We are stuck at home today with a plumber, repairmen, and other workmen here fixing things inside and outside of our house.  They put razor wire on the walls of our compound for security and installed a NEW hot water heater in our bathroom among other things.... We just MIGHT have hot water in our bathroom for the FIRST time!! Yippee!!

Anyway, I decided while I have some time, I would put on a few more random pictures... Timkat, the celebration of Jesus' Baptism was Sunday, January 19th.  They celebrated both Saturday night and Sunday.  Bob took these photos from the 2nd floor of the chapel on Sunday and I took a few close-up  Saturday night as we were leaving the Chapel.  It is actually a much BIGGER celebration than the birth of Jesus Christ!!

You can see the guys in the center rolling out the red carpet

ready to put down the grass in preparation for the priests and

the replica of the ark of the covenant.

Here you can see the priests all dressed in white in the middle

This is the procession as they carry the replica of the ark of

the covenant

This group was singing and chanting as they went down the
street in front of our Chapel Saturday.  (Timkat means "baptism".)

The Ethiopian Orthodox wear traditional clothing
and walk down the street to where the celebration
will take place the night before Timkat. 

Women in traditional clothing

This is our next door neighbor, Selamwit and her daughter in purple,
along with two other neighbor kids, on their way to the
Timkat celebration on Sunday.

We were going home from Church on the 19th
of January (Timkat) and the traffic was backed up.
Notice that cars just went down the other side of the road, 
making THREE extra lanes going northbound!?!?! 
That is VERY common here.... : /  We were STUCK 
while they all tried to force their way back over to the right
 side of the road.

Mmm... We stopped for lunch in Addis on Saturday at the Lime
Tree Restaurant on Bole Rd. for the first time and they had a
REAL grilled chicken sandwich and fries!!

I thought these were very interesting light fixtures
(brown paper bags) in the Lime Tree....

We gave the three 13-14 year olds in our branch 14 chocolate
candies for a birthday treat for our granddaughter,
Cambryn's (Julie's daughter's) 14th birthday, Sunday, January 26th.
The girl holding Cambryn's picture is a pen-pal with Julie's Lauryn.

We never know what we will find in our "front yard"!
This little guy was standing here when we got home from
Church  last Sunday!

I don't think we have put this photo on yet.... The cactus here
is SO tall!! On the way to Awassa we saw "fences" like this of
cactus in squares around homes and around animals! 

I wanted to add photos of our kids and grandkids standing outside
of the NEW Gilbert Temple after attending the Open House but
none of them will upload....?? SO here is a photo I found! 

What a gorgeous temple! It will be dedicated on March 2nd.  We have
four grandkids participating in the Cultural Celebration on Mar. 1st
as well as our Jamie helping with choreography for a group of 2,000 kids!
They said that 12,000 young people in Gilbert will be participating in it!!
We look forward to going inside in 2015, when we get home!