Blessed.

We are so blessed to be living in America.  I was always told by my parents and other adults that we were blessed, but i guess i never really got the picture.  I see it now. I started to get it, for the first time, last year when I went on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic with our church youth group.  I saw just enough to get a picture of poverty. But recently I have been researching the Democratic Republic of Congo, (where we are adopting from) and what i read just broke my heart. People die all the time.  There is so much civil unrest and not enough food, malaria, sickness, so many things i cannot describe, and so many people.  So many orphans.  From a survey taken, over 45,000 people died or were killed.  Half of those were/are children under five years old.  Here is some of the article:

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

 The survey, released Tuesday, estimated that 45,000 people continue to die every month, about the same pace as in 2004, when the international push to rebuild the country had scarcely begun. Almost all the deaths come from hunger and disease, signs that the country is still grappling with the aftermath of a war that gutted its infrastructure, forced millions to flee and flattened its economy. In all, more than 5.4 million people have died in Congo since the war began in 1998, according to the most recent survey’s estimate, the latest in a series completed by the International Rescue Committee, an American aid organization. Nearly half of the dead were children younger than 5 years old.

Source:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/congothedemocraticrepublicof/index.html