El Mundo

Yep, the title is in Spanish...and yep, it's not December and I'm already writing again, ha ha!

I've been wanting to write the past couple of days and now I finally can! Hooray!

I'm reading a novel for my Children's Literature (pretty much the best class ever) that's really great! It's called the Devil's Arithmetic and it's about the Holocaust. Not only has this book made me think, but also other things like how tomorrow is the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 and what not, I've just been...thinking lately.

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. I don't know how many people died from 9/11, but when you look at it, these were two significant events of total destruction and heartbreak and ciaos.

But really, heartbreak is happening everyday all around us. Obviously not to the same magnitude, but there is destruction happening all over the world (el mundo).

In my ESL class there is a student who had taught in Georgia and she said that a large part of the students she taught lived in cars with their families, or lived in cars alone because their parents were in jail. To me that's heartbreak.

We always seem to think of Africa (which is totally a country) when we think of starving people, but I have kids in my autistic class that come to pre-school hungry.

It's super sad reading the book that I am right now because it makes me feel really selfish. It started storming while I was reading and I immediately thought "oh no! Thunder! Jeff's not home!" ...........psh...it's thunder. Ha ha.

The people who lived through the Holocaust didn't have food for days, lived in trenches, and watched their family die, and I'm getting scared from thunder?

I am so blessed. I'm filthy rich compared to 2/3 if not more of the world and I still worry about money sometimes.

Not only am I lucky that I have ALL of my basic needs, a free country to live in, higher education, a car, a laptop, a cell phone, but I have the Gospel in my life too.

I have faith to believe in, and hope to live by. Even though the world is crazy with politics and war and poverty, I have the light of Christ to see me through all of it. I don't have to be afraid like the Jews were during World War II. Like so many people are in the lower socioeconomic statuses.

I always say it's a good thing that Jeff really looked up to the senior missionary couples in his mission cause it's always given him the desire to serve a mission (if not a couple) when we are old. I figure till then I won't really have a way to go out into the world and help.

For now I just get to help with the people in my own world. I go to work everyday and I can see the difficulities that the little boys in my class face and I feel like I'm making a least a little bit of a difference. For these boys, they don't have to suffer like so many people in third world countries do, but they have to fight another kind of battle. They struggle with basic motor skills, social skills, couping skills and for most of them they will struggle their whole lives. It's really neat though when the one little boy who can only mumble and doesn't articulate finally says his name clearly during circle time. To me, that's a beautiful thing.

I don't really mean to sound like a downer in this post, kind of the opposite actually. In the Devil's Arithmetic the older Jewish ladies in the concentration camps are always telling the younger women that they need to laugh more. When the younger girls tell them they are crazy, the older women just say....if we laugh then we won't cry. We are in God's hands now.

I believe that we are always in God's hands. Whether we are rich or poor, married or not, Christian or Jew....we're always in God's hands. There is not a person on this earth that our Heavenly Father doesn't love. Our only problem as His children is we don't love each other.

Anyways, I feel really priviledged to live where I do, with my loving husband, and with the wonderful family we have, the opportunities we have to learn and help others.

There have been dozens of times already since Jeff and I have been married where he has helped people move, helped fix their houses, taken people things they need, etc....and he always says to me... "I can't take peoples money when I do stuff like that...I was just raised to willingly help people like that."

I love him for that. :)

So I guess, going into 9/11 tomorrow I'm just going to be thinking a lot, not only about the people who suffered from that event, but also about the future and how it can only get better if we choose to make it that way.

"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway." -Mother Teresa