Inside the church

The inside of the churches was often quite beautiful. Here, the priest holds the Lalibela cross in his right hand and a staff in his left hand, with a picture of Jesus to the right. Isn't he nicely dressed, though! You might be surprised to see sunglasses inside the dark church. There are a lot of tourists visiting these churches, and he wears the glasses because of flash cameras. I thought the picture of Jesus quite interesting because we often see pictures of Ethiopian faces, but here is a European version of Jesus.
We spent a lot of time with our shoes off since this was required whenever we entered a church.