Week Six

We are officially in week six of waiting...God has been so good to our family by keeping us busier than we have ever been during this time. We have been blessed with extra work hours, relatives visiting, gardens to plant, and good friends to go to the mountains with. Even at week six, I still have to remind myself that we are actually in waiting. We could actually get "the call" any day now. They could know who our daughter could be right now. I do love just knowing that God knows how this whole thing is going to work out and when it will actually happen. One of my favorite Caedmon's Call song, Table For Two just says it so well:

And You know the plans that You have for me And You can't plan the end and not plan the means And so I suppose I just need some peace Just to get me to sleep.

Yay Jody and Andy!

We are so excited for the Lander's family who has finally gotten the Visas for their two adorable twins from Sierra Leone. We can't wait for you guys to go get Zeke and Kora! Praise God!

Our thoughts and prayers are with Stephen Curtis Chapman and his family...

we are so sorry for your loss and this tragic accident.

Hunger::

hun-ger (hnggr) n. 1. a. A strong desire or need for food. b. The discomfort, weakness, or pain caused by a prolonged lack of food. 2. A strong desire or craving: a hunger for affection.

I have never been hungry. I have never wondered where my next meal will come from or if a drought will ruin my family's crops. I have never had to beg for food. I have never been hungry....but there are so many in the world who are hungry each and every day. Did you know that it is estimated that over one billion people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition (statistic form The Hunger Site)? Did you know that approximately 24,000 people die each day from hunger related causes and three fourths of those are children under the age of five?

These are statistics I cannot even begin to understand...but I have to grasp them somehow.

I got on the computer this afternoon to the BBC News page. I love the BBC because I can hop on their site and get instant information on things going on in Africa, specifically Ethiopia. This afternoon I stumbled across this article and it just made my heart hurt so badly for my child-to-be's home country. The article was about how UNICEF is saying that 60,000 children in two regions in Ethiopia are going to require food aid for survival. Approximately 147 million dollars is needed to help Ethiopia recover from drought, poor rainy season, and the high price of food. Without this help, the situation looks bleak.

So, yes, I live in a society where hunger is something that is seen only behind closed doors. Hunger does happen in the United States, but we do not openly see hunger on the streets. We do not see the children with the potbellies, and bones sticking out. Hunger is such a silent disease, but unlike cancer, we know the cure for it. Hunger is something that we have not experienced and will not fully understand unless we see it first hand and decide to make a difference. What can we do to help? Here are a list of a few sites dedicated to helping flight hunger around the world. Please visit these site

First Food Bank - a great list of 40 ways to fight hunger
Action Against Hunger - lots of great info about hunger around the world
Free Rice - Play a simple vocab game and grains of rice are donated.
World Food Programme - Updates on hunger issues around the world.

Week Four

Week four is officially over....Bring on week number 5!

This week, I was introduced to the Red Letters Campaign...this is a really cool site that helps people fight extreme poverty, preventable desiese, and connect orphans with loving families. They partner with all sorts of amazing organizations. Their goal is to help people who have a passion for helping others. Whether you passion is for making sure others have clean drinking water, or someone who has a passion for Africa, or South America, or someone who has the desire to help those who are starving, RLC wants to help by connecting you with organizations that are making a true difference. This is also a place to be able to network with others who desire to see change and are doing something about it! Please look at their website! For all you adoption bloggers, you can get on their Adoption Journal Page by simply emailing them your information and a picture.

Visiting RLC also introduced me to this book. Red Letters is a book all about being Jesus' hands and feet in a hungry and hurting world. It is a call to take what Jesus told us to do (feed the hungry, love others, care for orphans and widows) and radically change the world. Though I have not actually read this book yet, I am so encouraged by the author and am energized to try to do more to simply love others. This book is now on my list of Summer Reads...can't wait to get to it!

The Lander's family is amazing...they have been in the process of adopting two-year-old twins, Zeke and Kora from Sierra Leone, you must visit their adoption blog. They are currently having a silent auction to help raise funds to bring their babies home! Please visit their family blog and check out the beautiful bags and the goodies that are inside them...this is an amazing cause and a very amazing family.

Week Three

Well, Week Three was filled with lots and lots of time spent outdoors. We went to the zoo, weeded and planted part of our garden...just enjoyed the warm weather. We also had our first thunder storm of the year. I love this time of year because I love to watch everything grow. It is just so amazing that you plant a seed and in a few days, you have this little sprout and a few weeks after that you have some flowers or lettuce or corn.
I also found this article to be really interesting. I love running and I love that running is such a big deal in Ethiopia...they are just so fast.

Week 2

This last week has flown by...I can't believe that tomorrow we have been "waiting" for two weeks. I do have to say that I am still not quite used to being in the waiting period...We are only in the second week, but it still feels so strange and unreal. I am just waiting to find a list somewhere of all the documents we still need to get...or get an email from Natalie saying that we are actually missing a very important document. I keep feeling like we need to be filling out some kind of paperwork. I am a "do-er" by nature. I thrive on doing my part to help finish a project and now it is completely out of my hands. I have to keep reminding myself that we are actually waiting now and I don't have anymore paper work to fill out...its just such a very strange feeling..I know there is so very much we still need to do...I have the lists to prove that we have a ton to do. We are starting to slowly dive into researching all the travel stuff that we need to and I am just getting so excited to go. We have decided to bring our daughter with us when we travel...I am busy finding ideas to keep a by-then, three-year-old busy on the plane...we are also hoping that my parents will be able to travel with us and that will help out a ton.
The last two weeks have gone by so quickly...I can only hope and pray that the rest of the time will go by as fast!!!