A WORLD Full of NEED

A world full of need!  What touches one heart but not another's is often I think based on your own life experience.  If your personal history has included opportunities to EMPATHIZE with certain needs then that's the spot in which your heart pulls its strings.


But wait a minute.  I am one of those people who thanked my parents to the best of an 18-22 year old's ability to say thank you for paying the bills for my university education.  I tried to say thank you with the grades I made, but it took YEARS for me to realize what a gift they had given me.  THEN it was my husband who paid the bills for my master's degree.  Once again, I thanked him but did I really know how to say THANK YOU?  I don't think so.


Generally I am not the typical "mother" who just feels with and for her children and gives into them out of a Mother's heart.  I don't know whether that's good or bad. I know I'm not the typical though. As I look back on my life, memories will engulf me with moments of regret.  "Oh, I could have shown more empathy, gotten inside their shoes better than that."


I tell you this because I am really quite surprised that I became involved in raising money for scholarships in Africa.  The interest in Africa doesn't surprise me because that goes back to the theory I began this post with.  MY PERSONAL HISTORY has always collided with THAT CONTINENT.  As a 10 year old kid, my parents enrolled me in a program for memorizing Scripture..  One of the rewards for memorizing certain amounts was books.  Mine was called Radio Pals in the Hands of the Mau Mau.  I didn't even know there really WAS such a group of people called the Mau Mau in Kenya, but my imagination was lighted with books like that one.


Now, my circular thinking might get the ends to come back together.  For whatever reason, my heartstrings have been plucked, but with this world of need I don't know how to tell the stories I'm collecting in a way that draws others into sharing this experience with me.


We've tried taking people with us to Africa, and there we often find that while their hearts ARE DEFINITELY touched, they don't necessarily give so that our students can be instructed with knowledge and skills to be LEADERS in THEIR OWN COUNTRIES.


Tomorrow, I might give you bios of some of the ones that tonight the scholarship selection committee will choose.  "God funds what he favors."  This must be my mantra!
It has not escaped his notice, not one single one of these needs.


Maybe I wrote all this as a part of my own self therapy, to work out my fretting, sadness for those who will get denial letters tomorrow.  God knows; God cares: God will provide, if not through EAFC through another.