Writing last night about Hope and Mercy 

and the tragic reality of the lives and deaths of children in the world led me to GlobalIssues.org where this article titled "Today, over 25,000 children died around the world", laid the situation out clearly.

That is equivalent to: * 1 child dying every 3.5 seconds * 17-18 children dying every minute * A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring almost every 1.5 weeks * An Iraq-scale death toll every 16–38 days * Over 9 million children dying every year * Some 70 million children dying between 2000 and 2007

While I'm at it ...

Cogitating on the blog I posted earlier and posting a comment reply sent me to Raising Malawi's website, and reading there has me running back under this roof with just a bit more to chew on.

With Ethica challenging the adoption community to come up with a whopping $2,240 to save poor Mercy James from the fate of being adopted by Madonna, it seems a good time to post this little bit of reality:... "Raising Malawi and Hope of Hope: Partnering to Empower Vulnerable Kids".

Today we have an important and emotional Guest Blog from Teresa Legler, who shares her struggles with dishonest people and adoption scams while in pursuit of her dream to become a mother, in the hopes that others will learn from her experiences, and not have to endure the same pain and suffering as she has had to face.

Hello.  I live in Canada.  For the past 20 years all I have ever wanted is to be a mother, which is not physically possible for me so in the past few years I have been trying to adopt with unfortunate results.  One baby was stillborn the second at the last minute the birth mother changed her mind without letting me know.

By the end of last year I was heartbroken and becoming more desperate to become a mother since I just turned 45.

After a few days she told me she had decided I was the person she wanted to raise her son.  It was the happiest time of my life.  She gave me the name of a lawyer she said her Pastor had given her stating he would help with the adoption.

With great pride, the First Lady of Rwanda has announced the opening of a new orphanage ... let's hear it for institutional living, shall we?

Or not.

No doubt as state-of-the-art as a brand spanking new central African orphanage can be ... and at the cost of $1.5 million it's bound to be shiny ... and funding from an American missionary organization, the Rafiki Foundation ensures the obligatory heath/schooling/indoctrination aspects that come with $1.5 million tossed at African kids.

Pardon my cynicism, please, but I'm a bit leery of aid with strings ... as if there was another sort ... but when the First Lady touts the new facility's donors approach as " ... raising children in a God-fearing environment while equipping them with life saving skills as a positive attitude needed to raise responsible children the country needs," I cringe.