During the call, one of my sweet friends referred to Adecar as “our village.”  Ours!  Not “Melanie’s” village, not “that” village, but “ours.”  Wow.  It’s happening.  The people around me really are seeing these orphans, this village, as ours.  Our people.  Our kids.  I LOVE IT!  We get to help them and be part of their lives, and slowly people are joining this Adecar family who will bring hope to those who need it most.  I love that almost everytime I go somewhere now, someone in the room is an Adecar sponsor or in the process of becoming one.

I still have a huge stack of sponsorless orphans sitting next to my desk.  Today Elliott picked up Josephine and brought her to me.  Her dad’s dead, her mom’s sick and is a peasant, and she has seven siblings.  She’s eleven.  If she lived here she’d be in fifth grade, dance and sing in Upstreet every Sunday morning, have a small group leader, maybe play soccer or take piano lessons.  In Adecar, she’s most likely taking care of her siblings, walking for miles to get water, going hungry many days in a row, and sleeping in a mud hut with her entire family.  I can’t even comprehend it.

So, imagine how exciting it is for me to hear one of my friends talk about “our village.”  I’m no longer carrying this burden alone.  I’m no longer the sole advocate for these kids.  Now other people know, and other people care, too.  Sitting around my kitchen table with my book club talking about Scared…oh my goodness.  These friends who I love connected with Adanna’s story, they saw through her eyes, and we got to talk about it.  They willingly entered into the pain of her world.  And I’m excited to see what God’s going to do with that pain.  He’s transformed my life through the pain of others, when I finally worked up the courage to take a look.

Getting to talk about Africa and orphans with my friends and NOT feeling like a freak felt so good!  Watching my Adecar family grow also feels amazing.  Tonight I’m feeling hopeful.  I often tell God, “Um, I have a pile of orphans next to me and no earthly idea how to find sponsors for them.  I need a heavenly idea, please!”  It’s too big for me, but God moves the hearts and minds of all of us, so I’m trusting that He’ll move some this way!

Today is Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Sveta’s parents abandoned her to the orphanage shortly after her birth. She was their fifth daughter and her mother and father decided they had “enough” girls already.

As a young girl, Sveta loved animals and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. She also wondered about her biological family. She knew exactly where they lived, and knew she was the only child they abandoned.

Sveta wanted her parents and sisters to be proud of her.

After leaving the orphanage, Sveta accepted a place in our Independent Living Program. Thanks to the efforts of her house parents, she got into veterinarian school and successfully graduated.
Soon she re-connected with her sister and brother-in-law. Wanting to help her family so much, Sveta allowed them to use her credit card. But when they refused to pay her, they left Sveta on her own.

They told her that a young and attractive girl could easily get a “job” to pay her debts.

To read more, visit Tom’s blog at http://tomdavis.typepad.com/tom_daviss_blog/2010/01/htad2010.html

Dear Friends,

I’m excited to let you know that a generous ministry partner has awarded HopeChest a $20,000 grant to stop sex trafficking in Russia and challenged us to match it by midnight, December 31.

Since that’s just 2 days away, I need your help (and voice) to help meet this challenge.

I sent an e-mail out earlier today to our supporters, and posted on my blog at http://www.cthomasdavis.com/.

As you read this letter there are over 2 million children forced into prostitution and sex slavery.  This can be prevented and we can do something about it. These girls need our help and there isn’t time to waste.  Right now, pimps and prostitution rings are targeting our precious, young girls. They wait for them to leave the protection of the orphanage, and then offer them a “job.”  Many of the girls simply disappear: never heard from again by their friends.  But sometimes you glimpse this horror.

To read more of this post and learn what you can do to help end sex trafficking before it starts, visit http://tomdavis.typepad.com/tom_daviss_blog/2009/12/urgent-stop-sex-trafficking-now.html.

As I contemplated the iFast58 request today, my heart was broken. The profile of a young boy named Dima caught my attention. I am not sure why it caught my attention as it has been sitting on a credenza in my office for weeks. But today, I began to think about him – how he is a little younger than my son Luke. I thought of how Luke sometimes needs his mom just to hold him or he will just come snuggle with us – Dima does not have that – he is alone. It is easy to dismiss Dima because we don’t know him – he is on the other side of the planet – out of sight and out of mind.

To read the complete post click the following link:
http://www.brandisthoughts.com/2009/10/pray-for-dima.html