Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Summit

I have been wanting to post for a while now about our trip to The Summit but some how I just can't seem to find the words to express all that is circling through my heart and mind.  Despite that I will give it my best shot!  I am sure it will take several days to write about all of the different things we learned so I will start with the basic info.

After 1 delayed flight, 2 stops, 1 missed connection, 1 rental car, 1 4 hour drive across 3 states we finally arrived in Louisville, KY at 5am on Thursday morning...just in time to sleep for 2 hours and make it to the conference by 8:30am!!  My sweet husband was willing to do anything to get me there!  As crazy as it was I throughly enjoyed my middle of the night drive with my love.  We laughed, talked, sang old songs together, and laughed some more!

Finally we made it!!


The Summit is put on every year by the Christian Allience for Orphans.  There are 3 main focuses for the Allience...FOSTER CARE, ADOPTION, and GLOBAL ORPHAN CARE.  Within those 3 topics are tons of other areas involving orphans.

The numbers themselves are staggering...

  • at least 500,000 AMERICAN children are a part of the foster care system...this is a huge area where our churches could really make a difference!!
  • around the world there are an estimated 147,000,000 orphans...not all of them can be adopted which leaves us with a need to find some way to care for the orphans who will never have a family (Global Orphan Care).
  • those numbers don't even include the millions of children who live on the streets around the world.  It is estimated that there are between 750,000- 1,000,000 street children in America alone.
And those are just a few of the numbers!

The fact is there are MILLIONS of children in need IN OUR OWN BACKYARDS and around the world.  The bible is clear that we are ALL called to look after orphans and widows and to care for the needy.

So the question is...

What will we do?

What will you do?

The next posts will hopefully give you some ideas on how you can get involved!

3 comments:

Keri said...

I'm tired just reading about your trip. ;) Looking forward to your next post.

Nana's Nuggets said...

So Happy:) you made it! And yes just those #'s of all the driving, missed flight, etc. made me tired as well! But God directed the foot steps! Whoo~Yoo! Love it!

Beth in NC said...

Hi Jenna! I am your newest follower.

We adopted our beautiful daughter - had her since birth.

I have a dear friend who has 2 biological, 1 daughter from Guatemala, 3 from Ethiopia, and now she is in the process of adopting a young boy from Europe who is HIV positive. Please remember Deanna in your prayers.

I hope you'll come visit my blog as well.

In Him,
Beth