Heavy Heart

Over the past few days my heart has grown heavy, not only for our child, but for the people of Ethiopia.  I have been reading There is No Me Without You, and even though I've only read a few chapters, it has already provided me with greater insight into the conditions of Ethiopia.  I knew the normal statistics you hear in the adoption world, but the statistics in the book break my heart.  

• Nearly 2/3 of school aged children in Ethiopia are not in school, and only 41% of adults can read.
• 81% of Ethiopia's people live on less than $2 a day, and 26% live on less than $1...the marker of absolute poverty in the world
• In 2002 the Ethiopian government was spending only $2 per person, per day on healthcare...this broke my heart "Thus victims of polio and malaria and HIV/AIDS and cancer, and the blind and the lepers, and the mentally ill and the malnourished, and the orphans and the dying, roam the streets of the capital city, or lie on its sidewalks, defeated."
• Africa is known as the continent of orphans
• Because of aids, more than 13 million children had been orphaned, 12 million of those in Sub-Saharan Africa. 25% lived in Nigeria and Ethiopia.
• In Ethiopia 11% of all children were orphans
• by 2010, between 25-50 million African children from newborn to age 15 would be orphans

These statistics not only blew my mind, but broke my heart.  Those numbers are just unfathomable, that there are that many children who have no family, who are living on the streets or in the dump, in one country/continent.  My heart is broken for these people.  There are so many luxuries that we take for granted, even the ability to read, one of my favorite activities since I was a child. And to think that if our child were left in that country, what are the chances he/she would end up in the small 41% that are able to read?

Reading all of this makes us want to push through all of this paperwork even faster, to get our little one home.  We have been praying for this process to draw us closer to each other and to our Father, and so far it has done just that.  It has given us a tiny glimpse of how His heart breaks for His precious children.  We want to live our lives radically and generously, and we have been praying for opportunities to do that.  Adoption is just one of them, how can we rescue just one when we have heard what we have? We cannot turn our backs on the beautiful country that will give us a child.
Our prayer is this:
 "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I might gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. That I may know Him and the power of his resurrection...Phil. 3 :7-10

Praying that we can live this out and make a difference, whatever the cost.