I got this email a few days ago from Rich Lester, he wrote it as he was flying over here. The more I thought about what he wrote the more I realized how easy it is to share his feelings, and I wanted to share it with you..  Rich and his wife Melissa adopted their 4 year old son from the Drawn From Water orphanage two months ago and have ran the American side of our operation since things started.

As I am flying back over to Africa on my 18 hour leg, of course I am surfing the in flight entertainment to see what movies I can watch.  The movie titled “I Am Because We Are” is a documentary that Modonna made about the HIV/AID situation in Malawi.  Of course I like watching anything about Africa but I must say that I was saying to myself “Oh great, what does Madonna have to say about a microwave solution to the issues of Africa.’  So, in my cynicism, I pushed play.

About 25 minutes in, I have pushed pause to write this out.  I don’t yet know what Modonna’s microwave solution is (cynicism continues), but I have found something new else.  Every picture of a little African boy that has been orphaned is squeezing my soul out of my eyes.  I litterally can not handle to watch it.  The reality is that I have grown deeply calloused to pain and suffering over the years.  Only now is God reawakening my heart to see the child behind the image.  I feel my new son in every one of those helpless faces.  How could I have not seen them in their images before.  I find myself embarrassed that I have only seen a “little poor African kid” and not the child that God desperately loves.  I am so glad that loving our son and knowing he has reawakened my heart to these precious children that desperately deserve us (those that call themselves Christians) to see them the way God does.

Let us not grow calloused.  Let us not turn our eyes away from Jesus.

Matthew 25:31-46

Thought I would share this with you today, even for us over here who are seeing the suffering every day on the streets and all around us, it is still easy to become calloused and forget that making even a little difference in the lives of a child is worth it.

Levi

Sorry for not writing the past week, things have been swirling about us and we have not had time to catch up on here. We had a school picked out for the kids but then found another one that seems to be quite a bit more suited to their specific needs so we have been working on getting them registered and ready to start in a few weeks. Thankfully we were able to find a very good school in town called Children’s Home Academy that has done a very good job of building an incredible school in a place where good schooling is hard to find. We were particularly excited to see that they have classes in both Amharic and English so the kids will be able to learn both languages as they grow up. English plays a major part in this country and will be a valuable tool for these kids to have.

We are hoping that things will calm down here in the future and we will not have to make so many trips to the hospital and back, its not been anything major lately but a lot of ear infections and small sicknesses.

The kitchen has been a project and a half! Its not easy to get things set up to cook for this many people all the time. We finally have a good countertop to cook on and are getting to where its easier for the cook to make meals.  It’s wonderful to see the place coming alive and the kids settling in more, it was a major adjustment for them to move up here and be with new nannies in a new place they had never been before, but slowly you can feel the mood changing, the kids are settling in and its starting to feel more like a home.

We have a few people heading south today and they will be spending some time out in the tribes, Lale says that there is a possibility that one of the newborn babies we have been hearing of will be born and hopefully able to come into our orphanage.  We are praying that things work out and these babies we are told we will get are able to be rescued.

Levi

First of all I need to say thank you to everyone who has been donating to help us meet this months budget, we are starting to get a lot closer to making it and so thankful that we do not have to lay off nannies to make ends meet.  Thank you all for your generous support, we are truly humbled and in awe every time someone steps up like this.

This past week we have been going all around town trying to pick out a good school, its a lot like picking school for your own kids, you know that feeling where you walk into a school and immediately start to look around for dangers or reasons why you might not trust the place… Its amazing how our feelings for these kids have grown and how providing for them has become almost a part of us, we can do nothing without thinking of how it affects the kids and what they might want, or how we can help them be able to learn and get ahead in life. We found one school that looks very good, also as a big bonus they teach english which is a very important skill to have over here and they seem to have very good teachers.  The kids are jumping out of their skin ready to go to school, they ask about it every day and are getting antsy to get out of the compound more.

Kotsa

We have this little boy who is the cutest little thing ever, his is six years old and just has a very sweet and kind heart.  He is one of the newer kids who came to us earlier this year and has adjusted well. When he first came we all though that he did not like us, he would always squint his eyes at us and wrinkle up his forehead, whenever we went to hug him he would look at our hands like they were going to attack him. At first we backed off and gave him some space, but later on we started to realize that he just has really bad eyesight, he can literally hardly see us coming for him and is scared. Its was so sad when we finally realized what was going on, he tries to play ball with the other kids but every time the ball comes at him he runs a totally different direction thinking he is going to catch the ball. Is super sad but kind of cute to watch him try and play.

This past week we took him into the eye doctor and tried to get his eyes tested for glasses, but he just sat there staring at the equipment and would not say a word to the doctor… So we are going to try this again and hopefully because he has been there before he might warm up to the doctor.  We are praying that he loosens up and helps us make this happen for him. I can not imagine how happy he is going to be when he realizes that there is so much more to see in this world than he sees now.

On another note, Abre the little boy who is living with us is doing very good, he is improving every day and seems to trust us now. And big bonus, he sleeps at night now! And now I know something I always wondered before…. 5 kids is really not that much harder than 4.

Levi

Sorry we did not post about Yosef again yesterday, this week has been a tough one on our family. It seems that everything went full throttle a few weeks ago and has not slowed down, its after 7 pm right now and we have all been working since before 6 this morning. Whoa!!! Needing some rest and peace around here. Just have not found a second to sit down all day and update on here.

Yosef is doing good, he went into surgery yesterday at about 2 and was done in less than fifteen minutes.  The doctor installed a drain hose in his chest so the infection can ooze out instead of staying in his chest. The really sad part is the hospital would not give him pain killers because he is only a month old, so he had to just bear it while his chest was cut into and the tube was installed.  I am cringing just thinking about how bad that must have felt. The doctor did not seem worried, he thought the antibiotics would catch up with the infection soon, we are just praying that its sooner than later.

Thanks to everyone who is praying for him.

Another thing I want to mention but have been hesitant to….  I am always scared that people will stop reading the blog if we talk to much about the needs over here but we just have no other connection with the folks back home, and all we can do is put it all out there and pray that God gives you all grace to stay with us.  I feel real awkward every time I bring it up, but I just have to get over it, so here goes..

We just went through the incoming money for this month in preparation to send over the wire for September, and for some reason we are almost 5000 dollars behind meeting our budget this month, the incoming donations are just way behind where they normally are.  We have been in scary situations before but this is the closest we have ever come to not having money for the basic needs of the orphanage. Its amazing how fast money goes when you have this many kids to care for, it seems we don’t go more than a week without something coming up that goes outside the budget, this past month it seems was medical emergency month. Also we did the push earlier in the month to pay for the orphanage move and got that covered super fast, its possible that people donated towards that instead of doing a general donation. Either way its always uneasy to not know where the money will come from this close to the first of the month.  We are praying that God will come through at the last hour like he always does.

Thanks for sticking with us, you have no idea how truly grateful we are.

Levi and Jessie

Little Yosef who came to live with us only a few weeks ago is having a serious problem today and we want to ask you to pray.  At about 10 days old he developed a clogged milk duct which apparently is fairly common in newborns because of the mothers hormones being left in their bodies. Anyhow its now become a serious infection in his chest and he is headed into surgery.  We will keep you posted as we know more, but for now Emily is going to stay with him at the hospital while we wait and see how things turn out.

Levi