I was thinking, kids… parenting…. hmm… I guess this might come in handy in the future.  And then I put it in my CD player.  It wasn’t about parenting, at least not in the way we might think of that word.  It was about taking care of the world’s children, especially those on the fringes of society, and the great responsibility (and privledge) we have in that.  Looking through the Bible, we see that it must be something that’s very close to God’s heart. 

I was suprised at this statistic: If every church in America helped one family within that body to adopt a child, there would be no children without families left in our country.

Rivertree is starting an adoption ministry and over 100 families are going through the adoption proccess.  That’s awesome.  Adoption is something that has been really close to to my heart for a while now, and it’s something I am going to to continue to pray about.

The last sermon in the series, really kicked my butt.  A couple weeks ago, Wes Stafford, the president of Compassion International came to Rivertree.  His testimony is so heartbreaking and so amazing.  His parents were missionaries in Africa, so he grew up in a small village there and saw poverty first hand.  As a little boy, he watched the children in his village — his best friends — die, one by one, from poverty and diseases that are hardly considered serious here in America.  He said that poverty broke his heart as a little boy, but that God was preparing that heart for the ministry that he is now the head of.  He also endured terrible beatings and abuse in the “Christian” boarding school that children of missionaries attended.  All the little children were silenced and the teachers told them that in speaking up about what was going on, they would be destroying their parents’ ministries, which in turn would cause the Africans they loved to go to hell, unsaved.  Wes was the one that finally spoke up, although at quite an expense, but knowing God’s will was not for His precious children to live in fear and abuse.  At age fifteen, Wes’ family moved back to the United States and he was in shock by the way people lived with an abundance of food, when he had just come from a place where little children were starving to death.  But he soon discovered that it wasn’t that the people here didn’t care, they just didn’t know.  And he knew that he wanted to spend his life fighting that.

His sermon is here, if you would like to listen to it.

So on Thanksgiving, I was reminded how lucky I am that I’ve never experienced or seen the things that Wes did.  I also was reminded that I have been blessed and God wants us to bless others with what we’ve been given. 

When there are people starving to death, how can I be buying new clothes and going out to eat?  An $8 movie ticket could buy two mosquito nets, that could potentially save two children from Malaria (a disease that kills 1,500 children a day).  The $40 I spend on a new outfit could feed 40 children for a day.  

My prayer is that I will feel the urgency of the world’s problems and that my heart will feel a burden to help.  I hope that one day, the word “compassionate” will describe me.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being pollited by the world.” — James 1:27

Snails.

The lovely Ann at Dawes.

Ann said that it reminds her of Jane Austin books, and it kinda does. Doesn’t it.

I really enjoy reading old headstones.

Jumping Picture. I haven’t taken one of these in a while.

I love him so very much.

My fake henna tatoo, drawn with markers.

I got tagged by Ann, so I am supposed to list 6 weird things about myself.

1. I am really afraid of greyhound dogs. I can’t even tell you exactly why. I think it’s because they are so freakishly skinny and fast.. whenever I see one, it gives me the willies.

2. I am fascinated with religions, especially sects of Christianity that are really different than my own… Catholicism, Pentecostalism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism. If I could start college over, I think I would major in Religion.

3. I draw all the time, especially in class. It actually helps me pay better attention to what the teacher is saying. If I didn’t draw, I would just sit there and daydream, but drawing is something that is really mindless for me and keeps me focused on what the teacher is saying.

4. Most of the time, I eat vegetarian. I pretty much never buy meat for myself at the grocery store. I probably only eat it a couple of meals per week .. sometimes when I eat out, or if someone cooks it for me.

5. I rarely eat the crust on my bread or my pizza. And if I have a hamburger, or something, I eat into the middle, leaving a crust. It’s not that I don’t like it. It’s just an old habit from when I was little.

6. I think I have probably watched Anne of Green Gables at least thirty times. I probably watch it about twice a year now, but when I was younger, I watched it a lot more than that. I have never gotten sick of it. I can think of a few times that I have actually asked myself, “What would Anne do in this situation?” and have made a decision based on it.

I am reading a poetry book by Billy Collins called, “Picnic, Lightning” and listening to Explosions in the Sky. I just finished a bottle of Root Beer, something that I have been craving since sometime yesterday. I think it was when the topic of hot dogs came up (which happens often in 1D.)

Yesterday, Stephen hung out with Christy and me, and he was telling us the kind of ridiculous questions that people ask him because he is Jewish. One of those questions was: “Can you drink out of the same water bottle as a girl?” His answer: “Not if she has bacon on her lips.”

Last night, Ann and I sat in the middle of a graveyard and talked. It was dark out. And if it had been 4 or 5 years ago, it might have really creeped me out. But not anymore. The angel with the broken wings was still there.

Today in my Contemporary Religious Thought class, Dr. Laughlin asked if what we had been learning had shaken our faith at all. I thought about this for a while, and it hasn’t. A year ago, when I first started taking my string of Religion classes for my minor, I felt so lost and confused. I remember crying after class because I didn’t know what to think. The way I feel now is that there are so many things I will never be able to explain or understand, like the nature of God. There are things I learn in class that I might never be able to reconcile with my faith. But when it comes down to it, I know that my life changed when I became a Christian. I know that there is something living inside of me that gets me through every day and that makes me want to be a better person. I believe what the Bible teaches. I have a new heart. And that is enough for me.

I’m becoming a lot more globally-aware this quarter too. A global citizen. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I learn a little more about the state of the world, and feel a little worse about being so complacent in doing my part in helping others. Tommorow Lauren and I are filming a video for Film Your Issue on the topic of Malaria, a disease that kills 3,000 children a day, a disease that we started eliminating from the United States about a hundred years ago. A simple mosquito bed net, that costs $4, is enough to save a lot of these children, but only 5% of Africans have them.

““If we turn our heads and look away and hope that it will all disappear then they will – all of them, an entire generation of people. And we will have only history left to judge us.”” -George Clooney, spokesman for Film Your Issue.

P.S. I updated my Poetry and Photo sections.

Tommorow.. The Stills and Jason Collett.

Speaking of the globe, here are some things I learned in my Global Citizenship Class today:

• .19% of the United State’s budget goes to foreign aid. Most of the other affluent countries in the world pledged and have given .7% of their budgets.
• 12 million children die every year and mostly from treatable diseases, like the flu.
• 8% of Americans, aged 18 to 24 couldn’t identify the United States on a world map.

P. S. Happy Belated Birthday to my Dad.