We have harvested over 300 strawberries in under a week. Feel free to share your favorite strawberry recipes! Cherry trees, coffee, three-in-one citrus tree, and chives. Grapes galore! This year’s tomato “cages.” Cucumbers. Snow Peas. Lovin’ the nylon netting this year.
Author: Melissa
{#27} Indigenous Efforts
Every parent who has a child by international adoption should really find out what is going on in her child(ren)’s birth countr(ies) in terms of local orphan care. If I had to put care of a child on a continuum, it would look something like this: In an ideal world, children would be raised in...
All roads lead to Ethiopia
Road #1: Derek’s Calendar all started when our friend, Derek, served for a couple years at MTW’s AIDS project in Addis Ababa. Between book club and our Global Outreach [GO] Team at church, we see a lot of Derek and he still has a lot of Ethiopia connections. Road #2: The president of the non-profit...
Potato towers wall
We saw a post like this one at the beginning of the spring and loved it! We’re always trying to use our vertical space more efficiently. We had initially thought we would do towers but then decided a long, narrow wall would take less time to build while still accomplishing its our original purpose…more potatoes...
{#26} Don't Assume
I recently read a post where a mother tells the story of having had her older boys from China home 3 months when they had dinner with a Mandarin-speaking couple only to find out that the boys had no idea they were there to stay. She was heartbroken to realize that they had woken up...
Moving past the material
What is poverty? I often think it’s lack of material resources. I conjure up mental images of third, world, African countries. It’s more than lack of material resources. Brian Fikkert, co-author of When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor… and Yourself, spoke last night at SUMMIT VII and said the most...
Slowing down for best practices
As expected, our time at Summit VII has been empowering, encouraging, overwhelming, educational, and exhausting. We are at a large church in Louisville that is home to 25,000 people! One main theme that keeps popping up in the sessions I am attending is “best practice” in international orphan care. Thoughts: We (westerners) do not have...
{#25} HIV
“Minor, correctable special needs.” Most of us would agree that most kids with cleft palate, small holes in the heart, club feet, and other minor, correctable special needs are really not “special needs” at all. Holt International offers a China program specifically for these children that allows families to bring home children home in less...