OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED

In the beginning, JD adamantly only wanted two children. I thought that four would be perfect. Once we caught God's vision of putting orphans into families, our plan was multiplied by God. We are currently blessed with 12 children; five biological, six adopted and one more waiting in Ethiopia. Our first adoption was from the U.S., the next three were from Liberia, West Africa, and our last two were from Ethiopia. We are supporting our 12th child in Ethiopia after her adoption could not pass court.

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Blog Update

My blog has been neglected this week, as has been my laundry and other home essentials. You know it's bad when Tori whips open her drawer and it's completely empty. I have been working the last few years of having less clothes per child, but that only works if you actually do laundry. To be honest, I actually have done laundry, but none of it has been folded and put away; so a quick dig in the laundry room at least produced a pair of shorts. JD had the crazy idea the other day that we might actually fold the clothes when they came out of the dryer, but that would only work if I enrolled the kids in school - so we are on year 14 of homeschooling and wearing horribly wrinkled clothes. JD presses his own work clothes every morning; I pressed a shirt for him once about 17 years ago and when he saw it, he said, "I thought you were going to press this?" He hasn't asked me to handle the ironing since then. I do, however, cook and complete other traditional home-maker chores, so he doesn't complain.

One of the events of the week is that JD is upgrading a few of the computers. I am not able to upload the pictures that I wanted to accompany this post, however, since I can not find the camera cable. So, I'll give a book update and post my pictures later.

I just finished Red Letters, Living a Faith that Bleeds by Tom Davis and I just started Fields of the Fatherless by the same author. I am excited about reading these since he is one of the speakers that is going to be at the Orphan Summit in November. Here's a very basic idea...To my knowledge, the only thing that the Bible calls true religion is taking care of widows and orphans. Over and over the Bible describes that when we care for the least of these, we are actually doing it to Jesus. Jesus also says that when we care for the least of these, we are his hands and feet. So it's a win, win when we care for orphans; we are representing Jesus and serving Him at the same time. I certainly don't see this combination anywhere else in Scripture. So, how do we grasp that caring for the orphan is not an optional ministry, nor is it something that we need to be "called" to do? It appears to me that if we are Christians, it should be our primary focus.

I'm going to search for some statistics, but I'm sure that in America, we generally spend more on pet food than feeding the orphans and more on video games for our own children than clothing or educating orphans. This just should not be! More on this later...

1 comment:

  1. we are trying to get down to less clothing too. Not easy!

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