I’ve dreamed about Ethiopia every night since my return from that amazing country. One thing I am learning is that you really don’t visit Ethiopia when you cross its borders. It visits you. Ethiopia — its people, its cultures, and especially its orphans — presses itself in upon your heart with great weight. I’m still trying to prayerfully process everything I witnessed and experienced there. There were several occasions while in Ethiopia when I sat in complete silence — not because there was nothing in my heart worth saying, but because I could not put what was in my heart into words. I’m still finding appropriate words difficult to come by.

So, what I thought I would do is blog a series of posts that contain pictures taken during our time there. After all, they say that “a picture’s worth…” I took this first picture at one of the orphanages with which our agency is now working. We had just handed out colored pencils and paper to the children. They were all very quick to sit down to start drawing. (Donations can be made here.)

[[ This photo has been removed to honor Ethiopia's desire that photos of orphans not be displayed on websites. ]]

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans…in their affliction” (James 1:27).