Movies like Hotel Rwanda and Slumdog Millionaire have always been an issue for me. On the one hand, I'm glad truth finds it way into pop culture, but on the other, I spend a lot of time wondering what truth is really worth when there is little I can do about problems so huge.
Enter
Melissa and
Angie's blogs. Go read them. You will be
mesmerized. They are
bloggers that I follow (I'm a closet blog stalker) who recently took a trip to India with
Compassion. I've known of Compassion my whole life but it has never been very real to me. I mean, it sort of seemed like a "good" thing to do. Man, their blogs changed me and my views. Seriously, go read them. Find where they announce they're headed to
Calcutta and read forward from there.
So, suddenly all I could think of was movies like Hotel Rwanda and The Constant Gardener and even dear ole Jack Bauer in 24: Redemption. I mean, there is so, so much pain in the world and here I am, somehow, just by coincidence, born into the wealthiest nation in the world. I mean, who am I that God allowed me to be born into such wealth? I could just as easily have been living among the millions and millions all over the world who starve to death and die of things like diarrhea because they drink bad water.
So, we decided to sponsor a kid. I guess I thought it would cost a lot. $32 ya'll. $32. I mean, we're on a pretty tight budget and $32 is half of what we spend on date nights each month. And - get this - it is MORE THAN what our new child's dad makes in a month. When he can find work every day. Which he sometimes doesn't. Yeah, suddenly our "tight budget" seems like extravagance.
Anywho, we went online, filled out some info, and got to the part where we get to select a kid. You can choose a child based on birth date, country, whatever. Or you can choose to sponsor the kid whose been waiting to be sponsored the longest. Which of course brought to mind images of those beautiful starving kids in all of those movies. So I picked that.
Jordan and I have been joking around, wondering if our new kid is a boy or a girl. I mean, we reasoned, we're so good at girls. But, we thought, maybe this is our chance to have our boy. Haha.
Our Compassion information came today, and I'm excited to announce: It's a Boy! We're proud "parents" of Aravind, a little man from India (who turns 9 in July!) Even after the blogs (that you seriously should go read...), I wasn't sure how much this little guy would really mean to me. I mean, really.
(This is where I would put a picture of our new child if I could figure out my scanner and/or my husband was home to help me...) :)
Oh, man. I love him. I love looking at his sweet little face. I'm hooked. I am already thinking of ways to cut our excessive American budget more so we can sponsor another child. This is what life is about!
As soon as I got the girls in bed tonight, this was the first thing I wanted to do. I'm just so excited about Aravind. Our little man.
This week, Sister celebrated her last days of school and swim lessons. At school, she got to have a water fun day and eat pizza and ice cream! Mommy and I enjoyed one last day of Avery-free infant storytime before picking her up. Mommy cried a little when she thought of how grown up her big girl is... no more first of anything school related anymore!
