Welcome Home Anela!

I'm late on this....two weeks late, actually....but I had totally forgotten to post about Nellie's homecoming! It's not too late, though, to share what an amazing night it was!

It only lasted about 10 minutes but anyone could feel the joy and blessings in those 10 minutes. God has truly worked a miracle on bringing Nellie home to her wonderful family. Here are a few pics from the event!

Nellie's "Welcome Home" sign was so much fun making. We decorated with Chinese words, bible verses, drawings, the Chinese and American flags, notes to Anela, and more. It was a lot of fun getting to see how it looked all together. A few bystanders at the airport even took pictures of our sign!

I was bubbling with excitement in my stomach. I think everyone was. Here we were holding up this humungous sign, knowing we would see Anela's, Fred's, and Mrs. and Mr. Scisciani's faces any minute now. When they finally did come, everyone did this mini-cheer-gasp-thingy (we didn't want to alarm or scare Nellie, so we tried to be semi-quiet). I thrust my part of the poster at Meghan (haha) and ran over to them.

Here I am holding her. She was so sweet and precious. In one picture, you can even see me kind of twiddling her hair because it was so soft!

I think about Rawha's homecoming....and OUR childrens' homecoming....what am I going to do with myself when I see MY very own siblings come down that escalator? I WILL be the first to hold/hug them if I don't get to go to Ethiopia. I'm going to be pushing everyone to get to hug my siblings first! ;)

I love all these sweet orphans coming home! I love them going from lonely orphans and becoming daughters and sons. I am so happy!

Welcome home, Anela Scisciani!

I'm NOT innocent!

I saw this quote on a facebook friend's account and I just had to share it:

"Sometimes I'd like to ask God why He allows poverty, famine, and injustice when He could do something about it. But I'm afraid He might ask me the same question."

The thing is, we all probably want to do something about THIS:

But never do.

I'm definitely included. I mean, I really want to do something about it. It's my dream. But when something comes up when I can, I find myself rejecting it. It's kind of like this past Christmas. I heard about people giving up all their gifts/stuff they would get for Christmas. They'd ask for no gifts, but just gave all their gifts/money/etc. to a charity or orphanage or something. Did I do that? No.

The thing is, I'm actually a really selfish person. I don't think of others the way you think i'd do by reading this blog. This blog, the things I write on here, that's the real me. That's my heart. But at home, when nobody's looking, I will act very mean to my siblings sometimes. Sometimes? One of my biggest problems is being mean to my little brother. I love him a lot, and we play all the time and hang out, but that triggers a lot of fights too, and I'm not always very nice to him. The question I AAALLLWAAAYYYS hear from my parents (and I'm sure I'm not the only adoptive-family-kid who's had to hear this) is, "Are you going to treat your new brother/sister like that?" "NO!" I always think. "Of COURSE not!" But then I ask myself.......would I? What if the kid did something that totally made me so angry? If I wouldn't do it to a sweet little Ethiopian child, why would I do it to my sweet brother? And then I think, how could I ever show compassion to the world if I can't do it to my own family?

At school, I think a number of people think I'd never do anything bad. I'm quiet, shy, people know I am in love with people of the world and stuff. They know I'm passionate about adoption and poverty and things. There's this one kid, who's always like, "Madeline, oh innocent Madeline. I will find something bad about you one day. But I can't, because you are so sweet and nice." Now, its not teasing or taunting or anything but he literally says this to me every day because out lockers are near each other's. I always feel a bit guilty because I'm NOT innocent. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, that's what I am, a wretch. I'm a sinner. But God loved me ( a dirty rotten no-good sinner ) enough to send His ONLY son to die on the cross for me. Have you ever seen the movie "Passion of the Christ"? That is a HARD movie to watch. I'm not sure if I even could watch it now. It's unbelievable. And that, is even sugar-coated. What really happened is 10000 times worse. But, like I said, it's unbelievable. Just how much we take that for granted. Why does Jesus even want anything to do with us anymore? We sin on a daily basis. Reject Him every day. Totally and utterly disobey Him and forget that He exists in so many things we do. We give up on Him all the time. But HE does not give up on US, no matter how many times we block Him out of our lives. He follows us even when we don't follow Him. That's just really amazing to me. People complain (oh, whatever, I complain) that this world isn't fair. If it was truly fair, NONE of us would be here because we'd all have sinned and should be dead. I'm NOT innocent, I'm not even close, I'm not even a good person. I sin so much!

This post was originally meant to be titled "Do Something About It!" and all about how we need to stop dreaming about doing things that make and difference and...DO IT! But first, I myself needs to stop dreaming about it and do it, and stop being a goody-goody-little-two-shoes and become a once-a-wretch who became a new creation, saved by HIM, and now I'm going to SHARE what He did for me because only He can do it!