A Face To Africa

 

I wrote my first children's book three summers ago.

On a legal pad.

While vacationing at my sister's house.

Watching my two kids swim in her crystalline pool.

I was supposed to be working.

All that yellow paper was designed for some thing legal.

But it was destined for some thing lovely.

As the kids swam and splashed with their new aunt,

I swam and splashed through my tears at the edge of the pool.
 

How so much can change in a small span of time.

We hadn't been together four whole months yet.

English was still an accent on their tongues.

Most smells and sights were new and each experience more exotic than the last.
And Africa was still very much in my heart and thoughts.
 

I think I've said before that I believe David when he said

"God sets the lonely in families."

I believe that because I never knew how lonely I was until I got my kids.

As the kids splashed and played,
I wrote.
Wrote the story of the boy who walked every day for water.
A boy who carried the liquid on his back,
while my new kids covered themselves in water I was telling them not to drink.
I wanted a way for kids every where to learn about his story that stole my heart.
A story that would bring him and others clean water.

I found an illustrator that weekend.
It was a pure divine encounter.
He fell in love with the story too.
As he began sketching the outline, we met several times.
He asked me when I envisioned my story set in Africa, did I see a face?
I laughed out loud.
But of course, I did.

This was the first picture I sent to him:

This was one of the first illustrations Jerry sent back:

AHHH!!!
My words didn't seem to do the art justice.
But now at least Africa had a face.


In other news, I just heard from the printer and books will ship November 21!
I'll start taking pre-orders in the next few days.
Scared.
Scared out of my mind.
But the kind of scared you get as you top the incline of a roller coaster. :)
 



Running Over

Some of you know that today is World Water Day. Some of you are asking what does that mean? Why is World Water Day any more significant that Cupcake Day or Hug A Stranger Day? Why should you even care?

For you, I have no answer. Maybe you shouldn't care. Maybe you should stop reading right now and go to the sink for your pot of clean water to make coffee and forget that you were reading a woman's words who was discussing water at all.

But for me, I do not have that luxury. My eyes have been opened and I have seen the water crisis and I have held one of its victims in my arms. I could bore you with facts and staggering numbers of humanity that has no clean water source, but if you were to ask me to put a face with a victim of clean water, there is only one:




Each day, a boy that I love, that I call my son and who calls me 'mama', walks from his home to an unclean water source. It 's a disgusting river where not only trash and debris are congealed together to form a murky liquid, but during my time with him, I observed tens of people using it as a public toilet. But for this boy, my son, there is no other water source around. While I am fighting on my knees and with my hands to see his situation changed, I've been advised of new challenges in the war for clean water. And please, I'm not being overly dramatic about this being a war, thousands die every day from water related issues.

Today in India, 1/3 of the wells that have been built in the last twenty years are broken. WHAT? People have access to clean water and the pump is broken? That makes me more mad than having no access to water at all. That's where the Adventure Project comes in. Over 100 bloggers across the globe are donating their blogs today in an attempt to get 10 of their blog readers to donate $20 each to help fix broken wells in India.

The Adventure Project is partnering with a group from WaterAid who trains women to repair wells. I LOVE that! Empowering women and attacking a problem at the same time. Check out the people in this photo. Note that the warrior in the middle, leading this group, is female.

You can go to http://www.theadventureproject.org/ to read about my amazing friends at The Adventure Project and you can go http://www.theadventureproject.org/typetap to make a donation. 10 readers giving $20 would mean $200 raised from YOU today!

So until K has a well in Ethiopia, let's fix the ones that are broken.

There is a verse in Luke that I've always loved. It's a promise of God's blessings on those who follow Him and give of themselves. It goes like this "Give and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38. Last night I read a tweet from one of my favorite social justice heroes, Bob Goff, who is in Uganda right now building a school. "We've been pressed down and shaken together; now its time for us to get to the running over part."

So today, let's get to the running over part!