Sitting in my cozy little apartment here in the Manitoba
prairies, my thoughts have been jumping to children and schools all over the
globe today. Phil and I woke up feeling overwhelmed, talking about his new job
with Open Schools working with the marginalized street children in parts of southern
Africa.
During breakfast had a motivating Skype call
with my brother Tim, who was in France visiting my parents. We discussed
thoughts on how learning really takes place. Does knowledge alone make a
difference? How is learning in the 21st century different?.... and how does any
of this apply to kids who don’t have enough to eat, a pillow to lay their head
on at night or someone who is there to care about them? Can it make a
difference?
Later in the day I was on another Skype call with
TeachBeyond’s regional director to Eurasia, discussing an exciting opportunity
in a very closed country to start one of the first Christian value based
schools there. How exciting! So many open doors of opportunities!
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| One of our school projects in Congo |
Just a couple of minutes ago I was looking
into the logistics of my next flight to Kinshasa in the Congo to help in the
planning of a school there.
Why take on these challenges? Why invest in projects that most days seems
to me like an uphill battle; fighting against the lack of finances, governments
that don’t support the values we believe to be central for true transformation,
our own feelings of inadequacy?
Well Phil reminded me why the other day. He said: Because if
teaching the 10 year old girl who lives on a garbage dump, to read and do some
basic math can perhaps keep her from having to sell her body several times a
day to buy a little bit of food to survive, or if helping start a school in
Congo can be one step closer to helping influence a healthy change in that country which has been
exploited so many times by other countries, then it is worth our trying"……Example
of God using the “underdog” flood my mind and lead me to persevere and in faith keep saying: " Yes Lord, I am willing."
…We passed this sign the other day on our way to Winnipeg.
At first it made me
chuckle. What? Way up here? In the cold?
The heart of the North American continent? Yes it is true. Geographically it is
and I can also say: a beautiful, open, generous, gracious, warm and welcoming
heart it is indeed.
My thoughts took it
one step further. I thought about my day and the connections I made, just “little
me”, with the globe around me. I want the Jesus in my heart to connect with the
world around me. Maybe a little bit like the heart of Winnipeg.
... Amazing that God uses us to connect His heart
to others.
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