Quick Overview

• Hike: Level–Difficult. There are two sections of free climbing. For safety, I recommend asking your guide to bring a harness and ropes, but I have always done it without. One hour climb to the church.
• What I Like: I love how treacherous it is to reach this church and what treasures await you at the top.
• Overall Experience: Top five, I would only recommend this for children over twelve and please request ropes.

You don’t have to be a person of the Orthodox faith to enjoy this deeply spiritual pilgrimage past pastoral farms, up through canyon walls and into the mountains in search of these ancient treasures. The physical act of hiking to these hidden churches mirrors for me the life-long journey of the pilgrimage toward God. It is a unique opportunity to see yourself, away from the busyness of routine and habit, as you climb up into the ancient mysteries that these mountains hold.

Need, I am finding, is one of the greatest gifts in the world. Maybe it is a gift to need redemption, to need grace, to need water, to need God to provide. I have never felt my need as clear as I do here in Mekelle; it’s a combination of the brokenness I have embraced in myself in recent years mixed with the vulnerability of our life here. Away from the familiar, distant from community,  and adapting to the unknown.

Quitting my job last summer made me face my real life, or should I say lack of a real life here in Mekelle.Greg had started a business, he had employees and friends and was getting a hang of the language. It had been tons of work for him, but it was paying off. He was blossoming and I was sinking in to the shadows.

In Ethiopia, the Melse is part two of the Ethiopia wedding celebration. The bride and groom wear the traditional Ethiopian clothes and partake in traditional dancing and food with a smaller group of closer friends and family. The word Melse means, ‘a return,’ and in this case ‘a changed return’. The significance is that the man and woman were recognized as single individuals before, but now they are welcomed as a married couple to the community by the Melse. Our Ethiopian friends and family wanted to welcome us as a married couple to Mekelle as we entered this new chapter of life with a Melse.