19 seconds

The statistic is that every 19 seconds a child in Ethiopia becomes an orphan due to Aids. I’ve heard this statistic before and was reminded of it last week. It seems unimaginable to me. Every 19 seconds. That’s huge! That doesn’t include the children that become orphans because of other deadly diseases or poverty that the poorest of Americans can’t even fathom. Just so you can see a rough number (that is if I did my math correctly); it’s

4547

Roughly 4,547 children are orphaned daily due to Aids in the relatively small country of Ethiopia. On a map, Ethiopia looks only a bit larger than Texas. So it makes this statistic even more unbelievable to me. How do they even keep up with well over 4,000 new orphans a day? I don’t pretend to know much about Ethiopia. But I would assume that they can’t keep up with numbers like those. How would America keep up with a number like that? I can’t eve imagine it. And so I would assume many many many children die.
And so I wonder if one day in our future Jeremy and I will be making a trip to Ethiopia to pick up one or two little ones. It’s been a thought for me for a while. I’m not sure if I can sit with that statistic and not do something. Even if it’s just 1 or 2 little lives that are changed.
I know that with adoption the need truly is everywhere. I don’t think that you can choose the wrong path. There was a real need to find a family for Holden last May. And I know that God purposed us for one another. There is a real need through the state where children are being neglected and abused. And obviously there is a need internationally, outside of what we are able to see each day, where it’s just an entirely different world for those children.