Happy Belated Thanksgiving Again

I'm posting a belated Thanksgiving note just like I did last year. Last Thursday we went to Christine's parents home for the day. Shannon's parents were invited too but they traveled to Montana for the holiday. We were there with Uncle Don and aunt Donna, cousin Dave and his wife Jess with their daughter Ava, cousin Deanna and sister Corryn. We all ate well and had a great dinner with leftovers for supper. In addition to the typical Thanksgiving dinner we had pie for dessert. There were 9 pies! We wanted to be sure to have a good selection!

It is nice to have a day to remind us to be thankful and give us some time to reflect on what we are thankful for. Family, friends, church, the Christian schools and teachers that two of our children experience, our home, God's provision, the ministry and the people affiliated with it. Most importantly though, we are thankful for our salvation through Christ.

As we enter into this holiday season and the busyness begins, try to remember what it is all about. Take time for family and friends and enjoy the time.

Orphan Care-Rick Warren

This week is Cry of the Orphan week at several large pro-family organizations. Focus on The Family, Family Life Today, Crown Financial and Shaohannah's Hope have teamed up together to draw national attention to the plight of the orphans of today. I have such tremendous respect for these ministries for what they are working together to do.

I have been listening to the several radio broadcasts they have dedicated to the orphan this week. I cried many tears yesterday as I listened to the story of a woman, who 20 years ago, when she was 17, found herself pregnant. She told how she struggled with whether to abort her baby, keep it or allow it to be adopted. After a Focus on the Family broadcast, she decided to give her newborn son to a Christian couple. Now, many years later, she has met her son and they have a relationship. He loves her and respects her greatly, for the selfless sacrifices she made so that he could have life and grow up in a loving, God-fearing home.

Also, yesterday, during the Family Life Today broadcast, I cried as Rick Warren told how he and his wife Kaye, began their church's orphan ministry. Rick Warren is the pastor of one of the nation's largest churches, Saddleback Community Church in Southern California. He told how, while on a trip to a tiny village in Africa. He visited a church there to discover 50 adults and their families along with 25 young AIDS orphans, worshiping together. He came away with the realization that the tiny church in Africa, was doing more o help the orphans than his mega-church. It convicted him tremendously and he began an Orphan ministry in his church.

The facts and figures given yesterday during the broadcast are heart breaking. The broadcast is a repeat so these numbers are a bit old. Right now, a I write this, there are 150 million orphans in the world. 150 million! Over 40 million of those orphans are in Africa alone. There are 115,000 children in the United States, right now, that do not have a family of their own. This is America, and we have orphans looking for a Mom and Dad to call their own.

With 150 million orphans in the world currently, if we assume a typical orphanage takes in 100 children(a high estimate in most cases), it would take 1.5 million orphanages to care for them all. In reality, an orphanage is not God's plan for His children. Ideally, each child should have a family. I will speak more on that in a few days.

God has put the orphans on Shannon's and my heart since we were dating during our teen years. We talked about foster care even back then and it has graduated to adoption and now, moving to Africa, to try to make a difference in more lives. What is God asking you to do for the orphan? There are so many ways you can help- foster care, domestic or international adoption, misssions, or financially supporting those who are doing any of that. Please, ask God how he wants you to help. Those dirty, snotty, fly-covered and yet beautiful faces you see on TV are real. Each of those children has a soul and a need for love, care and Christ.

Wordless Wednesday

Shopping in Tanzania is different than here. Although there are stores in buildings there are also many open air markets where people bring the food they have raised or items they have made, put them in a pile on a blanket and wait for things to sell. I remember while in Mwanza one day, I saw a huge pile, probably four foot across and 3-4 feet high, of used tennis shoes. I noticed they didn't look to be paired together so to find a pair that fit and had both shoes I think would be quite a time consuming task.




The interesting thing about the stores within buildings is that most of them are basically variety stores where they have a little bit of many things, they do not typically specialize in anything. I recently heard from a missionary in Dar Es Salam who told of trying to shop for a side mirror to replace the one that had been stolen off his Land Rover. Of course, there isn't a local car parts store. He had to hunt through the many stores hoping someone had exactly what he needed. During the process, he was well aware that the one he ended up buying was most likely stolen property from someone else's or maybe even his own vehicle. Frustrating to say the least.

The Medders family-update

Please continue praying for Jason and Kelli. Just yesterday they held another of their four daughters as she died in their arms. Here is a list of their daughters names and current status.

Annika Peace Medders went to be with her Creator before birth.

Berkley Claire Medders is in the NICU in Minneapolis.(update-died peacefully in her parents arms on Nov. 7th, joining her two sisters in heaven)

Callie Ranelle Medders is in the NICU in Minneapolis.

Daley Providence Medders, while in the arms of her parents, joined her sister Annika a few minutes after being born.

I cannot imagine the emotional rollercoaster this family is experiencing. I am so sad for them...

Do you remember Terri Schiavo?

I remember very well the story of Terri Schiavo. She was a woman who was supposedly in a coma but her family and some caregivers say she was attempting to communicate with them and well aware of her surroundings. After an extremely lengthy legal battle, the courts allowed her feeding tube to be removed and for her to literally starve and thirst to death even though she had family members wanting to care for her.

A friend of mine from choir has a cousin named Tia in Florida. Tia is married to Ryan and Ryan has something called Frontal Temporal Dementia or Pick's Disease. He is young and is currently experiencing dementia and has been admitted into hospice care with less than 6 months to live. The nursing home providing his care does not want him there any longer. Problem is there is nowhere else for him to go. The nursing home is insisting that Tia allow them to put him into a medicinally induced coma and "allow" him to die of starvation or they will discharge him, by taxi if needed, to Ryan and Tia's home address. Tia is not willing to stand by and watch him be murdered and yet she can find no other placement for him and knows she cannot care for him at home. Thankfully she has the help of the Terri Schiavo Foundation and lawyers to work in the courts to not allow this to happen to her husband and the father of their still young children. Please pray for this situation. I hate the slippery slope that our country has stepped onto.

Wordless Thursday-Transportation

Oops, Wednesday slipped by me. All week I have been behind one day as I had Monday off from the mail route and it made me think Tuesday was Monday from there. All of the following pics were taken by me on my trip in 2004.
This first picture shows some wood being transported in downtown Mwanza.


This one, taken through the windshield of the bus I rode, shows an extremely overloaded truck full of people! Even the native Tanzanian I was with, Pastor Richard, could not believe how overloaded it was.


This picture shows yet another overloaded truck. I am unsure what it was carrying.


Another, taken through the broken windshield of a Land Rover, shows donkey cart being led out in the bush.



And this one, again from inside a Land Rover, shows a man pulling a cart over a bridge on the way into a major city. He was right in the road with the gas powered vehicles causing quite a traffic jam that no one seemed to blink about. It must be common enough.


Transportation, when not done on foot, is certainly interesting in this part of Africa.

Keep praying for the Medders family

A couple of weeks ago I asked you to pray for the Medders family in this post. Unfortunately, the three remaining babies were born, far too soon, yesterday morning. One of the three babies has joined her sister in heaven with the Father that created them. The other two babies are very small and will need extensive medical care for awhile. Please pray for Jason, Kelli and Wyatt and the two tiny new little girls fighting for their lives.

As small as these two are, I am extremely encouraged by this news story I saw recently. This little peanut, born at just 21 weeks and 6 days gestation and weighing only 9 ounces and measuring 9 inches long just celebrated her first birthday! It is absolutely amazing to me, that these little lives, could have been legally aborted long after they were actually born if their parents had chosen to do so. I really recommend you take the time to go to this little ones news story and view her slide show. The newborn pics are absolutely astonishing.

Politics? On this blog?

I had never planned to do any political writing, much less on the blog but I really want to point out a presidential candidate here.

Shannon and I have been terribly dismayed by what have been the leading presidential candidates for the 2008 elections. I will not go into details about each specific candidate here and why I agree or disagree with each of them. I do, however, wish to share with you the name of Mike Huckabee. Several months ago, a homeschool group we are involved with, had suggested we look at him closely. I remember at the time thinking that even though the guy sounded good, he would probably never actually be in the running for the republican nomination. In the past week, Gov. Huckabee(Ark-R) has become well known, in part due to the Iowa straw polls where he came in second place. I am very excited about the possibility of this guy being on the ballots and definitely know who I am voting for in the primary. Please check out his website. I encourage you to send a "buck for Huck" or more if you think this is someone you would like to be the next president and tell everyone you know about him.