Where My Heart Is

Discord drives Somalis to Yemen in record numbers

Story Highlights
Agency attributes surging number of refugees in Yemen to unrest in Somalia
More than 15,000 refugees have come to port city of Aden since January
New routes across the Red Sea to Yemen also contributing to increase

It is sad hard to imagine what a famine really feels like for me, someone who has always had food on the table, and plenty in the pantry to last all month. I don't know what it feels like to go hungry. I don't know what it feels like to look my children in the eye and tell them that there won't be anything for dinner today, because we can't afford anything, or there just isn't anything to be had. I don't know how that feels, and I pray that I never do.

It is devastating to read everyday in the news about how more and more people are going hungry in the world we live in today. In all reality, they live in a different world, they live in a completely different world than mine. Mine has a grocery store, fast food joint and nice restaurant on practically every mile corner; theirs is cold dark and empty. There's no food to put on the table they don't have in the home that leaks and has dirt floors and only one room for everyone to sleep. They work hard simply to stay alive. I go home after sitting in my plush office and sit on the couch as dinner is delivered to my door hot and fresh. I don't know what it feels like to work for a living.

It is raining outside today. They don't get rain, at least not enough to grow the crops they so desperately need simply to stay alive. We can have a garden in our back yard to grow tomatoes and potatoes and corn so that we can just go into our backyards and avoid driving to the store one day. They can't; they simply can't grow anything; seeds and tools and land are very hard to come by, if they are even available at all.

My children will wake up in a warm home with clothes on their back and shoes on their feet and food on the table. They will not ever know what it feels like to beg on the streets for a few coins to buy bread so that they can feed their younger siblings because their parents are no longer able to take care of them because of AIDS. Many children across the world have to do that everyday. They have to do their best to hold their family together, and they are only 12. That is too much for a 12 year old to have to go through. I pray that my kids will only have baseball practice and homework to worry about when they are 12.

I am so beyond blessed to live where I live and to have the things that I have, and don't deserve at all. God is taking care of me; God is taking care of those orphaned children in Africa, only in a different way. And I want to do my part, I want to make a contribution to this rock we call home and leave something good behind after I leave. I want to teach my children how important it is to try to make this big round world a smaller place. To keep those suffering on the other side of this world in our thoughts and prayers and plans. To help them as much as we possibly can and to leave a footprint on their lives.

The only way I know how to do that right now, where I find myself in the story God is writing in me and Dale's lives, is through Compassion International. Compassion is an amazing ministry and a wonderful extension of God's hand here and now. Dale and I have 3 children in Ethiopia whom we have added into our family. I love them as much as I am going to love this little baby Best I will soon bring into this world. These kids are in my heart, even though I have never met them, and may not ever get the opportunity to meet them, I know that they love me and will be forever changed because of the simple 35 dollars a month we send them. They are clothed, fed, educated, cared for and loved through the work of Compassion and they have the chance for a few hours a day to escape, to really be kids, until they have to go back home and help their parent's keep their family together and pay the bills and put food on the table. They get a little glimpse of the Kingdom through Compassion International and I pray that they take that and run with it. That they grow up and change the world they find themselves in; I pray that Bilen, Markos, and Hewan truly love people and remember that they are loved so that they too can go and love others.