But God...

So our friend's Jeff and Emily just got back from Ethiopia. They went there to meet the child  that they sponsor through Compassion International as well as to bring back video, information, etc to raise awareness of both the children that need our help in Ethiopia as well as for Compassion International itself. I am really excited to see how God works through them and the time that they spent there.

They had us over for dinner the other night and showed us a bunch of video and pictures of Ethiopia and man did it wake me up a bit. I mean, you always hear about the poverty in Ethiopia as well as other countries out there but until you see video and pictures from someone you know personally, it really doesn't quite sink in, or at least it didn't for me.

They showed us the "marketplace" which I imagined would be like a market place here in the states where you have people in booths selling vegetables and fruits and breads and such. They did sell the same things in the Ethiopian market place but their booths were replaced by the back of pick up trucks or simply on the dry, dusty ground. There was rotting food all over the place and dogs eating food out of dumpsters and everything.

Then they showed us video of the shacks that those lucky enough to have a house call home. Shacks that are about the size of half of my bedroom and they are the home to entire families. And then you have the countless others with nowhere to call home except whatever space they can find on the streets to sleep. Here in Ohio, you have to drive downtown to see any homeless and even then, you only see a couple here and there but in Ethiopia they just cover the streets. The poverty is unbelievable.

Then you hear the statistics of how many children die each day because of preventable things such as lack of clean water or diarrhea. Children die each day for lack of clean water meanwhile, how many of us (including myself) refuse to drink tap water but either have to have spring water or filtered water?

As they showed picture after picture and video after video of children there, I couldn't help but wonder if one of those children is our child that God has picked out for us. Even if one of them wasn't our child, I couldn't help but see our child in their eyes. I couldn't help but just want to fly over there and bring a child back with us right away so that they didn't have to go through the disease and hunger and thirst anymore.

But as I think of the destitution and poverty over there and how it seems like most of the children are in a hopeless situation with no chance of getting themselves out, it makes me think...I was once like that to God. I was once a orphan. I was once completely hopeless in my sin with no chance of getting myself out. Ephesians 2:3 says “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” I had no way of being healed or rescued unless God intervened. I was a complete enemy to God and completely dead in my sin, but then in verse 4 we see two of the greatest words in all of the bible, "BUT GOD!"..."But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved-" (Ephesians 2:4-5)

I thank God that he didn't leave me as an orphan but he came to me (John 14:18).I thank God that while I was dead in my trespasses, while I was dying from a far worse disease than malnutrition with a far worse future than living life in an orphanage, God chose me to be adopted into His family so that I can be called a child of God and not only that but a co-heir with Christ.

Adoption Journey Begins

Well for those who haven't heard, Steph and I just got accepted into American World Adoption Agency's Ethiopia adoption program. In the next year or two we will be bringing home our child from Ethiopia. It's crazy how things work out sometimes. Like, you have this plan for your life and then God just takes you a completely different way. Just like Proverbs 16:9 says "The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps." Steph and I had planned on having another "biological" child of our own and then talk about adoption. However, God had a different plan for our life and we are so excited.

We can't wait to obey God's command to care for orphans. It's so easy to just ignore the fact that there are millions upon millions of orphans in the world because they can't speak up for themselves. They can't get interviewed on TV and ask for someone to come help them. No, instead they are in orphanages crying out for help knowing that no one will answer their cry. They are being abused but no one cares because no one notices. In fact, countless orphans are kidnapped and sold into prostitution or slavery and no one notices because they have no one who cares.

More than the fact that we want to rescue a child from a life with no hope and no future, we want our adoption of this child to point him or her to the adoption that he can have into God's family. We can't wait to show them how "he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will." (Ephesians 1:4). We can't wait to share the love that God has for them that far surpasses any love than we could ever show them and how he made a sacrifice far greater than any time, money or effort that we can sacrifice and how He wants to rescue them from a far worse condition than being in an orphanage. Ultimately, we want to point this child to the God that he likely would not have heard about in an orphanage.

 Feel free to follow our blog (fitzadoption.blogspot.com). We are going to post where we are in the process, our thoughts and feelings as we go through this process, any fundraisers we have coming up, etc.