I love God. I'm a Mom. I'm a Mom to children who were once considered orphans.  You see, to the Lord, the orphaned children are not "someone else's child"... an orphan is HIS child.

See, my "story" WAS going to go like this: small town Iowa girl goes to Bible college in the big city. She will meet a boy that wants to be a pastor.  She will marry the pastor. She will take the pastor back to central Iowa where she will teach music then stay at home with all of the pastors little white babies until the good Lord takes her home.

YEAH... THAT IS NOT HOW IT HAPPENED. :-)

Well.. the first few bullet points are true.  I did go to Bible college and I did meet a wonderful man right away.  That wonderful man wanted to be a doctor.  During the journey to become a doctor he traveled a lot and began to see the world much more as it is and I went on that journey with him and that passion began.  The story, however, continued to change.  We wanted to start a family and learned rather quickly that it would just never happen.  Childhood cancer came back to haunt us 10 years later in an unexpected way.  Our journey to adoption began, and through that we have two beautiful sons.  Lucas(3) is from Colombia and Ben is Ethiopian (15 months).

So you can see, orphan care just became personal to me.  I can look in their little faces and EASILY see how they could be one of the other little kiddos this project is about.  The truth is, it could have been your child, your neice, your nephew, or YOU.

I traveled to Haiti after the earquake and returned in 2011 while waiting for Ben to come home. That's just one of the many travels I've taken, but that's a much longer story!  I will be traveling to Haiti in March after GO Threads is complete to see the sewing centers and learn/work in the ministry there. I hope to be on the ground in Uganda as well sometime in 2012.

Why is GO Threads so important?

These bulk purchase orders we are creating through your donation are building the capital phase of these already established businesses that are run by the Haitian and Ugandan church. As in the United States, it takes little for a new small business to fail: a few bad months, your truck breaks down, a hurricane floods your basement, etc.  Imagine that you are doing that in the world of no insurance, limited resources, no contractors, and no fire department.  One small fire could destroy your work and cost your eager staff their jobs. This sends them home empty handed. This means they can't feed their children. This means they may need to give them up... and the cycle repeats.

That's what Global Orphan is all about. How can we come aloneside the indigenous church to be the "fuel" for their work?  This campaign is striving to build the capital so that when the storm comes they have some reserve.  They can use this profit to hire more workers, to make more textiles.  The uniforms you are ordering are going to the children that need them most, so that they can go to schools that are already free.  In these countries, you MUST have a uniform to attend school.  We may not like that fact or think it is right, but it is the way it is. 

Here is how your $20 (or any donation) breaks down: part to pay for the labor of the actual uniform (fueling the business), the businesses are required to tithe 10% of earnings BACK to the church FOR ORPHAN CARE according to their contract with us (HOW COOL IS THAT??).  The remainder goes straight to orphan care. The uniform sends a child to school. Depending on the success of this campaign, uniforms will go to the kids within the Global Orphan villages first to get those kids to school, followed by the poorest families within the church, followed by the children in the community areas that the church is in or frankly, anybody else they can find that they think needs one.

Our goal for 2012 is 15,000 uniforms... and that's creating a whole lot of economic awesomeness for these communities and it;s putting a whole lot of eager folks to work and out of the aid line in Haiti and Uganda.  This begins the move towards sustainability and self sufficiency.

Oh, and you and I are obeying God's command to care for widows and orphans in distress, in a whole new and amazing way.

I love you already.  Come join me :-)

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." - James 1:27.  I think it's a fantastic idea :-)