Sponsor child

On the day we got Mebi we went to visit one of our sponsor children in the morning. We were hoping to see both girls, but Hanna lived in Adama and Kiddist was just outside of Addis and as we had a tight time frame we just picked Kiddist.

We are with CCF (Christian Children's Fund of Canada). They were fantastic at setting everything up for us, even on short notice. They had a nice jeep they drove us in, and brought their communications person along and an additional translator/guide and of course the driver.

We drove about 45 minutes down the Adama road (it's crazy - big semis will come head on and swerve out of your lane at the last second) and then made it to her village. They first took us to their office there - it's literally a shack with a few old computers and a filing cabinet in it. My first impression was that they use the money well that we send them. Sometimes you hear of places where you send money and then you find out they have these luxurious offices or accommodations. (Ring a bell for you Imagine people??) They showed us her file which had her original letters and report cards in it. Then we went to her house.

Kiddist and her mother greeted us and we went into her home and sat down. Had we not just been to Mebira's home, we would have thought this home was sad, but Mebira's home environment was so poor that this seemed almost nice in comparison. We gave Kiddist a backpack filled with gifts and talked to her and asked her questions for a while. She was extremely shy but adorably cute.

If you don't have a sponsor child yet, I highly recommend getting one. There are so many great organizations out there, and you truly make such a difference in their lives. They have almost nothing - and you can make a difference.

I have struggled with sponsorship versus adoption...I've wondered if we instead should have used the money for sponsorship that we used on the adoption...but in my eyes both are right, and we choose to do both. Adoption isn't an option for everyone, but I would REALLY like to encourage sponsorship for everyone.

Anyway, enough preaching. I'll attach some pictures, and have tried so many times to attach a song that our sponsor child sang for us. She had just lost a tooth and was shy about it. In Ethiopia they sing a song and throw their teeth on the roof as tradition. We've had some conversations about this on our yahoo board, so I was hoping to attach it, but blogger keeps showing up with an error. If you're interested in it, I've gotten it down to a 5MB file and can email it to you. Hopefully it is the song everyone was thinking of!