Letter Day! From Tadesse

Tadesse is only 4 years old so I didn't expect much of a letter from him, but I'm happy to get a tiny glimpse inside his life regardless!

Date: 11/29/2010 (They actually used our calendar. Usually I see letters dated in the Ethiopian calendar. On our calendar November 29, 2010 was 3/20/2003 Ethiopia. If I save these letters for a long time, as I plan to, this will get confusing trying to remember which dates are which.

On to his letter (written by a translator or church member):

Dear Dan & Julie
How do you do? He and his family are fine.
Parents names: Chalitu B & Gezahegn T
Sibling: Tigist
Best friends: Barla?wgn, Binyam, Dawit

My favorite things:
Game: Soccer
Food: egg
School subject: English
Pets: Hen
Color: White
Song: God is love
Holiday: Christmas

I live in a town.

I want to be a doctor.

(His fingerprint.)

He is thankful and happy for your willingness to be his sponsor. He is ICGI student. (What's a ICGI student?)
What is school around you? He likes learning.

Pray for his school, him to be a smart student.

Compassion International: Wolisso Kale Heywet Church (Ethiopia)

I found a blog today about my compassion child, Tadesse's church.

http://markgumm.wordpress.com/2009/03/14/exciting-things-in-ethiopia/

Our Ethiopia team spent the last 2 days visiting Woliso Kale Heywet Church. The church of 1500, located 2 hours outside the capitol of Addis, is doing amazing things in their community to care for the physical and spiritual needs of the people surrounding them. In addition to their span of church ministries, including sending and supporting 8 missionaries and 5 church plants, they also sponsor 18 children through Compassion Intl, and another 29 children/families in their community that are either double orphans, or have parents terminally ill with HIV/AIDS, in order to delay the onset of orphaning these children so they can spend as much time as possible with their parents before they pass away.



We had a wonderful time on Friday playing with the kids through our sports outreach program, and spent time with the pastors and leaders of the church today, hearing their vision and speaking about the future partnership with World Orphans. We are excited to pray and think about what God will do in the future, not only in the lives of the people at Woliso church and their community, but also the impact they will have on short term missions teams that may have a chance to serve alongside them in the future.

The miracle of adoption