Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love", which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
-a quote from the character Dr. Iannis, in Louis de Bernieres, Corelli's Mandolin: A Novel
If you have been on facebook or twitter or watched the news the last couple of days I am sure you have heard about Joseph Kony, the LRA and Invisible Children. Kony has actually been around for the last 26 years spreading his horror first in Northern Uganda among the Acholi people and then on to Sudan, the Congo and the Democratic African Republic. If you want resources and information you can go here for a list!
But, all the while this focus is on Kony and trying to catch him, it is easy to lump all of the victims together and not realize their individual stories. The children affected by this war and the ones who are still affected by it have never been nor ever will be invisible to his or her family or village. War Dance is a beautiful documentary film about three Acholi children ( Rose, Dominic, and Nancy who have experienced the war first hand) who live in Patongo ( a refugee camp in Northern Uganda) who along with their school, work tirelessly to win the biggest event of the year in Uganda. The National Music Competition involves over 20,000 schools in UG but only one school goes home with the prize. It is incredibly humbling to watch and listen to them tell their stories. Despite the odds these children rebuild their lives and show what can truly be achieved in the face of unspeakable trajedy. If you want to help children like Rose, Dominic and Nancy World Vision has a center in Gulu, Uganda.
Two weeks from today we will be on our way! Packing is officially underway. I feel good at this point about my list. We will see how I feel next week at this time! :)
I wanted to share about a ministry. Sole Hope is based in Asheville, NC. It was founded by Dru and Asher Collie. At this time the ministry is focused on three locations Asheville, NC, Uganda, and Zambia. They are teaching folks in each of those locations the trade of shoe making. Their mission is to offer hope to widows, orphans and others within impoverished and forgotten communities around the world by teaching the simple trade of shoemaking that provides jobs and shoes for those in need. How awesome is that! Sole Hope is competing for a grant right now that is offered by Cultivate Wines. The non profit with the most votes wins $50,000. Sole Hope would like to use the $50,00 to construct a building in Ndola, Zambia to serve the community there. This building would store sewing machines, materials, and finished shoes as well as provide the space needed to teach shoemaking and sanitation classes. All they need from us is to vote. You can vote once a day up until March 31st. Will you help them? You can go here and vote! This is so easy for us but will make a huge difference in the lives of so many!
During this season of Lent, we are reading A Place at the Table: 40 Days of Solidarity with the Poor by Chris Seay. Each day at the end of the reading Seay has a country to pray for and a specific peson/family to pray for in that third world country. I haven't been able to make it through a day yet without getting emotional. How could I read about a boy in Brazil named Mateus who drinks weak coffee mixed with a little flour each morning because it's all he has to stave off his hunger for a few hours, and not be smacked in the face by the fact that I have so much? I have so much that I get choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I am never hungry unless I choose to be! But yet how do I live? I live to be comfortable...we as Americans live to be comfortable... our churches live to be comfortable. How do we as Christ followers expect to change the world if we are so self focused that we can't get past our own comfort? How can we look at ourselves in the mirror when we will happily spend so much on ourselves or raise millions of dollars to build our churches when kids like Mateus live the way he does? Francis Chan hits the nail on the head in this sermon clip and challenges me to live for eternity.
Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
The countdown has started. We will be leaving three weeks from today! This will be the first of two trips that we take to UG to complete the adoption. On this first trip we will appear before the court. We will then travel home and wait to hear the ruling from the judge. Other families with our agency have traveled for the 2nd trip about a month to six weeks later. It will be a quick turn around for us but we welcome it! Honestly it is still very surreal to us. We have booked tickets, made reservations, started to pack, started to gather donations for AFC and filled our malaria and antibiotic prescriptions but it is still hard to believe that it is going to happen. After looking at a picture of J for the last 16 months we are going to actually be able to meet him!
While this is exciting for us and we have been waiting for this day for so long...it is not quite the same for J. He will be meeting us for the first time and he hasn't been staring at our photo for over a year like we have with him. Please pray for all of us as we meet for the first time. We honestly have it easy...he is coming into our world, we don't have to give up all that is familiar to us but he will have to do that. Adoption is beautiful and it is an earthly picture of God's redemptive work in our lives but nevertheless it is born out of loss. Please pray for J as this transition begins. Pray for the nannies who work so tirelessly at his orphanage taking such good care of the kiddos who will soon be saying goodbye to him. Pray for our family and for both of the trips that we will be taking to bring him home! We are so thankful for the prayers that have already been offered up on behalf of our family! You are all a blessing to us!
We have a court date! March 27th!Wow after all this time of waiting it is finally here and we are so excited and overwhelmed at the same time!! Little boy we are coming!! Please keep praying!
"Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it! -E. Lutzer
I follow Christ and try to bring him glory in what I do. I am fallen and imperfect and so thankful for Christ who died for my sins. This blog is just a way to share how our family is trying to grow deep roots in God.
