January 21, 2008

Abyssinian Roots

Hillary Clinton visited the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem yesterday, (click here for the article) where she was officially endorsed by highly influential and revered Reverend Calvin Butts. Although I love a good round of political talk and opinion sharing, that is not why I decided to mention this in today's post. The reason I bring this up...

My husband and I moved to NYC 6.5 years ago and the first church we visited was the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. I have no idea why - not sure if it was the choir, the community, or the fact that it was mentioned in every single NYC guide book, but needless to say it's where we went. And, subsequently stood in a line for over an hour prior to taking our seat for the service. It was extremely powerful, and we went back - several times. The word "Abyssinia" denotes the historical reference to the country of Ethiopia, home of the Habesha people. So now, 6.5 years later, we are waiting for our little Habesha. We always knew that we would grow our family through international adoption but the country specifics weren't certain until early last year. We didn't select the Ethiopia program, it selected us - and the match was perfect.

3 comments:

Amanda said...

This entry made me smile :)
And, if you go to parade.com and type in "ethiopia" it's one of the top 5 or so stories. I don't know why it didn't work for you-I copied and pasted the link and it worked.

Although, admittedly, I had problems when I clicked on Toni's link this morning-I had to go searching through parade.com.

:)

Children's Hope International said...

This is interesting!

Jennifer N.

Gamma! said...

Remember the first time we all went to Abyssinian Church together? What a great memory - and yes, Michael, I DID know all the words to the hymns! But to put that whole experience together with our little Habesha who will be joining our family is just a full circle and a great story to share. As always, thanks for the memories we create together!