Whew! We did it!
Thank you if you still read this blog. Thank you if you still put up with me. Thank you for giving me a bit of mercy when I go crazy during a fundraising effort. You see, these faces haunt me at night when I try to sleep. I feel responsible for them. Yeah, I know, I am not PERSONALLY responsible for them. Tell that to my heart. I feel responsible to make sure they have something FUN on Christmas Day. What would my kids do if they woke up to a balloon? Chicken and Rice? A gift of underwear or socks? I doubt they'd have quite as much joy and appreciation as these kids do! I suppose that's part of why I have this inner burn to speak out for these kids until the goal is met.
THE GOAL IS MET! These kids will have something fun to wake up to this Christmas. Something "fun" like a balloon, and chicken and rice, and some underwear. =-) Of course, the project goes on until December 1st. The sky is the limit. There are more kids. More things to do. WE CAN DO MORE! Always more. Just a matter of whether others have that inner burn.
I really don't get what makes some people give and others turn a blind eye. Don't. Get. It. There are people in my real life or family that I know read my blog or see my FB posts that never ever donate to any cause I share about. These are people that love me. I'm saying this is something really important to me. Some of these people *DO* have a few dollars they could donate. But nothing. Why? God didn't make me special. He didn't make me different from these other people. He calls us ALL to care for "the least of these." I truly believe we'll be held accountable for our actions AND our inactions on judgement day. I just don't get how people can see all of the suffering and injustice going on around us and not try to do anything about it. Yeah...my little donation for these kids' Christmas won't do a lot for the suffering and injustice in the world. But it will do something for those few kids' world! [I realize that I'm not privy to all the ways that people give. But there is *something* to the inaction that is there.]
Okay! I promise I'll stop nagging my friends and family for donations--for at least a week!! ;-) I truly do thank each and every one of you who donated--all 30 of you! Evidently you are quite the rare ducks!
Love,
Anita
4 comments:
I know exactly how you feel. My kids come from a very small orphanage. Ever since I left the rest of the kids behind, they haunt me. Many of those kids were sleeping boards. When I asked my 250something fb friends to donate: only one man did. He was a middle aged man who lives with his mom and is on disablility. That was it. It's like we live in a different world than so many of our american friends.
I don't think that it's that others don't care or are wasting their money, although I'm sure some don't and are. But I think, rather, that we each have our own passions, our own fire. you are an AMAZING advocate for children in need in Ghana. I often think that I need to be more like Anita G, reaching out to more people. Yet. . . while I care about orphans in Ghana, it's not necessarily my FIRE. It's not MY passion.
Sometimes I get so utterly bogged down by the needs. . . there are needs everywhere. The environment, the domestic violence shelter, the victims assistance unit, Shop with a Cop, Toys for Tots, Salvation Army, Animal Shelter, Ghana, Ethiopia, Uganda, individual orphanages, AAI, friends in process adopting, friends having an auction to fund their adoption, friends having an auction pay for school fees for children in a failed adoption situation. The list is endless. I wish I could give money to everything that crossed my computer. But I can't.
That sounds really bitchy, and I really, really don't mean it to. Just trying to point out that even the friends that don't give can be generous in other areas. LOVE YA!
Heather, I KNOW you. I KNOW your heart. Girl, you are NOT who I'm talking about. There are others who have never made a donation to anything in their lives. Those are the people I wonder about. Those are the people I can't quite figure out. I know not everybody is going to want to give what is important to ME. =-)
Last Crusade, glad I'm not the only one out there with these feelings! I'm was starting to feel all alone!
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