What 1 Year in a Church Can Do...

This past year at my church, Newsong, we've been on mission to raise money, awareness, and relational partnership with our friends in Malawi. God's done a ridiculous amount in the hearts of our people toward the widows, orphan, poor, and lost of Malawi. This 4-minute video shows an inside look into what has happened in the past year. This is cause to CELEBRATE! The videos stories and facts challenges me, humbles me, inspires me, and definitely moved me to tears. Please check it and and share with a friend!

Newsong Church Unleash Campaign - Malawi Update [Newsong Irvine | 09.27.2010] from Newsong Church on Vimeo.

If you want to know more about the organizations we've partnered with or how Newsong has arranged ourselves toward this kind of transformation, I'd LOVE to share more. Email me or comment here and we'll talk!

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep...

...I pray the Lord my babies keep.

As Brian and I fall asleep tonight, the courts in Ethiopia will re-open and our paperwork will make it's way on to the judge's desk. We are praying for expedient attention to our file and swift court dates assigned.

While we've been told not to expect court dates until 2011, our faithful family and friends have been praying in faith, hope, and love that we'd have our babies home by the end of '10. I lack faith in that reality, but if you also feel compelled to pray that please do! He can move the mountains and anything is possible with God. I do believe that [just not for our family, I guess].

In other news...this weekend I received 4 more pics of our Ethiopian beauties from a mom picking up her son at the same orphanage our kids are at! Included in these pics were the first pictures I got of our kiddos playing together!!!!! Of course, I cried.

She wrote from Ethiopia: We saw your sweet kids. Oh my. They are precious. I just can't tell you. They are sooooo sweet. They had them in the upstairs room, the same room where we spent our third day with Isaiah on our first trip. They were sitting on the rug, and the nurse and nannies had them sitting close with some toys. they asked your son to share with your daughter, and he did it right away. So sweet!!! His eyes. . . yes, you know how striking they are.

They had to wake Baby T up from her nap, so she was a little groggy, but she was still just precious.

My cup overflows...

A Family Affair

This may surprise some of you, but I am a white girl from the Midwest. I like to think of myself as half Puerto Rican [because when 2 become 1 it only makes sense that I'm half Puerto Rican...thanks babe!], half black [mainly because of my love for rap/hip hop and Ethiopia], and half Asian [Korean probably fits me best, but I'm a melting pot of Asian ethnicities...thanks Newsong!]. I know those fractions equal more than "1", but I gotta lot of personality!

My entire extended family is very white [minus my Hispanic husband, a Jamaican-by-culture sister-in-law, an Aussie cousin-in-law, and a Guatemalan cousin-in-law] - born and raised in the corn fields of Central Illinois. I don't even remember knowing anyone with another color or from another culture until late in elementary school when we moved from the small Midwestern town we lived in to Dallas, Texas. Pretty much everyone I knew growing up looked like me, even though I sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children". The "red, yellow, and black" children I sang about in that song were more theoretical than real.
But God's doing a crazy cool thing in my family!!! I'm not sure where it started but loving the little children of the world has caught a hold in the hearts of our family. I have 12 cousins and 2 brothers and the call to care for orphans is taking off!

• My cousin, Erin, and her family are looking to adopt a little girl from China.
• My cousin, Jeff, and his family are adopting a special needs boy from China.
• My cousin, Todd, and his family are adopting a Downs Syndrome little boy from Eastern Europe.
• I know other cousins are sponsoring kids through organizations like World Vision and Compassion International.
• My entire family has been prayerfully and emotionally supportive as we've sought to adopt our 2 kiddos.
  
• A number of my family have financially supported our adoption in ways that have brought head shaking and tears.
  

God is growing our hearts for caring for orphans!!! I never would've imagined our homogeneous family becoming so colorful, but God often does what's beyond our imagination to grow our faith and his Kingdom. Ever so grateful today for my increasingly colorful and diverse family! I am utterly convinced that it will grow us so much as we experience God through orphan care and different cultures.

Excited and proud of the Getz and Neukomm familia today!!! What a fun journey we are on together.