Julie Gumm - Author

Meeting My Online Peeps

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This fall I’ll be headed to Austin, TX to attend the Together for Adoption Conference where I get to be a featured blogger. Besides all the great content at the conference I’m super excited about meeting up with some online friends “in real life”. These is just a sample of some of the awesome gals I’m excited to hang with.

Brandi McElheny – This girl is like a fireball of passion, energy and prayer aimed at injustice. I’ve known her online for a couple of years but got to meet her at the CAFO Summit in April and then I got the opportunity to hang with her one night in June while in Colorado. She’s the real deal and a total blast!

Angel Weir – I “met” this girl online when researching Ethiopia adoptions. She had just been on a missions trip to Ethiopia, had one adopted daughter and another on the way. Then through her and her husbands work on the Red Letter Campaign we became friends. Imagine my delight when she was in Colorado at the same time I was and got to meet her at the aforementioned night as well. And now she’s paperchasing for an Ethiopian adoption.

Wendi Henry – Wendi and her husband Sam have a huge heart for orphans and started the micro-giving site HopeMongers. She’s another Colorado-dweller and was in on the fun girls night last month with Brandi & Angel. Totally excited to hang out with her again and get to know her better!

Amy Bottomly – Hooked up with this gal via Red Letters Campaign and got to design a web site for the book her and Josh wrote about their adoption “From Ashes to Africa“. Turns out she’s a John Brown University grad although I don’t think our paths crossed while there. They just brought home a darling daughter from Ethiopia (to join brother Silas) and I’m super excited to get to meet Amy in person.

Jody Landers – Found this beautiful gal a couple years ago when I was adoption blog stalking and have read her off and on since then. She’s a huge advocate/fundraiser for clean water (Water for Christmas). Jody pours out her heart on her blog and has walked through some extremely tough stuff in the last year and it has been such a privilege to read her honesty and be able to lift her up in prayer. I have probably only commented on her blog a couple of times so my behavior might be borderline stalkerish at T4A 🙂 But since she knows Brandi and Wendi hopefully they’ll vouch for my sanity!

Mary Ostyn (aka Owlhaven) – She’s got 10 kids from 3 countries – another blog I found in my early adoption journey. She’s a woman after my own frugal heart and her blog has tons of great ideas on saving money, great recipes and fun family stories. She’s written two great books as well – both in my personal library: “A Sane Woman’s Guide to Raising a Large Family” and “Family Feasts for Under $75 a Week“.

There are so many more, maybe I’ll have to save some for another post…

World Orphans Ethiopia Video

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I realized the other night that I don’t think I’ve ever posted this video that was made back before I too was working for World Orphans. Just another part of our adoption story, captured for posterity.

World Orphans currently has 3 projects in Ethiopia. You can find out more about them on the web site – www.worldorphans.org

Left Behind – Ethiopia Orphans from Mark Gumm on Vimeo.

Setting up House…in Haiti

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Oh wait, no we’re not moving…

But World Orphans is doing something very cool.

In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, World Orphans opened the Orphan and Vulnerable Child (OVC) Program in Haiti – a country we had not previously worked in. We identified 24 churches who are already caring for orphans but need the financial resources to continue to do so.

What our team saw on their trips to Haiti was that 90% of the orphans in these church communities had already been taken in by the other families – the church of Christ in action! But the reality is that, in a time of dwindling resources, those families may later find themselves unable to provide for these children and they are still vulnerable for abandonment.

The Haiti OVC brings U.S. churches alongside those Haitian churches to provide the financial resources for food, medical care, education and trauma counseling for those kids and families.

As we partner churches together we realized that we are going to have a ton of U.S. church teams traveling to Haiti to visit, encourage and help their Haiti partner church. It became clear that it would be more cost-effective for us to secure our own guesthouse that could be used by these teams as people from other mission organizations.

A generous church partner has paid for the lease on the building for a year and now we just need to finish it out – make it a home. We need to raise approximately $8,000 by June 11th for things like a generator, furnishings, kitchen appliances, security measures, etc. We have a church team traveling on the 11th ready to do all the work to put it all together. Then the first mission team arrives on the 19th!

There are five (5) bedrooms and three (3) bath rooms, and it is big enough to accommodate 24 guests at a time. It survived the earthquake and is built to withstand the hurricanes.

If you feel led to help, you can donate to the “Home Away From Home” campaign I set up on the new World Orphans web site.

Here’s some more pics of the house “as is”…