Because I am writing this letter on Christmas Eve it qualifies as a Christmas letter. Never mind it is January 6. I live in Ethiopia and this country of Christians is celebrating Christmas on the 7th. So here is our Roth Amstutz Christmas letter.
We started and ended 2010 with family visitors; Wanda's mother and sister arrived in January and Doug's parents and sister arrived in December. In between we, as a family traveled to Nairobi in March for EARM and again in December for the MCC/ EMM retreat at Brackenhurst. Wanda traveled to Canada in August for her niece's wedding. All travels began and ended safely, something we don't take for granted.
MCC Ethiopia was busy as a team as we worked with partners in development, funding education and supplying teachers, HIV/AIDs prevention and education and peace work. As always we work through our partners. One of our main partners is the Mennonite World Conference related partner, Meserete Kristos Church. We work with their Bible college, with their national offices in peace and women's ministry. MKC has an MCC-like organization called Relief and Development Association (RDA) which MCC partners with in development and HIV/AIDs work.
As I think back to a year ago, Amani, Abigail and Sophia have changed. Although all the girls enjoy singing, Amani loves singing in the school choir and it shows. Abby has learned to play the violin to the point that she can look at sheet music and play it for the first time with no mistakes (it helps if she knows the tune by heart)! And Sophia is playing the clarinet, practicing and hoping to get to the same place Abby is with sheet music. All the girls read as well but Amani can't seem to put a book down and that's a good thing (coming from someone who did that as a boy). The one area I'm not sure is a good thing is that they are all still very obsessed with their Nintendo DS games, they will sit and play for hours. The Gameboys always need charging before we go anywhere in the vehicle.
The girls have come to appreciate Bingham Academy, their school. The whole friends thing is still hard but given the fact that they are in their last semester ever at Bingham they are starting to think about friendships and farewells again. As for academics, they have continued to pull down very good grades overall and compliments from their teachers. We are very proud of them all. The test will be going to a new school and academic system next fall. The rigorous Cambridge curriculum they have been in should hold them in good stead in the transition.
Pets still play a big role in our house. Spot the male cat, Princess Waffles the female cat and Peanut the female dog are all in the house all hours of the day or night. Coca the male dog is the compound's guard dog. He wouldn't stop an intruder but he makes plenty of noise. And if you are wondering if we see litter after litter of puppies and kittens . . . we did but those days are over. Every indoor pet has been fixed and so they all live together in asexual harmony (mostly). Stray cats do come in the compound but are usually chased off by a combination of cats and dogs. It's the one thing the animals all agree on, get the intruders out. Spot was beat up recently however by a stray male so he's been sleeping in the house the last couple of nights.
Wanda and I still deal with health, water and electricity issues on a daily basis here. It is rare that everyone in the family is 100% healthy at the same time. It can range from pesky colds to nasty intestinal stuff. I constantly worry about water issues, our two 2000 litre water tanks never seem to fill up with city water any more and we run out of water on a regular basis now. When that happens we call the water truck to come and fill up the tanks. Everyone in the compound knows we need to conserve water but somehow the supply disappears quickly. Our gardener misses having a steady source to water the plants, but the priority needs to be the household. Electricity shouldn't be a problem going forward but that is what the government said a year ago when several hydroelectric plants came on line. Then the biggest was shut down when the tunnel for the water to go through collapsed. It has just opened again. All year long there were power outages but they have become less. The power goes out for shorter periods of time. Still the problem is low voltage coming into the compound. Since a new hydroelectric dam just came online and another is due to open in a month or so, maybe we will see steady 220 volt power. But as the dry season continues and no rains fall (until June) that will affect our water and our electricity.
Wanda and I are looking ahead into the new year. January and February will be busy months of finalizing our MCC Ethiopia budget and visiting partners. March is a traveling month. For our 15th wedding anniversary Wanda and I will go to Capetown, South Africa for 10 days (God bless our friends for hosting our girls at that time) from March 5-16. Then it will be on to Zanzibar for the MCC Country Representative (CR) East Africa Regional Meetings (EARM) at the end of March. Since Bingham has Spring Break the week prior we will take the girls and go early to Zanzibar as a family. That will surely be a memorable experience.
April will be a month of hosting. We will welcome our supervisors and the couple who will be interim CR's in Ethiopia, taking our place. They will have 6 weeks of language study and orientation that we'll provide. May and June will be times of sorting and packing and saying our goodbyes to friends and co-workers. July and August will be for landing and taking care of details like where we will live and what we will do. We hope to see friends and family during that time. What will happen by September? Only God knows.
