Our church held a Thanksgiving Dinner in November for International young adults and families. We helped organize and setup the dinner and it proved to be a great time of building relationships and meeting new people. We met one family from Ethiopia...

The father's name is Yilma, and he has three girls:  Lydia (age 5), Hannah (age 3) and Christian (age 2.)  Their story is amazing as Yilma has been in the United States for 5 years and is currently in his early 30s.  His story is a sad one though as his wife died in May 2006 from pancreatic cancer when she was only 29 years old.  This left Yilma by himself to care for his three girls.  To make matters worse, his oldest daughter Lydia is autistic and requires full time supervision.  Yilma lost his job as he must be home all the time to care for his girls.  About a month ago he had a friend from Ethiopia come over to the United States, his friend's name is Tesfaum.  Tesfaum does not speak much English but I know he is providing Yilma some much needed help. 

In this family we saw yet another way that God was going to tie our lives to Ethiopia.  We have visited Yilma and his girls several times over the last month.  For Christmas our Life Group at church adopted his family and we provided clothes, toys and food for him, his girls and Tesfaum.  This picture was taken when we delivered the gifts to his house.  It was amazing to see a bare Christmas tree suddenly full with gifts.  Our prayer is that our gifts not ony helped meet some pratical needs in their life but also showed them the love God has for them and that there is hope even as they spend their first Christmas without their mother/wife.  We love Yilma and his family and look forward to spending much more time with them in the future.