The Beginning...

It's a beautiful July evening, and we are driving home from an Amazima benefit, a ministry serving the orphans and poor in Uganda, Africa.  Both of us know what God has just laid on our hearts, but we sit in silence.  Somehow, we both know what the other one is thinking.  Putting fear aside, we finally start talking and digesting what we had heard.  It is at that moment that we know our lives would forever be changed.  Adoption was calling. 

The next few weeks we spent praying and discerning God's will for our lives.  This is not what we planned.  Our life was comfortable.  But...we wanted to be sure; we wanted to be obedient; we wanted to live our lives in accordance to our faith.  Most importantly, we didn't want to miss out on the blessings that He has for our family if we would just believe.

God seemed to use everyone around us.  We weren't suppose to be at the Amazima benefit.  It was my mother-in-law's birthday, and I had already told our table hosts, Jason & Holly, that we wouldn't be able to make it.  I didn't want to ask her to watch our girls on her birthday, but my husband said that he would like to go.  She of course said yes.  Our good friends, Will & Krisit (video on the side), were scheduled to lead our Sunday School class on their adoption journey, but we were scheduled to teach BB's Sunday School class.  As it turns out, we were double booked with another couple, and they insisted on staying, so we got to hear Will & Kristi's story. Right before we were going to tell our family, I was worrying and asked God to show me.  I got my Bible and opened it right to a passage on worrying.  The list goes on and on...

God kept gently saying "yes - adoption".  Now, that we know yes, but where? We had decided that we would be open and allow God to lead us.  There is need all over the world, even right here in the USA, but God kept bringing us to Ethiopia, and we felt totally at peace.  To give you a little education on the orphan crisis, here are just a few facts...

• There are between 147 and 210 MILLION orphans in the world.
• The current US population is approximately 303 million.
• Ethiopia has roughly 4.8 to 6 million orphans.  Basically, if you took all the children in New York, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia - removed their parents - then you would have the number of Ethiopian orphans.
• 1 in 10 children die before their 1st birthday.
• Malnutrition is responsible for more than half of all deaths among children under 5.
• Only 24% of Ethiopians have access to safe drinking water.
• Only 36% of the country is literate.
• Approximately 10% of the population has HIV/AIDS, and the life expectancy is around 55.  (It is 78 in the USA.)

It is hard to wrap my brain around what goes on "outside the bubble" of my life.

With all of this in our mind and on our heart, we forge ahead.  We have selected a wonderful agency, All God's Children, to help us navigate through the process.  (The book, The Strengh of Mercy tells how their agency started.)

Someone asked me the other day, "With so many orphans, how will you know what child to pick?"  I won't, God will.