, 50310

Amasayganalo (Thank you in Amheric (spelled phonetically))

So for those of you who have been remembering my friend Autumn in your prayers thank you so much.  and for those of you who don’t know the story basically she was really unsure about her decision to come on this trip for a number of reasons one of them being the amount of money it would cost. she recently sent out an email to the rest of the team letting us know about what the whole process has been like, and she gave me permission to share with you because some of you have been donors and pray-ers for her:

so,  i’ve been struggling these last few months with believing that i’m really supposed to be in Ethiopia for these six weeks. i knew i wanted to be there, but every other sign was telling me to listen to my parents. and listening meant not going.

i knew a little bit about the situation and so i wrote a blog about her just to see if some of you would be willing to bless her.  and as it turns out she is now the first to have raised all her support and she has already received some extra she wrote

all the money i’ve gotten has been unreal. each check and every bill has its own story behind it. but these three experiences have reconciled every doubt i’ve had in God and every doubt i’ve had in this trip. so i guess what i’m saying is He provides. He provides even when the people who are supposed to, let you down. and maybe relying on Him means giving up what you’re so comfortably relying on now.

i just wanted to share with you all because you chose to be a part of it.