Pray for Somalia

We received this email from World Vision concerning the famine in Somalia:



 Dear Sponsor,

I'm writing today with a different kind of request. Would you take a few minutes to pray? Here's why: There are 750,000 people who could starve to death in the next four months in an area of Somalia that aid agencies have not been able to reach.

This situation is horrific and avoidable. Families are walking 100 miles in search of aid, and often only the strongest survive the journey. In many cases, women are burying their children on the side of the road as they flee. This tragedy breaks my heart.

In the middle of the famine, in South-Central Somalia, we aren't even able to reach these starving children. World Vision had deep, long-term community relationships in Somalia since 1992, but we were forced to leave this part of the country in 2010. Armed groups demanded most aid organizations leave.




Somalis are fleeing violence and hunger.
In her escape, Gaalo Adan Ali lost two children to starvation.
She prays her 6-year-old son Khaleed won't die, too.


It is horrible knowing that we have been prevented from rescuing starving people.
 Our work elsewhere in East Africa is saving lives, where we are distributing
therapeutic food for children, clean water, sturdy tents, and essential medical care.

You can imagine the needs of a family who has walked for days without food and
 very little water, a mother and a father who have just buried their children. The
needs there are great. Yet governments and private donors have provided less than
 half of what the world needs to adequately respond.

Please pray.

We need safe access to help starving people. We need the resources to adequately care for the half million people now in overcrowded refugee camps. To achieve this, we need a breakthrough.

Please join us in prayer that World Vision and other aid organizations would be able to access the regions in Somalia where three quarters of a million people could starve to death. And pray for the financial resources to complete this job. I know that with your prayer, we can do this. "Jesus looked at them and said, 'With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.'" — Mark 10:27 (NIV)

In prayer with you,


Rich Stearns
President, World Vision U.S.

P.S. You can also
visit here for prayer resources and more information.

Praying,
Angi & Tim

Viola's new clothes

Kids everywhere LOVE new clothes.  In Viola's case she now has more than one outfit to choose from.  Viola (our Ugandan sponsored daughter) is the older girl and Rittah is her little sister. 

If you do not sponsor a child PLEASE consider it. 
Go to www.compassinmyheart.blogspot.com
to learn how you can sponsor a sweet child like Viola or Rittah for only $100.oo a year.

Thank you God for blessing us so we can bless others,
Angi & Tim

Update on Viola our sponsored child

Viola

 is the Ugandan child

 we sponsor through

 Compass in my Heart

She and her sister-Rittah moved in with the missionary because her Grandmother could not afford to feed them.  I received this post from Christie(the missionary) today:

Sweet Rittah. We're fostering her and her sister, Viola. Viola's sponsor sent us some money to get them both clothes, as they came into our home with nothing but the outfit they had on and their school uniforms. They were malnourished but are quickly eating us out of house and home. Last night, as I sat on the other end of Skype Video, I watched as George hand Rittah a new shirt, size 10/12, but only because she's so tall for a 7 yr old. Wanna guess what size shorts she wears?  3T

In America we find it hard to believe that a 7 year old wears a size 10/12 shirt but is so thin she is in size 3 toddler shorts, but this is the reality for the kids in Bugaboo Village. 

Consider sponsing a child today. 

Through www.compassinmyheart.blogspot.com

you can learn how you too can

support a child for ONLY $100.00 a YEAR! 

For that $100.00 they will go to school,

 receive a school uniform,

 one meal a day,

 vaccinations,

 school books/supplies,

 and the knowledge of Jesus Christ. 

Can you spare .27 CENTS A DAY? 

You too can CHANGE a childs life.

Kids like Viola and Rittah are counting on US! 

Thank you and love,

Angi,Tim & Viola

Our adoptive friends home-coming story

Our AWAA friends Jen & Brandon Hatmaker now have their children home together.  Thank you God for answered prayers.  Go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26GX9X36ObU&feature=player_embedded
to see their home coming video.

Be inspired to let God make a difference through YOU too!

XOXOXO,
Angi & Tim

1 year wait for our daughter and counting

Hello Cooper friends,

This Friday (8/19/11)

marks

1 year

since our paperwork was sent to Ethiopia. 

We are requesting your prayers.

This Momma and Daddy are ready to see our daughters face.

Aerie's room is ready for her;  her clothes are washed and folded neatly in her drawers, toys line her closet shelves, books are ready to be read, anxious relatives are excited to meet her, friends wait to play, and our arms ache to hold her. Donations are packed and ready for us to take to the Ethiopian Orphanages as well.

We are making a place for her just as Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us.

We have prepared a place for Aerie.

Our home is ready for whenever God chooses to bring her home to us.

Please raise us up in your prayers along with Aerie. We know God is sovereign and we trust HIS timing, even so we are keenly aware that the powers of evil want nothing more than for this precious child to remain an orphan.

So...

we are calling on you to join us in raising this matter up to God in prayer.

Will you joining us in praying that God himself covers our girl with HIS love,

that HE holds her when she cries and protects her from the storm.

Please remember to pray for her biological family too as they make the hard decision to place her in the orphanage. 

Pray they feel God's peace in their decision.

We love you Aerie Paige...

wherever you are may you feel how

VERY loved YOU are!
Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Story from Dadaab, Kenya

You can help save lives in the Horn of Africa.

It was the hole in the ground that got me. It was as deep as it was wide. It was carved, bit by bit, into brick red earth by men wielding shovels and farming tools. The hole didn't have to be too big — just 4' x 4'. It was for a child.

His name was Ibrahim, and he was 3 years old. Ibrahim had come from Somalia with his family seeking shelter, food, water, and medicine. They had arrived days before at Dadaab in eastern Kenya — the world's largest refugee camp. Ibrahim died at a clinic just as Dadaab was registering its 400,000th refugee — most from Somalia — 70 percent of the new arrivals due to drought.

We met Ibrahim's aunt on the windy plains of the camp and she told us about Ibrahim. "He couldn't survive the journey," she said.

I have covered drought and hunger in Kenya for five years now. In October 2008, I lived with a family in Turkana, Kenya, today one of the worst-hit areas in the Horn of Africa. But even then it was bad. The land was barren. Livestock, worth their weight in gold to pastoralist families, had died. I ate what the family ate for five days — relief supplies that amounted to about a cup of food per day. I wanted to see what hunger felt like.
Ibrahim's aunt, Isnino, sits with her baby at Dadaab camp in Kenya. She says her food is finished and that she will have to beg from relatives. "I am worried about the future for myself and my family," she shares.


Workers prepare the grave for 3-year-old Ibrahim, who died from hunger. He is the third child they are burying today.



Not having enough food sapped me of strength and curiosity. I could do little more than sit in the family's hut all day, shielding my skin from the scorching sun. With my energy sapped, I saw hunger in a new way — as a killer of the things inside a person, the will that enables one to persevere.

I am back in the Horn of Africa three years later to cover a drought that seems to have no end.

I returned to Turkana last week, where World Vision is feeding malnourished children nutritious Plumpy'nut™ and providing food and water for their families. The situation is worse than before. I tried to make eye contact with some of the 500 mothers waiting for food in scant shade. But the light had gone out of their eyes. They had no interest in interacting. The drought had finally taken its toll on their steely spirits.

The Turkana mothers' apathy was distressing, but it was the hole in the ground at Dadaab refugee camp that did me in.

Traveling from the camp to a room where I slept in a bed instead of under a tent made of sticks, I thought about that hole and the child, Ibrahim, who would be tenderly placed inside. The brick-red dirt would be replaced. His grave would be topped with thorn bushes to keep the wild animals from desecrating his body. Ibrahim's child-sized mound of earth would join the fresh graves of two other children buried that day in the makeshift cemetery.

Rumbling over the rutted roads, staring out the window at dry land littered with cattle carcasses, I thought about that hole.

And how its size so perfectly matched the empty space inside me.

In Him,

Kari Costanza
World Vision


Kari Costanza, World Vision International's global editor, has touched countless hearts with stories from her trips to Africa. As this recent crisis accelerated, Kari, an award-winning journalist, went to the Horn of Africa once again to witness the suffering of children and parents and the hope that World Vision offers. You can help provide life-saving food and other essentials to starving children in the Horn of Africa.

$4,030 rasied in 1 day!

THANK YOU FRIENDS!  Your generosity astounds me! 

This just goes to show what a few people banding together can do. 

$4,030 of relief to the people of Africa.

  I am blown away.... amazed.

I thank you on behalf of them...

 

and him



and him


Thank you for being HIS hands and HIS feet to our world.

God bless you!

In awe of what GOD has done through you,
Angi & Tim