Eric and I have been working in the ICU this whole week. It's kind of weird getting used to working 5 eight hour shifts instead of the 3 twelve hour shifts that we're used to :) We've mostly been training the staff on patient assessments and things to look for with each patient condition. Their ICU isn't very well established yet, so we're trying to help them make it better. Most of the staff know English but a lot of the patients don't, so it's a little hard to communicate with them, but we do the best we can. There's a little boy who was in a car accident and had a severe crush injury to his right foot. They thought they would have to amputate it first, but one of the doctors wanted to try to save it so they've been taking him back to the OR every 2 days to debride it (remove the dead skin). Every time he comes through the PACU he is so scared and cries almost the whole time. Since we don't know Amharic it's hard to talk to him but we made him a balloon out of a latex glove and Eric drew a face on it and made funny faces at him- he calmed down after that and seemed a little happier :)
Today we visited an Ethiopian woman who has a ministry for orphans. She is just trying to get it started right now so she only has 5 kids, but she is doing an awesome job with them. She teaches them all about Jesus and does all their schooling. The kids even got in a circle and prayed for us by name before we left- it was so sweet :) Some of them have really sad stories- One of the boy's father killed his mother and a couple of the girls have parents who died from AIDS. Pray for her and her ministry- her name is Tsion (which means Zion) and she has a husband and 3 kids of her own who are adults. The ages of her kids she is taking care of are 4, 7, 8, 9, and 10, and she is getting 2 more very soon.
One more quick prayer request- we're trying to switch one of our flights on the way back home because we have to fly into JFK airport and then take a taxi to Newark airport to catch our next flight, which is pretty dumb and will be a huge pain, but every airline we talk to says to ask another airline to do it (we are flying through several different airlines and no one seems to want to take responsibility for it). Please pray that we will be able to get that switched.
It's hard to believe we only have a little more than 1 week left here before we leave for India. Thank you all so much for praying- we are having an awesome time!

We were wondering why we couldn't log on to our blog and we found out today that the Ethiopian government has blocked all blog sites :) So, we've been emailing what we want to write to my (Kelsi's) mom and having her post them. We'll still try to update as much as we can.Last week we were able to spend some time in the hospital. Their ICU is combined with the PACU (post-anesthesia unit) since they don't have their ICU set up to be on its own right now. They only had 2 patients in the ICU, but both of them were very sick. Both were on ventilators and both were craniotomies. They have a couple of neurosurgeons here from Norway, so they are able to do some pretty complicated surgeries. We spent most of our time learning how they do things here since it's very different than in the US. The head of nursing at the hospital wants us to look at how they do everything in their ICU and see if we can think of ways to make it better and help train the nurses. We got to see a little bit of the city last week. We visited a couple of Ethiopian Orthodox churches (kind of like a cross between Judaism and Catholicism) and had some real Ethiopian food. Today we went to the English service at an Ethiopian church (they have another service in Amharic, which is the national language). There were mostly Ethiopians in the service but there were also quite a few internationals there from various countries. We really enjoyed it- they definitely know how to worship! :)We'll try to post some pictures soon if we can, but the internet connection isn't that great so hopefully it will work. Thanks for your prayers!

Eric and I are in Ethiopia after 25 hours of travel :) We got in last night about 9:00 and went to bed not too long after that. We didn't sleep too well because of jet lag, but we both took a couple naps today. Today we took a tour of the hospital and got some more information about how the ministry here started. Tomorrow is the Ethiopia new year, so we won't be actually working in the hospital until Friday. It sounds like we will be in the ICU for most of the time while we're here, which is fine with us since that's what we have experience in. We were very impressed with the hospital facilities. They seem to have a lot of equipment that many missions hospitals don't have. We were glad to see that they want their main purpose here to be spreading the Gospel. We'll update more later! -Eric and Kelsi :)

We want to thank everyone for your support, thoughts, and prayers. We have been blessed with great friends and family.

Dear Friends and Family,
It has been a busy, exciting year for us! Getting married, new jobs, travel opportunities, etc. It's been a crazy year, but it's been fun :)
On September 8th, we will be taking a mission trip to Ethiopia and India. We will be in Ethiopia from September 8th through September 30th, and India from September 31st to October 20th. We will be arriving back in the US on October 21st.
Although we don't know the details of everything we will be doing yet, we do know that we will be helping out at hospitals in both countries.
The purpose of this trip is to determine where God wants us to do full-time missions. We both feel God's call on our lives to dedicate our lives to full-time overseas missions work. Unless God changes something, we hope to move overseas in a few years. Right now, we are trying to decide between Bangladesh, India, and Africa. We had the opportunity to go to Bangladesh last year, but we haven't been to Africa or India yet as a couple. Hopefully, this trip will give us a better idea of where God wants us.
Here are some things you can specifically pray for:
-That we would be open to God's will and that He would show us His plan for our lives
-That we would be able to share the love of Christ with everyone we come in contact with
-For safe travels and no complications
-That we would be able to be an encouragement to the missionaries and their families.
We would really appreciate your prayers. We will probably have internet access, so you can read our updates while we're gone at this site.
Thank you so much for praying! We will keep you updated the best that we can.

Eric and Kelsi Harris