Archived Blog
Spiritual Emphasis Week
OK, I think I should just content myself with posting here every couple of weeks, busy schedules at Bingham mean its about as much as I can manage. Anyway, I'm sure that's plenty of random waffle for everyone anyway. :-) Here's a few thoughts on what's been happening for the last few weeks.
Bingham's Spiritual Emphasis week has finished up last week, and was by all accounts a great success. Both speakers who had come (one for the high school and one for the middle school students) spoke really well, and the students were very attentive. The high school speaker was going through the book of John in his talks. I had my grade 11 bible class discuss the talks each day, and some very thoughtful questions were asked (as well as some difficult to answer ones :-) But it was encouraging to see how God was working in the students' lives, and how many of them were thinking about the talks, and being challenged by them. Please continue to pray that God will continue to work in the hearts of the students at the school here, and that we as staff can continue to challenge them in their spiritual lives. 
Other than Spiritual Emphasis week, Bingham continues as normal. I'm continuing to get used to my busy schedule, but overall things are going well. We have a couple of weeks break at the end of October, one week of Halloween break, and one week before that known as "Activities week" where all of the high school classes go away for a retreat to different parts of Ethiopia. I'm talking the grade 11 Bible class to Awassa, about 5-6 hours south of Addis. We'll be going to help out at a local orphanage down there, as well as having some biblical talks and discussions about relationships etc. Thankfully, I'll have help from 3 other staff members! But do pray that we'll be able to have a great week with the students, that I'll be able to deepen relationships and trust among them, and for good conversations and questions with them.
This weekend was the Ethiopian holiday of Meskel. This meant a long weekend, so a couple of us took the opportunity to go camping. We went to a local forest, close to Addis, and set up camp. It was a really great way to spend the weekend, even just for one night. I'm hoping to make camping a more regular occurrence here, its such a great way to get out of the city and relax! We came back and headed out to the city's Meskel celebrations. Meskel kinda reminds me of the 11th July in Northern Ireland, in that everybody builds a bonfire, there are small bonfires on almost every street in the city (though the bonfires are usually much smaller than the building sized bonfires back home). The best place to go, however, is to the large "Meskel square" in the middle of the city where thousands and thousands of people go to see the official bonfire lit. Everyone buys a large candle, and holds it up, the thousands of candles twinkling in the darkness is a beautiful sight. My camera-phone really doesn't do it justice!!
More pictures if you're interested :-)
Niall
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