Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Its been a while..

.....so long in fact that I am not sure anyone will read this. Oh well. This is more like cheap therapy than true entertainment for those around me. Heck! We have Glee now. Who needs to read blogs anymore? j/k

So I am in school and although it has dominated my life I actually really enjoy it. I am reading so many books about my favorite things in life: missions, poverty, Islam, campus ministry, etc. Learning truly is a gift. Education is a luxury many go without. I always dream of some sort of non-profit I create where I get the opportunity to provide education to those who have not been given this chance. I always think about some of my kids who have spent most of their lives living in refugee camps, waiting on food drops from the UN, avoiding cholera. Now they are dropped into our American country with our English-school-system that gives them 0.2 seconds to catch up or they fall behind. Many refugee high school students do not graduate because they are stuck. Do you put a 15 year old in class with the 2nd graders because that's his reading level? Or do you spare him some dignity and put in a freshmen class where there's no chance of him ever catching up to the rest of his peers?
And what about the kids who go home to broken families, or single-parent households with a mom who can't help with homework because she's working job number 2 just to pay the bills. Or what about the kids who can't wake up their mom for a ride to school because she's passed out from the night before?
Education comes at different costs for different people and not all kids can be expected to learn the same when the environments they come vary so drastically.

This is just one of my soap boxes and a problem I think of often. I want to do my best to fix these things even on the smallest scale. Even if I only make a tiny dent. I care only because I have been cared for first. My deepest need has been met. Now it is my turn to care and meet the needs of others and never tire of doing so.

"And as for you, brothers, never tire of doing what is right." Thessalonians