Yates Family In Soddo

(This post was written by Taylor) I have to tell a quick story of how we came to know about the Mossy Foot Project ( http://www.mossyfoot.com/ ) and their directors Sharon and Jim Daly because it just shows how amazing God is. It was about two years ago, Simpsons and Yates were praying for God to show us clearly where he wants us to go and we had just finished sending out emails to hospitals literally all over the world looking for a fit for us.  Haiti, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, India, Peru, Tajikistan, Ethiopia... All over the place!!  And we get a very warm email back from Soddo Christian Hospital in Ethiopia inviting us to their upcoming board meeting in Chicago. This sounds interesting, so we end up flying to Chicago to meet the founder and leadership of the hospital.  We really like them, and to everyone it seems like this might be a good fit for our families.  Then a disappointment comes.  We hear that they are a relatively new hospital an...

This week, the Simpsons and Yates are in Ft Myers Florida for a conference at ECHO ( http://echonet.org/ ). The conference is the Health Agriculture Community and Culture. Together with 16 other medical missionaries getting ready to go to Africa, Asia, and Latin America we are exploring topics that will allow us to be effective in working in other cultures to affect real change in the health of communities through education. A big part of the conference is about wrestling with our western expectations and the realities of working in the developing world. It has been so valuable to hear the stories of other families that are going through the same process of preparation that we have. Their stories have encouraged us to continue trusting in God for his provision so that we can go and do His work in Ethiopia. A really fun aspect of this class is it's focus on agriculture as a way to improve life of the rural poor. ECHO is focused on teaching sustainable agriculture methods to people i...