everyday they hug

and shake hands

and say welcome

whether we are coming in or going out

they love us

and we love them

our hilton hearts

-jd

today we are shooting b roll all day (( footage to go over interviews and stuff… ))

the crew is starting to feel the burn, run downness… and i think me more than the rest…

headaches bodyaches difficulty breathing…etc.

please pray for us today.

pray we get all the footage we need

pray we don’t get shot while getting it

pray for our heath – pray against sickness

thank you all

love you

_andrw

regarding john’s previous post

these are the friends we love so much

who hang outside of our hotel room

esp. yared and john.

too much for words.

-

andrw

i love you all

i have like 10 minutes of internet

and this is just to say THANK YOU for praying

please keep praying for us

shooting and producing a documentary in this culture is semi difficult and is presenting various difficulties — but God is so good and answering SO many prayers.

pray for our production

pray for our flight home that needs to go through SUDAN which is currently at war and won’t allow us to fly through

thank you thank you

pray for our heath as well

love you all

this is john.  pray for john.  pray that john is one day a pillar in the church. pray that JOhn one day loves Jesus with all his heart and mind and soul and alkjfhajkhf oh man I LOVE JOHN so much. i pray for john. please join me. john lives around the hotel and we hang out with him every spare second we have.

P.S. 224 days till christmas!!!

 _andrw

others are hanging out with their parent’s who just got in

and drew and i are going to review the finished script for the first time and start to plan out the look of this video.

if you think to. pray for these things:

shooting here in addis is very difficult. there are many ‘no photography’ signs. and since we’ve arrived here to africa we’ve noticed that they do not care for photography much at all… and don’t like it when we do.

so please pray for favour and peace when we shoot.

pray for our equipment - that we get it all today.

pray for the safety of our equipment (( and us )) as we shoot on the streets and other places…

pray for creativity and logistics as i review the final script and try to visualize this video. from pen to the screen.

thank you guys.

andrw louis gallo

view

arithmetik

_

from, andrw

isn’t life bizarre?  one moment we can be sitting outside a frankfurt restaurant conversing for an hour and a half with four european businessmen on the existence of God and the implications of such topics.  the next day we are sitting in a nice hotel in the middle of an african city filled with extreme poverty.  stepping out of the gates, the contrast hit us forcefully as a wave of kids hit us out of nowhere.  four or five of them quickly began talking with us, some of them laying out their stories, their need for money for school, etc.  expecting this tsunami, i had purposefully emptied my pockets of money before i left the hotel grounds, understanding the impossibility of meeting the overwhelming need, and in an effort to, at least for today, be able to explore and interact with the people freely, with the ability to say, “all i have is my paper and pen and my harmonica.”  i just wanted to talk with and maybe pray for people.  my little buddy derege tried to sell me a map as soon as he approached me.  they have a fantastic drive to work and earn a living, but so little opportunity.  dawit (amharic for david) approached us and walked with us too.  he was probably in his 20s, and his english was excellent.  when i asked what his job was, he showed me his little license card and indicated he was a tour guide.  i told him we just wanted to walk around, but by the end of the day, he had dispelled several confusing situations and led us around addis so kindly and skillfully that we were happy to give him a few hundred birr (maybe 30 dollars) and thank him for being so kind to us.  during the day, we visited the grounds of an orthodox monastery, where people kissed the gates and kneeled on the earth bowing towards the church, crossing themselves religiously.  we had ethiopian coffee (bunna) on the side of the road, bought the kids sodas, and talked with the locals.  andrew wanted to buy his buddy yared some shoes to replace the ones which were falling off his feet.  this idea morphed into a walk to the small weekend market where drew, andrew, and david bought shoes for the five kids who had been with us for the past couple hours.  i think the kids were really blessed by receiving these things that they hadn’t even asked for.  an old man struck up a conversation with me and i was able to briefly talk with him about his life and language, and pray for him.

this country has so much religion, so much spirituality, though many of them are perhaps so very confused about the doctrines of the Word and the implications of the gospel.  there is also a large amount of satanic darkness in this country, and i think i’ll have more to say about that later in the week.

we took a picture at the end of the day and gathered the kids in a big huddle to pray for them.

this evening, andrew and i got some amharic lessons from our bellhop friend yoseph.

i am praying for discernment.  being among so much poverty, need, and spiritual darkness introduces the need to distinguish between evil and good, and to discern which needs God is calling me to meet and which people he wants me to minister to.  it is simply impossible to do it all.  andrew and i talked about it tonight.  i am asking for more discernment, and that God would lead us by his Spirit.  

please also pray for us as we still await the release of our cameras and lights.  they are at the airport.  we didn’t have sufficient paperwork to get them through customs, due to some misunderstandings with the ethiopian embassy in washington.  this morning carolyn and i went with wondy to a government agency downtown and by God’s providence received clear direction from one of the authorities about what we have to do.  the process is clear, but we need God’s grace if all the pieces are going to fall into place so that we can get our equipment out by monday.  it pushes our agenda back a little, but we have some space worked into the schedule.  please pray for God’s will to be done, and that we would get the cameras out by monday.  

andrew added some pictures he took to my flickr here.

love to all,

john david

germany was a hot tub compared to what we stepped into after we stepped off that plane…

i mean like. seriously. ok so today we all slept in. cause we were so exhausted well. okay lemme start over.

got into the ethiopian airport last night… starting walking out the doors and got stopped.  they wanted to scan all of our baggage… our 3 carts full of baggage and equiptment… so we starting the scanning process… then they wanted to see all of our carnet stuff… so anyway – we stepped back and let carolyn do her thing…  it turns out. ethiopia was not going to budge one inch. and we weren’t coming in with our equiptment. we needed to store it at the airport until we got a letter that documents that our government recognizes that we are not exporting this stuff… but just coming in to shoot a friendly documentary… and all this crazy confusing stuff.  basically our dude at the ethiopian embassy told us way wrong info and we’re not shooting anything untill we get this letter to their people.  so.  we’re on hold until at LEAST monday.

please pray for this.  they are holding our equiptment at the airport. and this is pretty sketchy. we’re all safe at our hotel. but please pray that on monday we will get our equipment and start shooting…  its holding up our production schedule. and obviously. time is money. and production schedules are tight.  but we are trusting in God.  so today we got to rest and recooperate from germany, all day flights, culture shock… and all that stuff.

today after we all assembled (( sans carolyn )) around 2pm to have some ethiopean cusine here at the hotel we set out just to walk around addis.  after stepping out of our hotel grounds — less than 15 seconds went by before we were bombarded with children.  one came over to me, another to john david — one to drew and one to david. we walked and talked with them for a while.  then a older (( 23-27 )) ethiopean dude came over to us and started hanging out with us… his name was david.  he took us all around (( and all of our newly aquired children friends )) addis and we walked and talked and laughed and o man… it was crazy.

here are some photos…

love,

andrw

hi i’m andrew

here in the hills

i need to take my pills

or else i might loose breath

or loose sight

or take flight too high

i’m very high

but not enough to die

i’ll be home soon

just wait for us

things are well

all is well

all will be well

and we’ll be home soon enough

here in the hills

i take my fil

of little child by marty

and songs by the same crowd

and no joke

i can barely breathe

john david is playing the harmonica behind me

as i listen to little child by m a t p

and it goes so well

duke, chris, p lew – it goes so well.

ok till later on

228 days till christmas!!!!!!!!