OUR PLANS MULTIPLIED: Awesome Ministry

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.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Awesome Ministry

A family that was adopting and staying in the guest house with us was friends with an American family that is running an awesome orphan prevention ministry in Addis Ababa. We were blessed with the opportunity to go and see it in action. The ministry is called Embracing Hope Ethiopia (www.EmbracingHopeEthiopia.com) and it is an orphan prevention ministry for young moms in the Korah slums area. They run a free day-care for young moms that would otherwise have to place their babies in orphanages to survive day to day. The babies were receiving good care during the day as well as food help for the mothers as long as they worked a job and did not engage in begging or prostitution. In many cases, the moms are now earning less day to day, but they are able to hold their heads high and receive the support they need to raise their children. The current day care had about 65 babies and a second one was opening the week we were there. Here's the amazing statistic - they are turning away over 1,000 moms a year! When we walked out of the compound, there was a mom begging with three small children, the middle one totally naked. It was heart-breaking and yet we are unable to give them help due to the common problem of other white families not being able to work in the area without being mobbed.

Here we are with the director learning about the ministry.

Some of the Moms with young, breast-feeding infants make jewelry right at the compound. I bought the jewelry they made that day if you are interested.

This was the roof of the house where they dry the babies diapers and clothes.

The roof also over-looks the Korah dump. If you have never seen the Korah dump video on Youtube, I encourage you to take a few minutes and watch it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4pgQvgdNqs

We spent some time in the baby room.

The 2, 3 and 4 year olds were napping, but we peaked at them lined up on the floor sleeping.

While I am obviously pro-adoption, in the land of 5 million orphans, we need to enable the ones that have parents to raise their children and reserve adoption for the orphans. I think that is the key to the orphan crisis.