I follow many blogs.  Thanks to my Friend Jamie who showed me how to use Bloglines… now I follow too many blogs!  Well not really but it makes my little time I have to catch up with people very efficient.  But the reality for me is that I LOVE a journey.  Could you tell?  I’m sure some of you want to tell me… “stop talking about journey Kim!”  Anyway, since I love journey’s I love getting a glimpse at other peoples and so the need to follow lots of blogs!  The other day I was catching up with Keri.  She is adopting a little boy from Haiti and she gave the following post.  Her words were so perfect on her feelings of being in Haiti.  I often try and describe Haiti to people and fail miserably.  How do you really explain the beauty that is found there in the reality of their conditions as I compare them to mine here.  I don’t know but wanted to share Keri’s words today.  Keri, hope you don’t mind!

you can’t go to a third world country and at some point not compare it to your own………i wondered why haiti was what it is and how america is what it was………yes the answers are complex and weaved together in a pattern not at all times comprehensive………..and then i began to ponder evolution and adaptation…….many may look at haiti and the united states and claim the states far superior………a light in a dark world…….while haiti is a quagmire of political unrest and an ignorant unevolved people……..and as i daydreamed in the back seat while being driven at threatening speeds going up impossible hills i thought it is not about evolution at all but adaptation………how the people of haiti have adapted to circumstance………how their life in a sense is no different my mine…..we each play our part in the hand we have been dealt…….they are the poorest country in the western hemisphere……..but they wake up each morning…as do i…they go to sleep each night…..as do i…..and in the middle they survive……as do i…….and you may say hey wait a minute …….your survival is a lot easier then an orphan baby in haiti………and i would answer yes in some aspects a full refrigerator……clean water and public sewage systems……make my life cleaner and healthier…..but what have i adapted too……..an ingratitude for my freedoms…….a taking for granted that i can turn on my tap and drink until full………a country so full of “made in china stickers”……..that i would dare assume that to god haiti’s garbage and our stuff look the same in his eyes……..

i am not bashing america’s prosperity (i believe we were given much for a reason)….. but what i am trying to say is when things come easy……there is no learning…no adapting….no critical thinking………and people become soft and obsessed……when you have to walk miles for water… shoeless over rocks…..you get blisters…those blisters turn to callouses…….the rocks don’t hurt as much……….

but here i am…..coming to haiti to take one of their children…….to give the child what they don’t have……..i make the child’s life easier…………..but how do i teach them hope…….when their bellies are filled comfortable in our home…..how do i teach them perseverance when there is nothing lacking…..how do i teach them community when we don’t really need each other and we like our privacy too much…..there are small lessons in each of these but you are not learning them in the context of an all out war between life and death………

but because i was born in america and have what i have …..i am able to share…….do you become poor to share in the poor’s suffering…….no ….but to some extent yes………i give up my vacations and mercedes convertibles and enormous mortgage(personal choices..)……to adopt a child that is in need of me…….i give up designer clothes and cell phones and a superfluous social life(personal choices)…..to adopt a child that is in need of me…….and in turn i find out i am in need of them… and i need what their parents could not teach them because the water got too dirty and the food finally ran out………………

many people don’t understand the poverty in haiti…they look away in disgust….or judge the people as lazy illiterate good for nothings………i think the heart in what i am saying is in the short time i observed the haitians i realized we each have much to share with the other…………we were a very young country once….like haiti…struggling to survive…..but in our greed and evolution we wanted people to do the work for us……i believe haitians want the same freedoms but their land has been raped and their banks emptied…..and america’s history shares in that crime………….i don’t know how to solve the problem…adopting orphans is not the answer…..but a way too the solution…………

going to haiti was not shocking for me…..it was what it was…..and i accepted it…..and i adapted……i am not taking eli out of misery but bringing him to love……..everyone needs loved

There are so many families out there adopting children from Haiti and other countries as well.  I’m working to update my blogroll with the families I follow but again, just need to find time in the evenings to do that.  But please pray for this family and for Eli.  That he would get to come home soon.