Life Lessons

This weekend is a time where I'm enjoying family as well as thinking and praying about Africa - a whole lot! Easton, my curious six year old, has been thinking Africa too. We are experiencing a weekend where real African needs are intersecting with all of the attention to African needs.

Saturday morning I went out to do yard work and Easton took the opportunity to ask if he could work for money. He said he'd like to earn two dollars. So, I gladly had him rake the grass clippings and bag it for me and gave him his two dollars.

Saturday afternoon we were cooling off inside watching Live8 when TT, Easton's pre-school teacher in Uganda (and my cousin) called on the phone from Uganda reporting of her time at the orphanage in Rwanda. Her big heart has an idea of raising about $3,000 to buy all the orphans new mattresses this fall when they move to a new location. Easton and I then talked about TT in Africa, the orphanage, Live8 and Rwanda and I wondered how it was all soaking into his six year old mind.

Earlier in the week, a Liberian who has been displaced in a Ghanaian refugee camp, moved to Tulsa under the UN's refugee relocation program. He drove by our church, opened the phone book and called to see if he could get a ride to church today. The secretary couldn't understand his African English so at her request I called him, found out where he was staying, and told him I'd pick him up. When I told Easton to get in the car and told him what we were doing, he grabbed his two dollars and knew exactly what to do with it. After some searching in Southwest Tulsa we found Samuel, our new Liberian friend, and Easton promptly gave him his two dollars and asked him questions about Africa all the way to church.

I love how God works in that way - weaving together many lives, small and big, to make a big difference in His Kingdom.

May Easton continue to learn life lessons about God and love. May we all continue to seek God as He prompts us to seek Him through service to others. And may God use the publicity of African poverty this week to prompt many rich Christians to love and serve the poor around the world.

By the way, did you see Roz on the Volvo commercial? It was great!