Selam

How does an 11 year old boy see Ethiopia? Check out this video he made about his favorite place on earth. Click here.

Waiting 7 Months

How to handle the wait?

1. Get a dog like Brady. That's like having two children with A.D.H.D.
2. Eat ice cream
3. Renovate the dinning room. Bye Bye wall of mirrors.
4. Still no referral--Renovate the kitchen.
5. Install new windows throughout the house.
6. Call your social worker for no apparent reason. You'll find you can get rather crafty with devising reasons.
7. Gather all the monthly newsletters with referrals and times waited. Punch the numbers into excel to calculate the average wait time for your referral based on previous referrals. If you don't like what you see--drive yourself crazy with all the "what ifs."
8. Call your home phone several times a day to insure the line IS still working.
9. Call or e-mail program coordinators repeatedly. Secretly hoping if you're a pain in the neck they'll push you along to get you out of their hair. No laughing, how do you think I graduated High School.
10. Use bi-weekly call-ins and monthly newsletters as targets. Just focus on making it to the next target.
11. Imagine every possible scenario of who in the program is waiting for what. Compared to what children come into the orphanage and what our requirements are. All of which no one has any idea about. So you can see this is time well spent.
12. Scour all adoption message boards.
13. Brutally hunt out every blog that has anything to do with Ethiopia.
14. Compare other agency's # of referrals to yours and second guess your decision.
15. Periodically call up a few compassionate friends in your life and whine or cry or both at the same time.
16. Still no referral= Eat more ice cream.

H2O

Water

Can't live with it.

Can't live without it.

Can you imagine having to walk one hour to the nearest pond to retrieve water for your family? Now imagine you know the very water you're about to give your husband, children and parents has mud, worms, or human and animal waste. That's the situation for about 1.1 billion people in the world today. Its estimated 5 million people die every year because of water-related illnesses.

I've partnered with World Vision for years now. I just received their summer news magazine. It's loaded with facts about how water or lack of effects our neighbors. Here are some amazing statistics.

Can't live with it.

The millionaires club no-one wants to join.

• 1 Million: Number of children killed by malaria each year
• 1.6 Million: Child deaths due to diarrhea each year
• 6 Million: People blind today due to trachoma
• 12 Million: People affected by typhoid fever each year
• 400 Million: School-age children infected with parasitic worms.
• 443 Million: School days missed a year because of diseases such as diarrhea and parasitic infections. Equivalent to an entire school year for all 7 year old in Ethiopia

Source: World Vision Summer 2007 & UNESCO

Water-Borne Diseases

Cause: Drinking water contaminated by human, animal, or chemical waste.

Examples: Diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, polio, hepatitis A

Water-Related Diseases

Cause: Being bitten by insects (mosquitoes or flies) that feed or breed in water

Examples: Malaria, dengue fever, river blindness

Water-Based Diseases

Cause: Ingesting organisms that spend part of their life cycle in water

Examples: Guinea worm, bilharzia

Water-Scarce Diseases

Cause: Having poor hygiene or washing with contaminated water

Examples: scabies, trachoma, lice

Guinea worm- When people drink water from a stagnant pond they may be ingesting microscopic larvae. This parasite lives inside the body for about one year, turning into a spaghetti-like worm. Then it escapes from the inside by puncturing the skin. Okay if this doesn't sound bad enough, it can take up to three months for the worm to emerge from the body.

Can't live without it.

Countries where less than half of the population have sustainable access to clean water:

Niger=46%

Democratic Republic of Congo=46%

Mozambique=43%

Chad=42%

Cambodia=41%

Papua New Guinea=39%

Ethiopia=22%

Source: Human Development Report 2006

Remember when your mother would try to cajole you into eating all of your dinner by saying, "You should eat those peas. There are children in Africa starving." Was it just me but didn't you think, "how was my eating green squishy peas going to help them?"

I've recently been told I'm very competitive. Yes I like to win. That's why this problem with water touches me. Its a battle we can win.

Did you know?

When a community gains access to clean water, its child mortality rate drops by half. (United Nations Millennium Campaign)

"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold

water to one of these little ones because

he is my disciple, I tell you the truth,

he will certainly not lose his reward."

-Matthew 10:42

The cost to bring clean, safe water to a community is roughly $2 per person per year-that's less than a penny a day.

Quote from Richard Stearns: World Vision Summer 2006

The world spends $100 billion a year on bottled water-a surprising statistic because most people who buy it usually have high-quality water piped to their homes. Meanwhile, an investment of a mere $30 billion a year would halve the number of people who have no access to clean water by 2015.

Source: Earth Policy Institute

No me eating peas will not stop the children in Africa from starving. Me drinking the clean water piped into my house and donating the money I would've used to buy bottled water will help to provide clean water to my neighbors.

There was another time God's people were thirsty and God answered prayer.

"The Lord answered Moses, 'Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.' So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel."

Exodus 16:5-6

Super Man & Wonder Woman

We have received all of our vaccinations for our travel to Ethiopia. We feel like Super Man & Wonder Woman, ready to take on anything.

Here's our breakdown.

Rick

Hepatitis A/B Combo

Typhoid VI

Polio

Meningococcal

Yellow Fever

TDaP

MMR (Measeles, mumps, ruffella)

Kateri

Hepatitis A/B Combo

Yellow Fever

TDaP

MMR (measles, mumps, rubella)

Typhoid VI

Polio

Meningococcal

Vaccination Grand Total= $1,447.00 (minus we each need one additional shot from the Hep. A/B series)

Ability to travel to Ethiopia to meet our children=priceless.

Program Update 4 siblings

No movement, its been the same date for a couple of months. I went back and looked at the referrals. There haven't been many sibling referrals with one child being an infant. Do we continue to hold out for one infant and one under four or do we change our request? If we don't receive a referral by July we most likely won't be able to travel until October or November because the courts in Ethiopia close for 6 weeks around September.

Where's the magic eight ball when you need it?

Who Made Me?

"There is no path that does not lead to a home."

TONGA PROVERB

I was in one of my favorite stores, Job Lot, yesterday and picked up this book. I had never realized how hard it was to find books, art or dolls that featured African Americans. Never mind trying to find items that show white parents with black children. So when I see these types of items I pick them up.

This book is about a girl trying to find the answer to the question, "Who Made Me?" in the African bush. She asks the same question to different animals. Their answer ties her creator to someone like them and they share their gift that resembles their creator. The book never really answers the question. What it does do is open the door to discussion.

Its a big question. First we know what God says in Genesis 1:27

"So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."

First we'll explain God created Nemo & Nema. They have birth parents and adoptive parents who both love them very much. We are much more than physical beings. The experiences throughout life make us who we are too.

Our ancestors are a large part of who we are. I believe they contribute both by nature and nurture. The characteristics that we have that resemble our ancestors are the nurture part of who we are. Who hasn't had the experience when they start saying things that their parents said while they were growing up. One of my first experiences happened when I managed a Bess Eaton. I said, "Why can't people put things back where they found them?" Thanks Dad :0) My brothers and sisters tell me I'm like my mother. For good or bad our children will model our behaviors.

Nemo & Nema will have biological ancestors in Ethiopia. We may or may not know anything about their biological ancestors. Not knowing one's biological history isn't a foreign concept only applying to adopted persons. Slaves brought to North America after a few generations also lost their biological ancestral history. I pray we are able to learn about Nemo & Nema's biological family. We'll share and celebrate their birth culture. Together we'll learn about Ethiopia.

The above quote, "There is no path that does not lead to a home." was in the book. At first I didn't really believe it. Then I read 2 Corinthians 5:1 "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." Then I realized it is true. We're all on paths. We all will live eternally. In the end it is rather simple. Our paths lead us to one of two eternal homes.

Adoption story

The blog Leave It To Avery has recently posted their adoption story. It really captures their story and I wanted to share with all. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Avery and Heather thank you for sharing your story with us. I pray God continues to bless you and your family. To see their story click here.