Worship, Mother's Day and Plastic

Last night Le and I went to Josh and Amy Bottomly's book signing for their book From Ashes to Africa, which is the story of their infertility and adoption of their son from Ethiopia. We met a few people from our agency who were up from Texas for the event. I even got to meet several people that I have fallen in love with their blogs. As Le and I left, it started on a new and open line of discussion about the world in which we live. And as we drove home, I couldn't help but thanking God for such an amazing experience. Of course, I started to cry. A year ago, Le and I would have been driving home from dinner, complaining about the lack of road construction on the south side of OKC (which is still bad), and caring nothing for the plight of people who went to bed last night with nothing to eat. As we talked~well, Le talked and I cried, I began to understand that this is what we want people to take away from our experience. We want their eyes to be open to the plight of others that share this world and the issues facing our society, locally and globally. To think more about what others need than ourselves. And I understand that you are more passionate about something the closer you are to it, but we pray that through our experience, our story will touch someone else and they will be enlightened to something; perhaps not adoption, maybe another issue that will cause them to become passionate .

Maybe it is this experience, perhaps it is just growing up, but I find myself recycling (Thanks Laura, this is because of you!), contemplating how to make this world a better place (I do believe that one person can change the world, because the "world" is defined as you wish~so changing YOUR world is easy...it's all about how you define it, even if it isn't past your front porch), and buying gifts that only come from the heart, attempting to buy from artists and craftsman. In this spirit of giving, as Mother's Day is approaching, I found a fantastic artist to buy my mother's day gifts from. I found her on Etsy.com (which is a new addiction). Her store name is Dos Besitos and she has amazing adoption gifts. For those of you who will be receiving a mother's day gift from me (Aunt J~this includes you), you are forbidden from looking at this site until after Mother's Day weekend, as it will ruin the surprise! But for those of you, who need a great gift, this is the spot for you.

I have been listening to a lot of really great Christian music, but I felt as though I needed a good praise album to sing by myself in my car. I found it Easter weekend in Michael W. Smith's new album "A New Hallelujah". I have been blown away. I bought it because on two of the tracks, he sings with the African Children's Choir and it hasn't left my Ipod since. So for those of you who need to spend some time worshipping and need a little help (or at least a trained voice to play over yours in the car), check it out. And for those of you who have fallen in love with Africa too, buy the DVD so you can watch the African Children's Choir perform!

This pic always puts me in a good mood. It is Walter's Halloween costume and he was NOT happy about wearing it~so he changed his world...2 seconds after I took this pic, he ripped off his outfit, but kept the beef jerky!