It’s no secret that Abreham loves running. Well...now, anyway.

If you ask him why he likes running, he’ll tell you “because God gave me fast legs.” But when he came home 10 months ago, it wasn’t this way.

 He of course didn’t speak English yet, so he couldn’t have told us so, but he didn’t understand the point of running. A boy from his village named Tamrat would run to school each day and Abreham tells me he didn’t understand why he would make himself tired when he could ride a sheep, donkey, or camel to school like he did.

Can you even imagine riding a sheep to school??

When I asked him about how far away his school actually was, he thought for a moment and said, "our house to King Soopers {our grocery store}, and home. One. Our house to King Soopers and home. Two. Our house to King Soopers and home. Three."

What? Seriously?? That's a long way!

When I mapped how far our house was from our neighborhood market, I realized he lived 10+ miles from school. Walking...or riding a pack animal would have taken hours! No wonder Tamrat ran {and was tired at school}!

When Abreham came home and school was about to start, we knew we needed to get him into a sport or some activity to meet students, begin making friends, work on english, and a slew of other reasons.

He spoke no english and had played no sports before, so that limited us a bit.

So we chose track.

And slowly he fell in love with it.

In August, a mere week or two after coming to America, we had signed our older boys up for a week long Speed Camp. Abreham seemed into it, so we put him in at the last minute, too.

Day one he was skeptical but really enjoyed it. And he was relatively fast, though pretty awkward. He laughed with Ezekiel the whole time, Ben and I were excited to see a smile on his face as he began bonding with his little brother. Day two, he was tired but still worked hard. Day three and on however, he wouldn't take part. He wouldn't go out onto the field, wouldn't even lace up his shoes.

Instead, he hobbled around and repeated a thickly accented word "hospital" to me with fear in his eyes.

Ben and I continued to show him how to stretch, run hot baths with epsom salt, and tell him in simple english that he was simply sore. He'd spent a year of inactivity within the grounds of the orphanage. There was lots of playing, but not to this level. Not enough to keep him from becoming incredibly sore when he began to finally get some exercise.

And so he really thought there was something seriously wrong with his legs.

We laugh at that now.

Once school began and he won every track meet in the mile distance, we all realized that um...this kid can RUN! He eventually won Districts in his event and became known in his incredibly large middle school.

This kid who fell asleep in class because he had no idea what the teacher was talking about, becomes not a weird new kid who speaks no english and essentially has no idea what's going on for the first quarter of school...but rather "the fast kid."

The kid everyone tries to beat in gym class but cannot. The kid who gets encouragement and pats on the back for winning yet another track meet, and poses for photos as he stands at his locker trying so hard to figure out this lock combination thing.

He becomes known.

He has an identity aside from being the orphan from Ethiopia.

And that's HUGE.  Really HUGE.

Now we spend our Saturday mornings as a family waking early, driving around Denver for various 5K races. We have a wonderfully generous friend who's a running coach and has created for him a training plan.  With the winters in Colorado being so cold, we never pushed Abreham to train. It was only bits here and there, we wanted him to love running without pressure.

Several months ago, we began looking for a running mentor for Abreham. Someone who had African ties and found the most amazing man, Roberto Mandje who ran in the Olympics a few years ago for one of the African countries. Its who he is though, that makes him really amazing. He and his wife have become like part of the family and they drive to see Abreham at various races, come to our house for dinner, and give him tons of encouragement.

My incredible husband is the type of guy who researches something to the point of exhaustion so he can know all about it, especially if it's something the kids are interested in. He wants to know it all so he can help them, so he can bond with them through it. And this has been so for Ben and Abreham.

Ben continued to Google around, looking for information on training and the best American cross country or marathoners. And he stumbled upon Ryan and Sara Hall. Ryan has posted the best-ever American times in the Half Marathon and Marathon and has represented the US in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Sara was the 2012 US National Cross Country Champion and Gold Medalist at the Panamerican Games in the steeplechase.

So Ben emailed them about our son.

Turns out they're outstanding people who love Jesus and even started an organization called The Steps Foundation, which amongst other things, provides micro loans to blooming entrepreneurs in Africa.  And they have a particular love for Ethiopia and it's people.

We have seen firsthand how micro loans work and the impact they make, and trust us...IT WORKS.  A little bit goes a long way {see the woman making us Sambusa on the side of the street in this post. She had a micro loan. It changed her future}.

Abreham was so excited as Ben told him about these two remarkable runners and inspiring people, the good they're doing in Africa, and that they would be at BolderBOULDER {the 10K he's been training for that's over Memorial Day weekend}.

Not only that, but also that he gets to spend time with them because we're having dinner with them after the race.

So...sweet boy that Abreham is, he decided he wanted to use this race to help kids back in Africa by partnering with The Steps Foundation and has raised $1,ooo so far thanks to the generous support of people like all of you that see a need and go after it {feel free to check it out here}.

He's in awe that people would give money for others like they have.

 

We have some other REALLY exciting things going on that I can't wait to share with you later this week when I get the green light to do so.

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Stay tuned for that!!

Thanks to all of you who have been on this journey with us. It's not been an easy one, but I'm so excited the Lord is so good and we're in a really, REALLY good, happy, joyful, season as a family.

///// Want to learn more about Abreham? Here are some more posts. /////

. Meeting Abreham . It's Not Always Peachy . Learning to Trust . also click on Adoption .