Valentine's Day ♥

My fiancé and I celebrated Valentine's on Saturday (us working/school kids don't have much time during the week for dates!)by eating at Cafe do Brazil in North OKC (PHENOMENAL food) and by going to an art exhibition called "Journey to the Congo" put on by No Boundaries International, a missions org here in OK. You guys know art just touched my soul in the best and worst ways, so I was dying as soon as Austin told me where we were going!! He knows me oh so well. :) It was a fantastic night!

But, the main reason I am writing this blog is to share with you all my gift for that sweet guy of mine. Our hearts are entirely broken for Africa and we miss it a great deal. We also love to give each other gifts that give back in some way to one another, because we know the importance of a life filled with serving/loving and giving to others. That's something that I absolutely love about us. And it's really fun and challenging to get creative with gifts for the holidays! That being said...my gift was...



This little sweetheart! He has shown up on my blog a few times before and it's because we just LOVE this child. So, as a surprise for Austin, we are the proud new sponsors of baby Beanium from Drawn From Water in Ethiopia! We went to Drawn From Water on our past trip and it was, by far, our most favorite place that we went there. We got to hold "Baby Bean," as we called him, kiss him, feed him and rock him to sleep. :) But this baby has a very special story as well...

"In rural Africa there are three tribes that practice what is called “mingi”, which loosely translates to mean dirty or unclean. There are many ways in which a child may become “mingi”, but once the label has been placed all children suffer the same fate, they must be killed. But now there is another way, in January of 2009 Lale Labuko an educated man from one of the tribes who practices “mingi” and Yabibal Abebaw worked together with a group of visiting missionaries to start Drawn From Water, an orphanage who’s mission is to take in the children who have been deemed “mingi” and to educate the tribes that these children are a blessing and not a curse. In the three tribes, which practice “mingi”, there are a total of roughly 130,000 people living in hundreds of villages spanning an area totaling hundreds of square miles. It is estimated that more than 1000 children are killed each year because they were “mingi”. Drawn From Water is working to save as many of these children as possible. In the first 12 months 21 children were saved. Our hope is that with God’s help we will be able to reach the tribes with the gospel and ultimately help them see that these children are a blessing and not a curse."--From Drawn From Water ()

Beanium was brought to Drawn From Water at just 10 days old. He was only given water for the first nine days of his life when he was still with his guardians in the Hammer tribe. DFW rescued him and began to give him formula and he put on weight quickly and is now a healthy, happy 8 month old that the nannies at DFW just LOVE. We are blessed to have gotten to spend those few hours with little Bean. He changed our lives and broke our hearts. And this is just one way we can try to return that gift he gave us in those few hours.




Happy Valentines Day! :)