Welcome Home Ben!

 

Our dear friends have welcomed home their sweet new son Ben from Ethiopia this week. I think God had it timed just right that he was completely asleep as we greeted them at the airport, because I think our big group with signs and balloons and big smiling faces might have overwhelmed him a bit. He was so precious, asleep in his daddy's arms. Look at this face!

I have been told that they will need some time to bond together and get adjusted to things before they expose him to too much. But seeing as we will be moving in just a few weeks and will be no more than 5 minutes away from their neighborhood, I can't wait for us to spend more time together and get to love on the whole family.

I am so intrigued and touched by Keith and Danielle's decision to follow God's calling on their hearts and open their family to this beautiful boy. Coming from Ethiopia, one of the five poorest countries in the world, sweet Ben might have had to battle AIDS, malaria, famine or water-borne illness. He was fortunate to not be the one in ten children who die before the age of one, of those that survive, one in six die before age five. (Hearing his story of his mother's death and his malnutrition, this certainly could have been the case for him.) Half of the children in his home nation will never attend school, and 88% will never make it to secondary school. Only 24% of households even have access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, and many families live in a small hut with their fire pit and livestock.

How blessed are we, to call America our home. Ethiopia is roughly twice the size of Texas, but is home to 4.8 million orphans. That is just slightly less than the entire populations of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio COMBINED. Can you imagine if those entire cities were filled with children with no one to care for them?

Here are the scriptures that have so touched my heart today:

Psalm 68:6 "God sets the lonely in families."

Isaiah 54:2 "Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your curtains wide... do not hold back."

John 14:18 "I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you."

1 Samuel 1:27 "I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted what I asked of him."

James 1:27 "Religion that is pure according to God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows who are suffering, and keep oneself unstained by the world."

Isaiah 43:6 "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth."

Psalm 68:5 "God is the father to the fatherless and a defender of widows."

Romans 8:15 "For you did not receive a spirit of bondage to fear but a spirit of adoption. And by Him we cry, 'Abba, Father.'"

Welcome home, dear Abenezer. Welcome home!