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...

We've been sharing a lot about the personal process that we have each been going through to get our families to Ethiopia, but we haven't necessarily shared much about Ethiopia. We have all been learning tons about Ethiopia, it's culture, history, and it's social and political systems. We humbly admit that we won't really KNOW Ethiopia until we we've "walked a mile" there. Until then we get to learn by reading the blogs of the wonderful people who are volunteering there now. One of the things we have learned is the hard reality facing the people in Ethiopia. Here are some medical statistics that we learned. 50% of the population is under 15 years old 40% of the population lives in extreme poverty, less than $1 per day 1 in 6 children die before the age of 1 1 in 10 die before the age of 5 1 in 70 women will die while giving birth 6% of births have a trained attendant present In all of Ethiopia, a country with a population of 91 million, there are only 1...

Recently I was encouraged to read more about George Mueller. I really, really love to hear about real life heroes, their struggles, and their victories. In fact Adam makes fun of me because if any movie says it is based on a true story, I almost always love it. If you have time to read or listen to this biography by John Piper about his life, I highly recommend it. http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/biographies/george-muellers-strategy-for-showing-god During this season we are going forward with our support raising, and it is humbling beyond belief.  It is a strange position to be previously a very independent person and then to become dependent upon the kindness, generosity and grace of God lived through others.  But I guess that is a part of the process.  It is wasy to believe the lie that we are independent creatures, when in actuality we are all very much so dependent upon God for every good and perfect gift. George Mueller raised over $7,000,000 at the turn ...

It's normal to have the ebbs and flows of excitement, fear, doubt and joy during this season of our life.  Recently I, Michelle, have really been struggling with how to end well with my job and my patients as we prepare for the next step... And God has been so faithful during the process. Friday was such a busy day, a full morning starting at 3am to get all my hospital and clinic work done.  I was exhausted, and emotionally drained.  I walked into my very last patient of the day's room.  She is a 400 pound ex-meth addict with no teeth in a powerchair unable to walk due to her size and chronic pain and a sweet christian woman. As we talked about her medical problems, she stated quite bluntly, Dr Yates, Are you leaving to go on a mission trip? I responded vaguely, well, ummm, only as the Lord leads.  You see I haven't told anyone really at work that I'm preparing to move and serve in Ethiopia because I don't want to create early or unnecessary turmoil. "Well, God...

I will be writing a few blogs over the next couple weeks to describe different specific ways we have been preparing ourselves for the work ahead and the move to Ethiopia.  The first installment is about RMI24, an awesome experience I, Adam, had the opportunity to be a part of at our home church, Reality. Last summer, I was thinking about our life and our upcoming big changes and I realized that I needed to do something different in my life if I was actually going to be spiritually and mentally ready to move my family to Ethiopia. I was having a desire to free up time in my schedule to read good books about working overseas and about God's plan for us to be part of his work on earth. I was also having a desire to connect to some mentors that could walk with us through this season. The first step was to start working less at my job at Applied Minds and carve out the time to do this, but I had no idea what the next step would look like.  I figured I would just have to get really ...

Praise God for his continued faith and calling to lead us to Ethiopia! It has been a long journey for our two families, but full of God's leading and faithfulness. We just found out that we are both going to be receiving grants from Project Medsend . " MedSend enables highly qualified and dedicated healthcare professionals to serve spiritually and physically needy people around the world in the name of Christ. We do this by making their monthly educational loan payments while they serve. Without MedSend, these healthcare professionals would need to spend years working in the U.S. to pay off their educational debt before going and being able to answer God’s call to serve – and many would never make it to the mission field at all." That is a great burden off of each of our families.   In addition they told us that they would pay for us to attend a great conference, the ECHO conference in Florida this fall.  This is a conference we had heard about and wanted to go, but didn...