So I am way behind with my updates. So the next few post will be condensed versions of our last month taken from various emails I have sent to people:

4/12 (This is where I really started to get behind because I was in culture shock) I spent the weekend reading Melissa Faye Green's book "There is not me without you" I was life changing (even more than TIVO :) I would recommend it to EVERYONE... not just those who are adopting. It is a huge eye opener to all of us who are caged into our trite close minded American lives. (Before reading this book I would have been angry at my previous sentence.) The book chronicles the life of a woman in Ethiopia who loses her 20 year old daughter to AIDS and is so lost in her grief that she started making plans to make a home in the cemetery (apparently a semi-common practice). A priest at one of the churches that the woman prays at daily persuades her to take in a teenager that did not have a home. Then over the next year the priest continues to bring children to her home until she has over 5o children staying in her small shack. She eventually finds out that people are willing to adopt these children. The most eyeopening part of this is the description of the lives of the people in Ethiopia. It is common for a nuclear family of 3 or more to claim for themselves cement blocks on the side of a sidewalk as their home. The mark their "home" with trash that they find. When it rains they have no shelter so the family with lay on the ground and cover themselves with plastic to keep dry. Work is so scarce that most families are lucky to eat 1 small meal a day! I could go on for years about this book but I recommend that you read it! It made me ashamed of my life here in America. The $20 our family might spend eating out equals 2 months worth of wages for the average family in Ethiopia! I have been wrestling with this for the last month. God has blessed us so richly yet we take for granted these blessings and only desire more and more... bigger TVs, nicer cars, new computer, video games, new clothes, the AMERICAN DREAM... our priorities are so out of control where money and STUFF are our idols. We sit in our house overflowing with a lot of unnecessary things...while others cannot feed their families, afford clothing, live on a sidewalk, have no vehicle, cannot receive an education, cannot afford medication. Infants and children die of a FEVER because they don't have Tylenol (I didn't even know that was possible!) and DIARRHEA!!! I thank God that He has opened my eyes to my own sin of gluttony and greed.