Why Ethiopia?

I feel passionately that orphans, whatever their nationality, need loving families. As a family we feel called to adopt a child from Ethiopia. There are roughly 5 million orphaned children who need a family in Ethiopia. But there are also 800 thousand children in America that pass through the foster care system each year, and they too need a family. In fact, there are 143-147 million (depending on who you ask) children, orphans, who need a family in the world.

That being said, some of the reasons we really do feel called to Ethiopia are that AIDS, famine, and poverty are reeking havoc on that nation's families. One in 7.7 children die before their first birthday, over 50% of children under 5 are stunted by malnutrition, and most are at great risk for being mutilated, raped, abducted, forced into marriage at a young age, or even being trafficked in the black market for body parts. Millions of parents cannot feed their children. Poverty, sin, and perversion have no mercy on these little guys. Children who have no parents, who live on the street, are lost, you can see it in their eyes. That's true in Ethiopia, America, India, China, Haiti, Russia, and the world round. We're doing what we feel called to do to help, to love, to find our children, to be parents for the parentless.