Day 8: It must have been 2010 or so…Tim was working 80+ hours a week in residency, and I worked full-time from home. We had been talking about doing a research year in Ethiopia soon, and I was trying to wrap my head around what that might be like. I remember sitting at my desk the day I found Paul and Becca Gray’s blog. Life-changer, right there. I had been googling looking for blogs of people in Ethiopia, and I came upon theirs—a surgeon working with PAACS in Ethiopia with his wife and kids. WHAT?!? The exact life we were imagining for ourselves down the road. Reading their blog gave me so much insight into what our life might be like, and hope that it could actually happen one day. 

When we went to Ethiopia in 2012 and visited Soddo Christian Hospital for the first time, I was SO nervous because I had read literally everything on the Gray’s blog and felt like I knew everything about them, but was going to meet them in real life for the first time. I felt like such a stalker, but thankfully they weren’t freaked out and a beautiful friendship began. 

Tim had read lots of missionary biographies, but missionary blogs can be like real-time missionary biographies. God used their blog and their real-life friendship to inspire us and form so many of our ideas and plans about serving in Ethiopia. So thankful. #31daysofcalling #lovesinethiopia