The first six hours of my day are intense—a race to get ready for work, prep for meetings, and tackle task after task. Those six hours before noon are some of my most productive.

That’s why it was so astonishing to spend time at a water hole in Ethiopia earlier this month, talking to children and parents who spend the first six hours of their day much differently—just getting water.

At the crack of dawn, with the rising sun as their only source of light, they begin their long journey toward the water source. More than 5,000 people, plus their cattle and donkeys, get water from just five water holes in a place that looks like the Grand Canyon. Baboons peer down from the high limestone cliffs, waiting for humans to leave so they can drink and wash.

I have written much about the need for water in my book—how as many as 5 million people die every year from water-related diseases (see “I Was Thirsty,” pages 135-140). Contaminated water causes deadly diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, and cholera. It’s not enough to say that water is important to people in Africa—water is life. I am passionate about providing clean water for those who don’t have it.

At the water hole in Ethiopia, I felt that I was witnessing more than a wellspring of health issues. I was watching dreams die. For every moment a young girl spends gathering water—including waiting her turn at the water hole, painstakingly extracting it cup by cup, and then trudging back to her village—she isn’t going to school. She isn’t advancing.

To the list of water-related diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, and guinea-worm, I want to add another malaise: water-borne despair. Its consequences are sorrow, irretrievably lost time, and the slow draining of dreams. I saw it all at the water hole.

It’s something to think about as I spend my first six productive hours. In the Pacific Northwest, water is something we take for granted. I cross a lake to get to work, my windshield wipers tapping out a beat in the rain.

What other things do we take for granted? It would probably take more than six hours to list them all.

What do you talk about over a cup of coffee? In Ethiopia, they talk about AIDS.

As you know, I was in Africa earlier this month, with a group that included Christian author and preacher Max Lucado and his family, Women of Faith’s Mary Graham, and Thomas Nelson Publishing CEO Mike Hyatt and his wife, Gail (see Mike and Gail’s beautiful pictures at his site). We all emerged exhausted, mosquito-bitten, and incredibly blessed.

One of our first experiences was a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Women dressed in ceremonial white costumes and beaded jewelry roasted coffee beans until they were shiny and black, ground them, stirred them into a black clay coffee pot, and served the aromatic brew with lots of sugar in tiny china cups. Ethiopians don’t rush their coffee. These ceremonies are a place to linger and talk.

That’s why the Hope and Light Association, a World Vision-supported HIV and AIDS advocacy group in Ethiopia, uses coffee ceremonies to bring people together to talk about the disease—to help communities break the stigma of AIDS.

Metages Legesse, the mother of two sponsored children, lost her husband to AIDS and then found that she, too, was infected with the virus. Sadly, her best friend shunned her. Metages says she wanted to die. Instead, she invited her friend to a coffee ceremony at the Hope and Light Association. Sip after sip, the two women reconnected. Metages still lives with HIV, but now she lives with joy. (Read about how a church in Zambia overcame the stigma of AIDS in my book on pages 235-237.)

At the coffee ceremony, we drank coffee, munched popcorn, and broke bread with hundreds of association members, including HIV-positive children. They welcomed us like family in a room that glowed with candlelight.

Now back in Seattle, I’m as busy as ever, starting the morning rush with coffee I gulp quickly so that I can get on with the business of the day. But I admonish myself to stop and smell the coffee—and reflect on the transformation I saw in Ethiopia.

I met so many amazing people I want you to know. I’ll share more stories in the coming weeks, and soon I’ll add a photo slideshow of my trip to the Gallery section of this site.

And, I enjoyed reading last week’s comments from Mike and Anne who both wrote about coming face-to-face with people in poverty and how that affected them. I’d love to hear from more of you. Together, perhaps, we can create an online coffee ceremony where we linger and share our stories. Let’s talk.

I’m home from Ethiopia, where as predicted, connectivity wasn’t the easiest. My traveling companions —Max Lucado, Mike Hyatt (CEO of my publisher, Thomas Nelson), and others on the trip did manage to regularly Twitter, however. Find their tweets at Twitter.com under the #wve hashtag. By everyone’s account, it was a great trip. We all thank you so much for your prayers!

Every trip like this—to meet those living in dire poverty—leaves me changed. I feel a combination of being outside my comfort zone and yet exactly placed in God’s will. I’m fired up to help families in Ethiopia and elsewhere to reach their full potential. I know their names. I see their faces. It’s personal.

But now I’ll get back into my daily life, and Ethiopia’s vibrant memories likely will fade. As I wrote in chapter 9 (page 109) of my book: “I drift back inside my safe and protected world.” I know my traveling companions will struggle with this as well. Mike wrote in a Twitter post during his return home: “I pray that I won’t be sucked back into the status quo.”

When God blesses us with significant—even life-changing-experiences, it’s a challenge to keep the flame of urgency burning over time. How do we build on these experiences to accomplish great things for God?

Max Lucado and Mike Hyatt are well positioned to influence millions of people. My prayer for them, and for the whole team, is that we retain the urgency of those convicting moments in Ethiopia, when the needs were so clear and our hopes so high. As I wrote in chapter 9, may we continue to see every suffering child as our child.

After some sleep and processing, I’ll share more from Ethiopia. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you. After coming face-to-face with people in poverty and need —anywhere in the world, even in your own city —how did it change you, and how do you sustain your passion?

This week I’ll be in Ethiopia, and I will soon meet up with my friend and fellow author, Max Lucado. It’s his first trip there, and he’s gearing up to write a book scheduled for publication in 2010.  He tells me that year will mark his 25th in book publishing, and to celebrate, he plans to partner in an even bigger way with World Vision. While we’re in Ethiopia, we will visit children and families assisted by World Vision.

God has powerfully used the moments I’ve spent with people in their humble homes around the globe, listening to their stories. My heart was broken the first time I met one of the real “poorest of the poor” (read about my encounter with Richard in the prologue, pages 7-11). My prayer for Max in the days ahead is that he will experience a similar life-changing encounter.

I’m told that connectivity in Ethiopia is not dependable, but when or if possible, I will try to post entries, so that you can be among the first to hear what Max and I are up to.

In the meantime, would you please pray for me, Max, our wives, family members, and the others traveling with us, as well as our Ethiopian hosts? Pray for our health and safety. Most of all, pray that our hearts remain wide open to God’s leading-even when we’re hot, jet-lagged, or intestinally uncomfortable.