A Letter to my Family :)

Dear Family,

I was looking on a blog today and I realized that I have a lot of information about my adoption that you don’t have. My heart breaks when I see the state of events in Africa and I want to help in a small way. I know that others will help in their way and it is through all people helping in whatever way that they can, that these needs will be met. My motivation to help is because God calls us to.

(NIV) James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

In addition He adopted me and gave me a tremendous love for kids and for being a mom. This has been a long transformation for me and yet I think one that God has worked for many years. Ethiopia also has been on my mind since I was a kid. You know all about this, as you also saw the TV spots and the great need there was then. I think it was then that God moved in my heart to think about helping those with less. My parents also contributed to this desire as they reminded me of how much I had. It wasn’t until visiting the Czech Republic in 1995 that I first saw real poverty, (that being greater than US poverty), in some of the outlying villages. It was hard to come back to the US after that. It was such a different view of material wealth. It was actually staggering for me as I adjusted to coming back home. The second time I saw poverty was in Morocco where there are whole villages that live over trash dumps. This was shocking for me and again coming home it was a major adjustment to the expectations of our country. However, I love my country and so I fit back in soon enough.

It was after having Caleb and Josiah, that I realized that God called me to be a mom. I receive such joy and challenge, even greater than my engineering work, that I realized that this was no second hand appointment this was my new career. Just under a year after Josiah was born, (February) Kent and I were confronted with adoption as being a possible part of our family’s plan. This took much talking and debate. Both of us realized that we had so much. We also realized that I love being a mom and that if I could love Josiah as much as Caleb, then the next child would also be provided for.

The biggest realization, though, was that we were adopted by God to be in His family. We were the kids with no Father (God) to call their own. We were the ones with nothing to offer a family (the family of God) which had much to boast of. We were the ones who weren’t safe to be brought in for the “other children” but were loved anyway and brought up to be like the Father. This above all the other reflections made Kent and I resolute that if God would provide a way we would join Him in saving at least one kid from an institution for orphans.

So a year later we were pregnant with Malachi and then I recovered and then this past February, 2007 Kent again ran across the idea of adoption. This is not to say that we totally forgot about adoption, the opposite happened. Our friends began adopting, others asked us questions about adoption. One friend adopting from the US and the next overseas. We were confronted with the conditions of orphanages in Kazakhstan where some of our friends are ministering and in Guatemala where our church visits every year. Adoption kept coming up, but for some reason, (God’s timing) I didn’t feel the time was right to start. Then in February, when Kent asked me to just listen to a radio broadcast that night, God captured my heart for a child I didn’t know.

So that night I did some research, as you all know I won’t go to the n’th degree to find something out, I like to use other people’s sources, so I did and I came across Ethiopia. Some of you have mentioned to me that Ethiopia isn’t the most needy country in Africa. If I was really doing this to help out, why not choose one of those? And with some of you I have shared my reasoning, my concerns, my fears, etc. But now I really think God was using all of that to get us to the place where we would pick the children that He chose for us.

Ethiopia isn’t the worst hit nation in Africa, but in case you don’t know where they stand. in my next blog is some info from another blog I ran across today. I think it will help fill you in on the state of things there and why I think that we are helping, in a small way, a big problem that we must do something about.

Love you guys.
Mari