Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Doing Big Things
I have sometimes considered the idea of being a missionary to another people in another country. It seems like it would be adventurous, even dangerous, which always gets me excited. I want to always know that I am alive. This means doing things that create a rush of adrenaline, that help me fell the sadness of someones heartache, or anything that stirs the heart and challenges the mind. However, often I think I get to caught up in looking for the big, broad things and loose focus on the small important ones. Experience has taught that I can feel just as useless and insignificant on a battlefield as I do at home in bed. A lasting sense of satisfaction and fulfillment are only to be found by focusing on our little corner of the world in which we have been place. When we concentrate on digging deep where we are at, the broader effect of our lives will be of real significances. Right now, that means to me working on meaningful relationships with the people I take for granted all the time.
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You might like this book called "It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine's Path to Peace" by Rye Barcott. Though not an account of a missionary per se, the book is about a young man in search for adrenaline-rush adventure with a purpose to serve others.
ReplyDeleteWhile at UNC Chapel Hill as an undergrad, he lived in a Kenya slum for 5 weeks and started a non-profit with a former street orphan and an unemployed nurse from the slum. 10 years later this non-profit, Carolina for Kibera, is providing health care, sports program and girl leadership support in the slum of Kibera (700,000 people living in squalor the size of Central Park).
I think it's a pretty amazing story - I took away a lot of valuable advice too: "Talent is universal; opportunity is not." "Sacrificing for Success." "God hates a quitter - Improvise, adapt, overcome" (from the Marines).
I must add that the clinic portion of the non-profit was actually started by Tabitha, the nurse who asked Barcott for a $26 loan before returning to UNC. When he came back the following year, she had invested the $26 in a vegetable selling business from which she saved $130 to launch a 24-hr medical clinic from her 10x10 shack in the slum. That's why Carolina for Kibera solicits donations in amounts of $26 in honor of her memory.
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