Hope - Blogabond

it's honestly closer to 23 hours. but i've been printing out my itinerary... i'm still not fully packed, and wondering if it's all going to fit. i have one suitcase filled with medical supplies thanks to the generosity of many friends. THANK YOU

medicine + 150 toothbrushes

plans are to leave at 4am in the morning.
i'm so excited. i just hope i do well, adjust quickly, and learn fast. i'm real excited about the plane trip too. i love traveling!
it's important to me that i'm not traveling just to travel, just for the experience. i have a purpose. whether or not the world understands it is fine with me. honestly, i don't think i do a very good job of explaining it when people don't understand or don't agree. i suppose if i try to live it out maybe one day they'll realize the point. it really doesn't take going to africa to make the difference i want to make in the world. i'm not sure what entirely it takes honestly, but i think it takes being open...taking people in just as they are and accepting them. opening our home and our heart to those in need of rest and love. opening our checkbook to those in need. it doesn't have to start with a trip to africa or having complete strangers or all the homeless people in your city over for a meal...it doesn't even have to end that way. it sometimes starts with saying hi to the person next to you, being generous at a stop light, actually chatting with that grungy kid on the corner just to find out they're actually a person who's life circumstances have screwed them to poverty. making a difference in the world might be just spending ourselves for one moment in order to give another person a little break and realize their humanity. not as hard as it seems really...but then at times very challenging. ...it's just so easy to forget that
"the world that is satisfying to us is the same world that is utterly devastating to them." -r.m. brown
i never want to live away from that...
i see my sisters and my brothers and wonder how i would act if i heard they were born into circumstances i've heard of.... i would act rapidly and aggressively. i would sell everything i owned to extract them from the situation immediately. it could have been you or i, you know? i guess we've just been blessed...or cursed. sometimes i'm not sure. i suppose it depends on what we do with our blessings.

24 hours...and counting!

Campbellsville, United States

Stopover in Canada

Beijing, China

Here we go again

Toronto, Canada

Heading South?