Blessed Beyond Measure

Dear family & friends,

Below you will see a post from a family in process of adopting from our agency. They actually live in Ethiopia and report about the current drought conditions and humanitarian need. If you are not currently sponsoring a child....I BEG YOU, please consider it. Compassion International is an amazing organization helping children around the world. They are a safe organization to give to as they demonstrate outstanding financial integrety by using over 83% of funds directly towards their children's programs and only a small portion towards administrative expenses. If you have kids......WOW - what a wonderful opportunity it is to sit down with them, look through the THOUSANDS of kids available for sponsorship and choose one (or two, or three) to give to. You will receive frequent updates on that child, you can write to them and they write back to you!!! Can you think of a better way to teach our kids how great it feels to give??? DO IT TODAY - YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY!!!!!

go to: www.compassion.com/sponsor

From post: People working in humanitarian assistance expect the government to release a report that will increase the number of people in need of emergency food assistance. We expect the number to increase from the current 4.9 million(those in need January - June 2009) to 6.2 million people (those in need July - December 2009). As many of you may know Ethiopia experienced its second consecutive failure of the belg rains and harvest in this past spring. Although this harvest is relatively small, only 15% of the total harvest, there are some areas within the country that are totally dependent on these rains for food.

Right now the rains were late for the next meher harvest cycle, and rather erratic. Most people working in the agriculture and humanitarian sectors are very concerned about low productivity of the next harvest season. With 85% of the total population living in rural areas, you can certainly appreciate how important the rains are. Many people can survive a bad year from time to time, however we are seeing more frequent shocks compounded with other issues such as the global food price inflation that hit Ethiopia hard in 2008. The best guess is that relief needs will increase at that beginning of 2010.