I received the blessing from my parents and I’m eternally grateful. My dad wrote a book called in 1990 with Dr. John Trent, that shared 5 key blessings you can give your children, family, and friends. My parents lavished me and my brothers with this incredible gift of love. The book is still a top seller, due to the simple message of the importance of blessing one another. The 5 Blessings: Meaningful touch, spoken words, expressing high value, picturing a special future and an active commitment. Roger and I shared with our mission team how to give the life changing gift of the blessing to the fatherless and effective methods to heal broken hearts. We visited hundreds of orphans throughout the 12 days in Ethiopia and constantly had the opportunity to apply what we learned, but had no idea we would meet a young boy who was going to need all 5 blessings at the same time. The fatherless have no hope of receiving the blessing without having an earthly father, so the importance of going on a mission trip to give the blessing, hope, and love is changing the life of an orphan.
Roger and I met this young street boy “B” at the Post Office three years ago when we adopted Zoie and traveled to Addis Ababa. The Post Office is an open market, definitely a hot spot for tourists and adoption families wanting to shop for inexpensive trinkets. B was being sponsored by one of our team members and came to our guest home to see his sponsor mom. We knew he was battling in his heart the choice of going to back to school or living on the streets begging for money. We asked B, as a team, if we could pray for him. We sat him down on the couch and circled him in love to pray a special blessing over his life.
We poured the blessing over this precious boy as we laid hands on him, and prayed for his future. It was such an emotional experience, knowing he could possibly make the choice to go back to the old life he lived on the streets. We gave him a Simply Love tee shirt and signed the back with each of our names as a symbol that we were wrapping our hearts around him 24/7. We will continue to pray for him as an active commitment. His story is yet to be written, regardless of the challenges he faced during our time in Ethiopia. He was offered a life-changing gift to earn an education at a boarding school, through his sponsored family, but he made the choice to go in a different direction. It broke the heart of his American mama, but understanding the life of a street child is beyond our comprehension. Our compassion and love can make a radical change, but it is a gift that must be accepted. This precious child of God has a long road ahead to healing. Please pray for B that God will use the pain and difficulties in his life to let go and let God change his life. If you would like to learn more about future Visiting Orphans mission trips, please email me.
Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. (1 Cor. 13:13)
The Blessing
