It’s been way too long since I updated you all on the progress at the Adami Tulu and Ziway schools in Ethiopia. Because of your generosity, we raised the 2012 construction budget of $220,000 in record time and construction is well underway at both school sites!

Digging the footers for the new Adami Tulu classroom building…

The walls about halfway up…

Earlier today…walls are up and roof is on!

Five miles away at the Ziway school, the building is two stories and a lot more complex. Here is one of the massive foundation holes they dug.

The staircase up the side of the building.

And work is beginning on the second story!

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. Keeping families together and giving them the tools to break the cycle of poverty isn’t easy…but we’re making real progress, thanks to your generosity.

I loved getting to hear from some of my favorite speakers from last year’s retreat. I’m so blessed by these women who chose to spend their weekend sharing their wisdom and experience with all of us younger moms. This year there was a new speaker, Carissa Woodwyk, who spoke about her experience as a Korean adoptee. I’m always hungry to hear from grown adoptees. I guess part of this stems from my anxiety as an adoptive momma. Am I doing things right? Am I loving them enough? Am I respecting their past, acknowledging their pain, giving them what they need to heal?

Carissa reminded me of the importance of letting Josiah and Evelyn have their own story. Their lives didn’t begin when they came to our home. They have a past before us. All kids who have been adopted have a past; even babies who are adopted at birth have a past before their adoptive parents. To tell their story as if it started with us is not only selfish, it’s damaging. So I was inspired by Carissa to write down all the details of Josiah’s and Evelyn’s stories before they joined our families. No, I don’t know every detail, but I know a lot.

I thought I would share with you the opening I wrote for Evy. I’m not sharing the details because those are for her only, to share if and when she wants to. But I hope that this will maybe inspire other adoptive moms (and bio moms – everyone would love to have their story written down!).

Dear Evelyn,

So here is your story, though it’s only the beginning. As I write this, you are three and a half years old, and yet you already have such a deep history. But your future is so much wider. I can’t wait to see the plans that God has in store for you . . .

“Hi.  My name is Richard.  I am in grade 7.  I stay with my sister, Josephine.  I have three brothers and two sisters.  My other sister attends Lifesong and is in grade 5.  Her name is Emelia.  My mother stays in a village far away.  My father died in 2006.  Thank you for supporting me and may God bless you and add more days to your life.  My favorite subject is art.”

Richard is just ONE of the 253 students that we are blessed to serve at Lifesong Zambia.  He is also one of the students that will be moving on to grade 8 this fall.  

If you join, please include my name, Mary Beth Picker, in your e-mail.

Have you ever noticed how much Jesus talks about His Kingdom in the gospels? Almost every time He speaks, He mentions something about the Kingdom. But for some reason, it’s a topic that I believe a lot of Christians are uninformed or misinformed about. I know that I was.

Here’s what Perspectives has to say about it: “God’s kingdom is a progressive victory over satanic dominion in order to rescue people of all nations from the power of darkness, and ultimately, to undo the curse over all creation.” And also, “The kingdom has already arrived! But it operates in a more hidden way, breaking satanic power, delivering people of all nations from the grip of evil’s power and offering the many blessings of God’s rule.”

I think that what can be most confusing to believers is the timeline. We sometimes tend to think that God’s kingdom is something that we will experience after the return of Christ. But I believe that the bible indicates that God’s kingdom is something that is present and active on earth . . . today. I believe that the “Kingdom of God” arrived with the first coming of Christ. It is here, invading the darkness of this world, and one day, when Christ returns, it will be complete.

Here’s a hint that puzzled me for quite a while. In Luke 9, Jesus sends out his apostles to “proclaim the kingdom of God.” And Luke records that they went from village to village “preaching the gospel.” Now, what do you consider to be, “the gospel?” I always thought of “the gospel” as the death and resurrection of Jesus. But if that’s all that “the gospel” is, then what on earth were the apostles preaching about in Luke 9, before Christ had been killed and resurrected? They were preaching that the Kingdom of God had arrived, and that fact is a significant, very important part of “the gospel.” If we are spreading “the gospel” by only telling them about Christ’s death and resurrection, we are not giving them the whole story.

God’s invasion of this Satan-occupied world began with Jesus’ birth. Satan was fully defeated at the death and resurrection of Christ, and Satan’s kingdom will be fully and completely destroyed at Christ’s return, at which time Christ will restore and reconcile all creation to Himself.

So, if God’s Kingdom is alive and well on earth today, what does that mean for us? Well, if you’re a believer, it means that you are living in the Kingdom. It means that Jesus is more than just your Savior (as vital as that is), He’s also your King. As J.P. Moreland writes, “The gospel of the Kingdom is the idea that the direct rule of God is now available to all in and through Jesus Christ, and that one may live from the power of that rule in the realm of the Kingdom.” Right now the Kingdom is invisible (to some), but at the return of Christ everyone will see and know it.

Now here’s why this truth, and specifically N.T. Wright’s book, was life-changing for me. I used to believe that this present world was in horrible shape and that the best that Christians could do was just to “grin and bear it” until Christ returns and takes us away from this place. As Wright says, “Why try to improve the present prison if release is at hand? . . . That is precisely the effect created to this day by some devout Christians who genuinely believe that ‘salvation’ has nothing to do with the way the present world is ordered.” Wright says that actually “classic Christianity is a sense of continuity as well as discontinuity between the present world (and the present state), and the future, whatever it shall be, with the result that what we do in the present matters enormously” (emphasis mine).

So, we are actually living in a time of transition, as Satan’s hold on the world is being further and further weakened, and Christ’s Kingdom is spreading. It may not appear that way, but that is reality. Our purpose in this world is to be “agents of the transformation of this earth, anticipating the day when, as we are promised, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea’” (Wright). Jesus works through us, His followers, to spread His Kingdom.

The things we do, the people we touch, the systems that we set right, the justice we seek matters immensely in this present world. As you can see, this leads to many more issues and topics. I’ll save that for another day and end with one more quote from N.T. Wright. (You really should get the book.)

“Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.”

I’ve found myself wrestling with the implications of this lesson this week. First of all, it’s just human nature to overemphasize my own role in God’s plans, but the truth is that, while God loves me in ways I can’t even describe, His plans are ultimately about His own glory, not about my happiness. My perspective changes when I realize that all of creation, and every word of the Bible, isn’t about me; it’s about Him. God is working out a plan in my life and in the history of the world that will glorify Himself and make His name known across the nations. Sometimes this is hard to swallow, particularly in times of suffering.

It’s easy to doubt God’s goodness when we don’t understand why He has allowed pain and tragedy in our lives. Sometimes the pain just doesn’t make sense when we look at it from our own perspective. But, as our speaker, Mark Palfreeman, said Monday night, “Our story only makes sense if it’s about God’s glory.” And I would add, that we can only appreciate God for who He really is when we remember that truth. If we are looking at pain from our own perspective, it may seem that God has failed, or that He has forgotten us, or that He is too weak to help. But when I remind myself, that everything that God allows in my life is for the purpose of His glory, I can remain confident in His power and His plan, even when I don’t understand His ways. That’s the encouraging side of this truth. Whatever happens, believers must trust that God’s plan to glorify Himself will be fulfilled, and we can join Him on His mission when we remember that this is His ultimate goal. Whatever your story is, the point is God’s glory. He desires that His name, His character, and His glory be known across the nations. Worship is the goal.

Scripture records this fact repeatedly, but we often miss it.

Exodus 9:16 “But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”

Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Numbers 14:21 “But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD . . .”

Isaiah 43:25 “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins.”

John 4:23 “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.”

John 17:4,6 “I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which you have given me to do . . . I manifested your name to the men you gave me out of the world.”

Every blessing and every trial we are given is for the purpose of glorifying God. He is seeking worshipers from every corner of the globe; worship is the response He desires from us.

So how does this relate to missions? This is probably one of the most helpful truths I learned this week. Our motivation for mission work of all types must be primarily the glory of God. There are many secondary goals, not least of which are the salvation of men and the pursuit of justice in the world, but we cannot forget that our primary goal is the worship and glory of God. This saves us from what the text calls the “false dichotomy” between evangelism and social action. They are both important, and, when we are seeking God’s glory first, they will both be accomplished. As 1 Peter 2:12 says, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles [unbelievers] honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” The purpose of our good deeds is to bring glory to God.

This lesson has greatly impacted my perspective of my own daily life. While I have a great desire to serve God in many different ways, His first desire for me is that I will be a worshiper. And I’m coming to believe that when my heart’s desire is to worship God, all of the other aspects of our faith, mission, social justice, evangelism, speaking truth, caring for the vulnerable and downtrodden, will fall into place.

Can we worship from dawn until dusk, in the mundane and the thrilling, between the pangs of childbirth and life’s final breaths? Can we spread the story of our amazing God across the globe with the purpose of raising praise to Him from every corner of creation, that people from every tribe, every tongue, and every nation will praise the Living God?

“I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.” Psalm 45:17

Here I am with my two favorites:  Kaleb and Birkie

Do you remember Minyahal?

Praying at the morning flagpole ceremony.

So precious; I could just eat them up.

We were there just a few days before Ethiopian Christmas, so the kids put on a program for us.

Behind us is the building that we raised funds for last year.

While we were there, Casey and I photographed the 200 students so that we could launch our sponsorship program. It was a precious time to photo each of their beautiful faces.

Here I am with sweet, sweet Kaleb.  I love this kid.

Now you have the opportunity to join us in our work at Adami Tulu. We are looking for sponsors for each of the 198 students there. For $19 a month, you can sponsor a student and help us continue to provide him or her with a high quality education, two nutritious meals every school day, and an introduction to the love of Christ. Casey and I can personally vouch that we have seen and touched each kid there. We have seen the amazing work that God is doing through this school, and we are confident that your money will be used wisely.

Find out more at the Adami Tulu Project.

Meet the Children We’re Sponsoring

Kaleb

Birkie

A couple weeks ago, Casey and I began taking the class called “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.” We had our first lesson last night, and I’m already blown away. This material is incredible, mind-boggling, and life-changing. There are several people in our class that are taking it for the second time; it’s that good.

From their website: “Perspectives helps believers from all walks of life see how they can get threaded into God’s story of redeeming people from every tribe, tongue, and nation to Himself. From Genesis to the prophets, Jesus Christ to the early church, and Constantine to today, you will see how God has been moving, how the global Church has responded, and what the greatest needs in world evangelization remain today. It isn’t a class about missions, but a course on how every believer can be intimately woven into the story of God using His people to be a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.”

Each week we cover a different topic with a different speaker, which we prepare for by reading through several assigned articles. In order to share what we are learning and to help myself process and record what God is teaching me, I plan to blog about each lesson.

Last night’s lesson was called, “The Living God Is A Missionary God,” and our speaker was Todd Ahrend, author of The Abrahamic Revolution and In This Generation. Todd works with Mission Revolution and The Traveling Team.

Todd shared with us many amazing things in his two one-hour sessions. He showed us how the Bible shows God to be a Missionary God from the very beginning. In the introduction to the Bible (Genesis 1-11), God creates His world, which is then compromised by sin. This sin results in a loss of relationship between God and His creation. After the people build the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, God scatters the nations across the face of the earth. But immediately following that, He calls Abram in Genesis 12; this begins the plot of the whole Bible, God restoring people to a relationship with Him, which concludes in Revelation with His victory over evil.

I’ve studied Abraham several times before. I know all about the promises that God gave him and the nation that was birthed from his obedience, but I never understood the point of God’s call or God’s plan for the Hebrew people before last night. God did not call and bless Abraham just because he was a favorite, or because God had given up on all other people. He called and blessed Abraham in order that all the people of earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3) and so that all people could come to know Him. In the same way, God did not elect the Israelites, the Chosen People, because He was fed up with all other people and wanted to only develop a relationship with Abraham’s descendants. His plan for the Israelites was always that they would point the rest of mankind to God. That they would serve as His priests, His mediators, between the lost people of the earth and the Creator of the universe. As Isaiah 49:6 says, “‘It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’”

I think a part of me always assumed that God only extended salvation to the Gentiles through the new covenant because the Jewish people had rejected Him. But now I see that God always desired a relationship with all people. He only chose the Israelites to be the vehicle for bringing His name to the nations. Think of Jonah, the Hebrew prophet sent to the Ninevites, a Gentile nation. God was reaching out to establish a relationship with those people, and He wanted the Hebrew people to help Him with this mission. Here’s how Todd Ahrend drew the diagram:

But the Hebrew people rejected this mission from God (just as Jonah initially did). They didn’t want to share God with the other nations; they would rather keep their relationship with God to themselves. As Todd Ahrend explained it, God intended to reveal Himself to the Israelites so that they could in turn reveal Him to all the peoples of the earth. He blessed Israel so that they could be a blessing to the nations, “that [His] way may be known on earth, [His] saving power among all nations” (Ps. 67:2). But instead, Israel’s disobedience ended up giving God a bad reputation on earth; they failed their mission. Ezekiel 36:20-22 says, “wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of them, ‘These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his land.’ But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of Israel had profaned among the nations to which they came. ‘Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.’”

When Jesus entered the scene in the New Testament, the people in the synagogue try to kill Him when He reminds them of how God had reached out to the Gentiles (Luke 4:20-30). Later on in His ministry, the Pharisees and Sadducees demand a sign from heaven. In His response, He alludes to Jonah (remember the reluctant missionary?) and says that He will give them no other sign (Matthew 16). Immediately after this account, Jesus asks for Peter’s confession of faith and then describes how He will build His church. At this point, Jesus is relieving the Jewish people of their mission. Now the Church will be the ones to fulfill God’s plan of making His name known among the nations.

Peter echoes this transition himself in 1 Peter 2:9, when he now addresses Christ’s Church as the “chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” And Galatians 3:14 says, “in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.”

So, if you are a believer today, you are now the seed of Abraham. You are the recipient of the promises and blessings that God originally gave to Abraham. But, we can’t forget the reason that God gave the blessing: that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:4), that we will be “a light for the nations, that [His] salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Is. 49:6).

So, the question is: are we fulfilling our mission as Christ’s Church? I think sometimes we are misled into thinking that our relationship with God is only for our own benefit, and the benefit of our own children. Just like the Israelites, we sometimes like to believe that the Church exists to be a warm and comfy community only for ourselves, as if there were only two bubbles in the diagram: God and the Church. But if God’s only intentions for us after we receive Him are to deepen our relationships with Him and other believers, why would He leave us here on earth?

That is what I’ve learned and been wrestling with, and this is only Lesson One. Worth the price of admission, huh? I can’t wait to see what else God has in store for us.

Children at the Lifesong Ethiopia school are fed 2 nutritious meals per day, provided with a quality education, and taught the message of Jesus Christ. This gives kids like Beza the hope they need in order to break free from gripping poverty.

We currently have a need to build a 12-room expansion to our existing school, in order to reach more children like Beza. We have been blessed, by the generosity of a donor, to be able to MATCH all donations to the Ziway and Adami Tulu Schools between now and December 31st… up to $130,000!!!

This week, the 5^th through the 9^th, we invite you to join Hope Ethiopia:100. We are looking for 100 people to give a one-time $100 donation

Joining this team will not only give hope to kids like Beza, but your dollars will be matched AND you’ll be entered into a drawing for a FABULOUS gift basket (details below).

*Gift basket includes: $100 itunes or amazon gift card, Lifesong t-shirt, Lifesong cookbook,Journey On CD, handmade necklaces & note cards by orphans in Zambia, handmade ornament from a child in Ukraine, 5 bags of Gobena coffee, Gobena coffee mug, Gobena t-shirt, andGobena tote bag. This basket is worth over $250!


*To commit via check, please send an email to info@lifesongfororphans.org. Make check payable to Lifesong for Orphans, indicate ‘preference Hope Ethiopia: 100′ in the memo.

10 things we’re thankful for this year (in no particular order):

• God’s daily provision in our lives
• Our sweet, but often crazy kids!
• Our awesome parents and extended family
• I get to work from home EVERY DAY
• Great friends to share life with
• Our friends & partners in God’s mission to care for orphans
• The wonderful people at Lifesong
• Our church family
• The guys I work with at Modern Tribe
• Grace! (I need it often)

We pray that your day is filled with the blessings of family, delicious food, and thankfulness. What are you thankful for this year?

When we were in Ethiopia last August, we got the chance to meet Dawit Lambebo. Dawit teaches Amharic to foreigners, and is quite good at it. So good, in fact, that his friends encouraged him to write a book about learning Amharic, and he did.

His book is designed to aid English speakers who are beginning to learn Amharic, and focuses on conversational Amharic. It also comes with an audio CD so that you can hear the pronunciations. The book is printed in Ethiopia, so, as far as I know, you can only get it there.

We are selling these as a fundraiser for Adami Tulu. You can buy one for only $30 shipped, and we will donate all of the profits to Lifesong Adami Tulu. (And, of course, those donated profits will be matched ’til the end of the year!)

These would make a great resource for Ethiopian adoptive families, or people who are just interested in Ethiopia. Each one comes with a CD, and we will ship it quickly! We only have 25, so order now if you want one. Please purchase one and support Lifesong Adami Tulu!

ALL SOLD OUT!