I want to introduce you to the newest addition to our family, her name is Vanesa. She is a beautiful 7 year old little girl who lives at the Casa Hogar Orphanage in Poza Rica, Mexico. We met her this past week when we visited the orphanage. Both she and her brother Angel have been living at there since February of this year without any sponsorship or monthly support. They come from extreme poverty, and the reason that they're at Casa Hogar is due to the fact that they interfered with lifestyle that their mother chose to live. In short, they were an extreme burden to their mother and found it difficult to get along with the different men that she shares a relationship with...at home they faced neglect from their mother and abuse from her partners. As I'm sure you can imagine, Vanesa is having a difficult time coping with the fact that her mom doesn't want her and that she has abandoned her and her brother. She is living in extreme denial and thinks that her mom is going to just come and pick her up at any time and take her back home...in fact, she told us that she may not be there by the time our group left.

This weeks clip is an awesome video that I've seen circulating on quite a few blogs over the past couple of days...it features the newest American Idol, Kris Allen leading worship and singing the song, God Of This City. I personally am really glad that Kris won...and I'm even more stoked about the fact that someone with a heart like his will now have such a major amount of influence, as well as the potential to make such a major impact on our society...check it out and be blessed.

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First of all let me just take this opportunity to say Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers out there...especially my wife and my own mom, two of the greatest mothers that I know. This post is kind of off the beaten path of my normal posts on here...but I thought that since it is Mother's Day that I'd share one of my favorite stories...about a mother of course. In my opinion, Mothers are some of the greatest unsung heroes on the planet...they make an incredible impact on our lives, they have a love unlike any other and I don't know what we would do without them in our lives. This is all confirmed and reiterated in this powerful story told by Guy Dowd...I really hope that you enjoy:

Danny was born with no ears. He could hear all right, but he didn’t have ears like normal people. All his life, Danny endured ridicule and rejection because of his deformity. But he learned to live with it. Thankfully, he had loving parents and a strong family to sustain him.

When Danny was in high school, his doctor told him of a new procedure that made it possible to transplant ears from one person to another. That meant Danny could get new ears if someone who was compatible to him ever donated theirs.

This was exciting news. After all, people donated body parts all the time—hearts, lungs, kidneys. But Danny soon found that donor ears were extremely scarce.

Danny didn’t give up hope, however. He knew that someday he would get new ears. He graduated from high school with honors and was accepted at a major university thousands of miles away. He kissed his parents good-bye and began his life as a college student. Again, though, he found it hard to make friends and fit in because of his ears.

One day he got a phone call from his father. “Go to the hospital tomorrow, Danny. A donor has been found.”

The very next day Danny checked into the university hospital where doctors were ready to perform the surgery. A few hours later, Danny had new ears.

When the bandages came off, Danny gazed into the mirror for hours. He finally had ears like normal people. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t ashamed of the way he looked. He not only had new ears, he had a new life.

A few weeks later, Danny received another phone call from his father. “Son, your mother is very ill,” his father said. “She may not live through the night.”

Danny was on the first plane home. When he arrived, his father gave him the sad news that his mother had died.

Together they went to the funeral home, where Danny was able to see his mother for the last time. He leaned over to kiss her cheek. Brushing her hair back from her face, he noticed that she had no ears.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

So I guess that I'm on this inspirational/motivational kick...and nothing will inspire or motivate you more than this weeks clip. Check out this amazing story.