I am very strong about teaching my girls that there is more to this world than just our little area. Life is filled with people of many cultures and backgrounds.
I love America with all of my heart. Believe me when we lost our home after hurricane Hugo there is no one that was rejoicing more than I when I could see the Navy ships pulling into port. When they patrolled the streets with marshal law and gave us a curfew I was thanking God for the USA. There is no other country I love more than my own...but it is not the whole world.
I refuse to let my girls think that Charlotte is the only city in the world! Sunday Night while driving home from the airport I heard a gentleman speaking who had just got back from Africa. He was in northern Africa and was in Darfur area. This is such a hot spot at the moment. He was talking about the abuse, the situations going on there. That the Muslims are flooding into the villages, raping the women, burning their homes, setting parents on fire right in front of their children. This is a real world out there.
He saw the faces of the children who had lost their parents. How children are being tied to a tent post because they wander in the loss of this horrible sights. Some of his pictures can be found on www.silentimages.org
Yes, I am glad that my children live in a safe, clean, warm home. But if I don't raise them with awareness that there is a whole world out there- I have missed the mark as a mother. That is why we pray for the homeless, we pray for the orphans. We pray T.H.U.M.B. prayers for the lost (see below)
Tribal
Hindu
Unreligious
Muslim
Buddhist
They have to realize that there is a world out there that needs Jesus.
I am shocked at my own materialism, when I think of how I was raised. I remember being in my first Sunday School Class in St. Croix I had just turned 5. I was given a quarter of a sheet of paper and was told to pull a leaf off of a tree and rub it on my paper and that was my "crayon". I remember going home that afternoon and going into my ice-cream bucket of crayons picking out 8 for me and taking the rest of them to Sunday School.
Materialism can not consume us!! Lord forgive me of my waste, my desire for more when really I have plenty. Just let me share what I have with others!!
The best things in life are free.
One of the happiest times in my life (outside of the marrying John, having my girls etc) was after hurricane Hugo and we had lost everything. We didn't even know where our next meal was coming from. But we had that feeling of -we made it- we were alive. We didn't have things left, but we had each other.
I remember being sent back to the US to get help for the churches and my parents. My father told me as I was about to board that military flight to the US. We love you but don't come back. Send help but go back to college and get a job. That was on a Friday and I was back on Monday. We lived in a shell of a house for the next 4 months. We had ice in a cooler for a fridge, we had a generator for electricity, we had plastic on the roof and on our windows for protection....but we were happy. Why? Because we were pouring ourselves into others.
We were going and rebuilding churches, standing in line 12 hours a day for ice (okay I was not happy about that). But it is truly in life, and giving are we the happiest!
That and a cup of ice and a diet coke!!
Have an awesome day...and if anyone ever reads any of this stuff -I think you for listening to my ramblings today!! :)
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