On Saturday, AJ ran in the Derby Day Stakes 5k at Coldstream Park in Lexington, his first 5k. The race was benefitting the Northwest Haiti Christian Mission, an organization that runs an orphanage where one of AJ's fellow adoptee buddies is from.
Ready to run (and firmly in the "too cool to smile" phase)
And they're off!
AJ finished with a time of 22:18, good enough for 7th overall and 1st in his age group. (Another runner informed me that he would've finished faster and higher in the results, but he took a brief detour onto the 10k trail.)
Congratulated by Dad after the race
AJ and the other placers in his age group
It was a big week for AJ, as his middle school soccer team had three games. He scored one goal in a 2-0 win on Monday, then scored both his team's goals - including a golden goal with 20 seconds to go in sudden death extra time - to win 2-1 on Thursday.
Our friends the Waggoners shared at our church yesterday as they prepare for full-time ministry in Albania (the country of birth for their 2 children). We had a great time catching up with them!
Nathan sharing about their ministry
The kids being entertained with fidget toys, helpful for all kids to make it through a long church service, but especially for our kids and their sensory needs.
5 children, 4 adoptions from 2 different countries, no longer orphans, but friends
Wilmore is a transitional town. Since we have a university and a seminary, many friends are here for a few years and then move on. Today, our dear friends the Waggoners moved to Illinois in preparation for their final destination of Albania. They will be raising fund for the next year in order to move to Albania as missionaries. The really neat part of their story is that their 2 children are adopted from Albania, which gives them a unique "foot in the door" to the Albanian people. If you've followed our blog for a while, you are familiar with Nathan, Cydil, Ellie & Reni. Ellie is one of the girls best friends and Reni was born with no legs and I've posted a while ago the video of Reni trying on his "new legs" for the first time. Cydil also takes our family photos every year (not an easy task to undertake, trust me.) The Waggoners have become close friends and walked with us through some very difficult times. I'm tearing up right now just realizing that they aren't just down the street anymore and soon will be half way around the world. We already have plans to Skype them into some of our adoption support group meetings because we all can't bare the thought of them not being here.
Anyways, I wanted to link their blog as Cydil posted about their last visit to our house. She was sweet enough to help me chop tomatoes last week and their kids loved hanging out with our hens. http://www.waggoner.blogspot.com/2012/08/tomatoes-and-eggs.html
Matt & I took a small group from our church out to Morgan County today to help clean up after the tornado that touched down on March 2nd. We cleaned up a lot of twisted trees from Woodsbend Community Church and viewed much devastation. The tornado was an F-5 when it hit Woodsbend and an F-3 when it hit West Liberty (the town nearby). I'll try to post our pictures from West Liberty tomorrow. Too tired tonight.
For those of you that have followed our adoption journey from the beginning (Dec. 2006) you will remember that we first tried to adopt from an orphanage in Jinja, Uganda. That place still holds a special place in my heart and I have been living vicariously through a woman much younger than I who has committed her whole life to the people of Jinja. You can follow Katie's daily journey on her blog or Amazima Ministries website.
One of the blogs that I follow is documenting their mission trip to Ethiopia to visit several of the orphanages that our adoption agency works with. I thought you all might want to follow their journey and learn more about Ethiopia and their beautiful people along the way. http://www.ordinaryheroblog.blogspot.com/
Don't forget to drop off your shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child this week. The girls and I just dropped off 30 boxes that our church collected. Not bad for a little country church on a dead end road. Way to go High Bridge Union Church!
I (Amy) found this information on the SIM site-http://www.sim.org/index.php/content/gumuz. I thought it gave a great, brief look into the life of the Gumuz people. Our girls are Gumuz so this information is very helpful for us to understand the area where they are coming from. I found out about SIM when I was in college and little did I know then that I would one day adopt two girls from an SIM ministry area.
When people ask me why I left teaching to come work at New Hope, the answer is Victor. When I was a junior at Asbury College, Prof. Lauter preached a message during Great Commission Congress in which he challenged all of us present to participate in at least one international mission trip while we were in college. I decided I would make that happen, and in January of 2001 I went to Guatemala with a New Hope team. It was my first time to leave the U.S., and I was excited to experience another culture and serve God however I could among the Guatemalans.
Just shortly before that service where I decided in my heart to make a mission trip before I graduated from Asbury, Steve and Pam English were in the early stages of opening La Senda Children’s Home in Guatemala. They received a call from a hospital begging them to come and take in a little boy who had been born there, abandoned, taken in by a Guatemalan family, and then abandoned again by them when he was found to need surgery because of hydrocephalus (water on the brain). After initially turning down the boy, Steve and Pam decided God wanted them to take him in, and they agreed to pay for the $200 surgery that would install a shunt to carry the water from Victor’s brain down to his abdomen, something he would live with for the rest of his life.
A year later, Victor did not relate well to others except Pam. He did not play with other children or visitors. That was when our mission team arrived at La Senda. For some reason, very slowly, Victor began to take a liking to me. Before the trip was over, he was clinging to me all the time. He would lay on my chest and smack the sides of my cheeks and make a clucking sound with his tongue. He and I grew very close that week, and I learned more about God’s love through that little boy than I had in a thousand sermons. My eyes were opened to a whole new world of God’s love and amazing grace, and I was changed forever.
In January 2002 I returned to La Senda with another New Hope team and we were amazed to find out that one day Victor’s shunt had dried up because he had been completely healed of his hydrocephalus. The doctor said that was the first time he had ever heard of a shunt being removed from a hydrocephalic patient. What an amazing miracle!
When Prof. Lauter called me and asked if I might have any interest in coming to manage the New Hope office, it was my experience with Victor that came to mind. I wanted to have a part in making possible for others what had happened in my life through a week in Guatemala. During my first year at New Hope I led another team to La Senda and met a five-year-old Victor who was talking up a storm and running around playing soccer. Last week we went to La Senda again with a team from our church, and it was so fun to see Victor growing into a little young man – rambunctious, intelligent, loving, ornery, joking. God’s going to do something with that boy, just wait and see. Of course, He already has.
At 4:30am tomorrow, we will be off to Bluegrass Airport with a team from our church at High Bridge to head down to Guatemala. This will be the 4th time for each of us to be at La Senda Children's Home in Sumpango. We are excited to see all the children again and our missionary friends Steve & Pam. We are excited that this is the first mission team that our church has sent and so happy to be a part of it. Please lift us up in prayer, and we hope to have lots of exciting stuff to share when we get back.
Okay, so you all know that I did more in Kenya than just look at animals, here are a few pictures of some of the things that we saw God doing in Kenya:
Holding baby Daniel at the AGC Baby Center in Nakuru
Our friend Staci Wells, who is the manager of the AGC Baby Center
Our team sings a song in chapel at Kenya Highlands Bible College in Kericho
Patients wait to be seen at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet
Playing with the children at Good Samaritan Childrens Home in the Mathare Slum of Nairobi
Our team with WGM East Africa Regional Directors Terry & Karen Duncan and our driver, Francis, in Nairobi on our last day
Well I got back from Kenya today. We had a great trip, and God was really good to us. I'm very tired, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some wildlife pictures for you to see:
Our first lion in Maasai Mara An elephant that followed our van Three giraffes in Maasai Mara A lion cub yawning in Mara ConservatoryBig male lion in Mara Conservatory
Amy & Carlos
Our first lion in Maasai Mara
An elephant that followed our van
Three giraffes in Maasai Mara
A lion cub yawning in Mara Conservatory
Big male lion in Mara Conservatory 
