Monday, September 21, 2009

Child Ambassador


I wanted to take a moment to talk about a new "mission" In my life. As many of you already know, Eric, Juli, and I had the life changing opportunity to meet and spend the day with our World Vision Sponsor child Habtamu. As a family, we had been supporting Habtamu and his family monthly as well as praying for him constantly for some time. So, we truly had a big place in our hearts for him. We also had been communicating through letters and pictures. Juli even thought we were going to be taking him home with us as another brother. You can view pictures of our day with him if you go back to older posts on this blog.

Meeting him in person was one of the most amazing days of our lives. I think anyone who has had the rare privilege of meeting a sponsor child will tell you they feel the same.

When we came home from Ethiopia, my good friend Sharon gave me a book as a gift called "The Hole in Our Gospel". I have spoken on this blog about it. It was recently written by Richard Stearns, the President of World Vision. This book has changed my life forever. And now Eric is reading it and feeling the same. In fact, I don't think i have spoken to one person who has read it and then said..."oh yeah, it was a nice book i guess."

Too make a long story short, (too late) I have come to the conclusion that there is much to be done in the parts of our World that are suffering. I personally feel that i live in this luxurious world, where I can eat whenever i want, have a multitude of drinks to choose from, and can find contentment in my long day. But this is far from true for millions upon millions of people on the other side of our world. They are starving, thirsty, and sick, and HOPE is a word they cannot even comprehend the definition of.

But, we as a family have helped one boy and his family in their time of need. And the reward to everyone involved has been a thousand fold. Therefore, I have join a group of about 500 people in the U.S. who volunteer for World Vision as Child Ambassadors. What that means is that I have chosen to be a voice for the children suffering in other parts of the world, here in our homeland. I am responsible for finding sponsors for children just like Habtamu who will change the lives of a child and in turn, his family and his village forever. I think basically, I have decided to help to define HOPE for the suffering in a tangible way.

If you would like to know more about the rewarding experience of sponsoring a child through World Vision, let me know! I would love to help you learn more.


Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Photo Shoot...



Well, I have been terrible at blogging lately. I seem to be bad at everything computer related. I think i just have too many kids and pets. Oh well.
Until i get back on the ball, here are some great pics of the kids on the lawn that I took this morning. They came out so great!
Enjoy!