Julie Gumm - Author

Hope-Filled Day

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Today has been one of those amazing, fill-your-heart, walking-on-clouds, amazed-at-God’s-goodness kind of days that is hard to put into words.

It began a couple weeks ago when I heard, via Twitter, that Tom Davis (president of Children’s Hopechest) was headed to Ethiopia and was looking for other orphanages that he could visit and explore a partnership with while he was there. Um, YES!!!

I quickly sent him a tweet back (ha, if you don’t Twitter you’re probably lost right now…hang in there) and sent him a link to our wonderful friends at Hope for the Hopeless. There was a flurry of emails back and forth and I will confess to not getting much work done that day (sorry Greg, I’ll make it up). But I knew what an amazing opportunity this was for Hope.

We kept it kind of close to the chest because we did not know what would come of it. We were elated when we saw the visit scheduled on Tom’s itinerary. I emailed out our little network of friends/fellow Hope supporters. Except I messed up. I told them Tom was visiting on Wed the 21st. We made all these great plans to fast and pray from Tuesday afternoon – Wed morning (Ethiopia is 10 hours ahead). Except Tuesday is the 21st, not Wed.

This afternoon I got a message from hubby that Tom had posted pictures to his Facebook page. Sure enough, there were our beautiful kids! I was hit with the fact that God so didn’t need me to carry out his plans.

I sat at my desk and wept. Mostly with joy, but also with an incredible longing to be there and see those kids again. We saw beautiful, familiar faces and it brought our time with them rushing back.

So then I left and got my hair done, picked up kids, fixed dinner, got kids to bed…all the while just giddy from head to toe, sneaking peeks at my computer.

After getting the kids to bed I checked my computer again (refresh, refresh) and there was Tom’s blog post about his day.

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve been overwhelmed with so many things at once – love received from the kids, stories that broke my heart, joy that filled my soul as we danced and sang together.

…When we left each of them hugged us again, this time a little longer, and with the words I love you in our ears. Some community of folks gets to sponsor this orphanage. I’m telling you, it’s one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been.”

So I cried some more…and now I’m crying again. I am so excited to see what God brings about out of this visit. Please join me in praying for Tom and his team as they visit even more orphanages in Ethiopia. If you want to help launch the sponsorship of Hope for the Hopeless with Children’s Hopechest you can donate here. Just mention “Hope for the Hopeless” in the notes section.

Tom’s promised to blog about Mary, one of the girls at Hope, whose story will humble and amaze you. And I promise that I will follow it up with my own story about Mary and how she changed this woman forever.

If you want to read some of my posts from our time at Hope for the Hopeless in Dec you can go here and here and here.

Oh, but God didn’t stop there – this afternoon Mark called and played me a message from our answering machine. It was the school principal (Uh, Oh – must involve fists and blood). But no, sweet Beza and her friend Lizzie and gone into Mr. Starts office because they wanted to pray and ask Jesus into their hearts. That made me cry too – I’ve cried a lot today.

Flag Football

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Most people will probably be surprised to hear that Wendemagegn decided to go out for Flag Football instead of soccer. I’m not sure what we were thinking – could he have picked a more complicated sport to learn? Line of scrimmage, down and out, down and in, 1st down….whole new set of vocabulary words.

But he is having a great time and we love that he is playing on Pastor Greg’s team…even if they have to be called the Raiders 🙂 They had their first game today and even though they lost the boys did a really great job. Wendemagegn is pretty fast so they’ve got a play where they hand off the ball to him. He loves to dodge and run around the defense…some of that fancy soccer foot work showing up. We just got to get him to run straight!

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American Girly Girl

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I was surprised that it took this long, but finally about two weeks ago Beza asked if she could get her ears pierced. I explained a little about the process and that it hurts a bit to make sure she understood. She vowed she still wanted them. I was hoping we wouldn’t have a repeat of Natalie’s experience. I told her we would get them done during Spring Break.

Then last weekend I was watching some Jon & Kate Plus 8 on the DVR and there was an episode of their 8 year old getting her ears pierced. It included tears and finally smiles. Perfect. I set Beza and Natalie down to watch that little clip for one last reassurance that she was ready. She was a little more skeptical but remained determined.

She vascillated between saying she would cry and she wouldn’t cry. Natalie was not helping at all with repeated “It really hurts Beza.”

So Thursday we did the deed with a quick trip to Claire’s. (After I spent close to 45 minutes on the phone with 4 different places trying to see when one would have 2 workers on hand.) She chose little red earrings to match Natalie (big surprise – NOT) and sat in the chair with her eyes half squinted close in anticipation of the pain – while I was still filling out paperwork.

When it finally came time to do the deed she squeezed my hands, the pulled the trigger and there were absolutely NO tears. I think there was a sharp intake of breath and a “ow” and some head shaking but she did really great.