About Beautiful Feet

In 2007, we adopted our daughter, Kidist, from Ethiopia.  Dave and I travelled to Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, to pick her up and bring her home.  We spent a week in the country, mostly in Addis, but also travelling to southern Ethiopia to meet Kiki's birth family.  During our trip, God placed a call on my heart.  I didn't know when or how, but I knew I would return to that beautiful, tragic place.  The children and the women of Ethiopia were with me forever.

Last summer, my friend Elizabeth mentioned that her boys' pediatrician was going to be taking a group on a mission trip to Ethiopia.  My heart jumped in my chest.  Was this my chance to return?  Three years had passed.  How different would it be?  How different was I?  What was in store for me there?  What could I do for those women and children that had been seared into my heart?  What about Kiki's family?  Were they still alive?  Healthy and well and ready to see us again?  God had all those answers.  Through Elizabeth, I met Chad and Michelle, incredible people that love the Lord and have also adopted a child from Ethiopia.  To make a long story short, I returned to Ethiopia with Chad and Michelle (and Elizabeth and my mom and about 20 other wonderful people) in January of 2011.  The trip was taken through Hope for His Children, Chad and Michelle's not-for-profit organization which was created to show the love of Jesus Christ to the orphaned, abandoned, and impoverished children of the world. 

The theme of that trip was "changed.2011".  It fulfilled its promise.  I was changed.  I was also set on fire with a vision of ministry to the women of Ethiopia (and through the women to the children, as well).  Life has circumstances, however, and this year provided some really hard ones for me.  The vision faded, until Dave and I decided to return to Ethiopia this winter with Hope for His Children's January, 2012 mission trip - changed.2012.  We are taking both our kids.  It will be my third trip to Ethiopia and Dave's second.  It will be Carlos' first, and it will be Kiki's first trip back since coming home to us in March of 2007.

Join us on this grand adventure!  Let's see what God has in store for all of us!