Closing A Chapter, Yet Still Holding The Key

These last two  weekends have been packin' up our lives at the SIM station on Gesas mountain, and moving 50 km north to Gilgel Beles where the project has located for the past 3 years. My motorcycle trips to Gilgel, nights spent away from home, and the accompanied stressors have caused us more than a few times to question whether or not it would be better for us to relocate as a family to the town of Gilgel. Well, this summer's circumstance provided the boot we needed to get out the door. Despite having some decent rain gear, Travis still hates the increased danger and discomfort of the motorbike commute during rainy season, but more important than that, our American and Canadian friends living with us on the Gesas station will all be gone until September. And so rather than try to justify Andrea's "need" for four days out of every week to single-parent three little ones without any English-speaking friends, we made the easy decision of keeping the family together.

The Gesas community has been good to us: friends, co-laborers, a genuine Gmz community with a group of believers growing in depth of faith, a beautiful area, a house specifically designed for the hot climate, reliable solar power and rain collection water systems, and a view over the valley that we never could get used to. It is sad to close that chapter in our lives, as we know that Gilgel Beles doesn't offer anything that even remotely compares (I'll share more about our new housing in a later post).

The nostalgia deepened a little bit more for us on Saturday when we returned our post office box key in Dibate town (please don’t send any more mail to the Dibate  address). Our new downcountry address is

Travis and Andrea Williamson

c/o Abeselo Janey

Gilgel Beles PO Box 39

Gilgel Beles (Metekel Zone – Rg 6)

ETHIOPIA

In coming back from being in the States for 4 months, we expected some old news to be in our box, but we didn't know quite how old. Check out the date on this envelope post marked in Indianapolis, IN:

 That's right October 4, 2011! Inside we read a very nice note reacting to our THEN recent newsletter which contained news of exciting things happening in the Gesas church while we were awaiting the start of the official translation project. It also encouraged us to enjoy our growing toddler as he was experiencing everything for the first time. Oh my, how much life has happened since those days, and looking back, it's hard not to recognize God's fingerprints of blessing all over it. And this mountain, this home, these co-workers are intimately intertwined in that story along with us. It's sad to see that chapter coming to an end.

But, while we turned in our PO box key, we didn't, nor do we intend to hastily turn in our Gesas keys quite yet. When the rains stop in October, our friends will be back, the roads will again be dry and if we haven't by then settled into a preferred life, we still have the option of moving back to Gesas and picking up where we left off.