Inspiring :: Young People Who Rock

This girl is amazing. She is only 16 and is already trying to make this world a better place. I pray that there are more young people out there like her, that is what this generation needs, young people who are willing to live for others and make this world a smaller, better, more loving place. Check out the article.

Tara Suri, 16, hopes to help to young children around the world achieve their
full potential.

Bake sales and recycling are common fundraising tactics in middle school. But Tara Suri wasn’t baking cupcakes for just any common cause. Her cause was hope, literally.
When Tara was 13, she was more than saddened by her trip to India with her family. From her sadness sprung the idea of trying to help the orphans in India and Sudan whom she saw abandoned by their parents, sometimes found in garbage dumps. Tara started H.O.P.E., or Helping Orphans Pursue Education. It aims to give kids the opportunity to achieve their full potential with the basics, like a sturdy roof over their heads, that Tara and her friends sometimes took for granted back in Scarsdale, New York.
Now, at 16, she has expanded her cause with an umbrella organization called Aandolan, which means “a movement for change” in Hindi. Through that fundraising group, Tara now runs Turn Your World Around and Connect a Kid along with H.O.P.E., and a lot of it for kids growing up continents away who are in sad situations.

Sometimes...

...I get homesick for a place I've never been......but long to go.

World AIDS Day 2007

People around the world, from Brazil, to Africa, to China, to Europe, to DC, came together today, to bring awareness to a disease that has hit so many lives, changed countless lives, and taken too many lives…AIDS. World AIDS Day is a campaign to bring the fight against AIDS to the forefront of people’s minds; awareness is half of the cure.

A large ribbon, the internationally-recognized symbol for the fight against AIDS, is placed in front of the “Christ the Redeemer” statue atop Corcovado Mountain, during a campaign for World AIDS Day in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
Danish human rights activists adjust candles during a rally to mark World AIDS day in Copenhagen.
A huge red ribbon hangs from the North Portico of the White House to mark World AIDS Day on December 1, 2007. President Bush announced he will travel to Africa in 2008 to check on US efforts in combating the disease.
Members of civil society light candles to create awareness on the eve of World AIDS day in Multan, Pakistan.
AIDS activists wearing body paint participate in an awareness campaign during the World AIDS Day in Lome, Togo.
HIV/AIDS activists march in Abidjan, the largest city in the Ivory Cost, to mark World AIDS Day. Held each year on December 1, World AIDS Day is a time of grim stocktaking as AIDS campaigners worldwide sound the alarm over the disease’s rampage through Africa, the threat it poses to Asia and former Soviet Union republics, and the risks to vulnerable communities such as sex workers, drug users, and gay men.
Pedestrians walk past a giant poster made by undergraduates during an AIDS awareness promotion to mark World AIDS Day in Nanjing of Jiangsu Providence, China. According to official estimates, there are around 700,000 HIV/AIDS patients nationwide.
HIV affected people take part in an AIDS awareness campaign on World AIDS Day in the northwestern Indian city of Siliguri. India has been the world’s third biggest caseload of people living with the deadly virus. After originally estimating some 5.7 million were infected in India, the UN reduced that estimate to 2.5 million.

this church stepped up

I just read this article.

This is what it is all about.

This church of 1,900 people found something that was close to their hearts (the victims of Hurricane Katrina), found people in need and helped them out. They sacrificed to help their fellow man. That's what it is all about.

They said that each person gave an average of $833. That's not easy to do, but they did it. There were also a couple of people who gave greater amounts of money, but would rather remain anonymous. That's awesome.

They raised a million dollars to give away, to help people. They set a goal of collecting the money at 2 years, but it only took them a year and a half.



...may the LORD make your love overflow to each other and to everyone else...
(1 Thessalonians 3:12)

My Dreams.

I want to make a difference.

This is a good place to dream toward.

I can make a difference.

I will make a difference.

...what if it was Jesus?

Dale took me to the TobyMac Concert on Friday night…it was awesome by the way…and I heard the coolest thing…Craig West from KXOJ’s morning show is going to spend 2 days (yesterday and today) as a homeless man in downtown Tulsa. He grew a scruffy beard for a few weeks, didn’t eat or bathe all day Sunday, and Monday morning at 9am, Bob dropped him off in downtown with only the clothes on his back, a blanket, and a cell phone (to call in reports to the station to let the listeners know what he was going through). This morning he was awakened by a security guard who kicked him off of the stoop he took as a bed the night before. He went over to a nearby park bench and sat. A few business people were eating their fast-food brecky on a nearby bench. He looked upon their breakfast burritos like they were steak dinners complete with baked potatoes. They threw half of the thing away, in the trash. And he was hungry, sitting nearby.
Makes ya think.
Just like something similar happening at the church I attend, and have attended since I was about 4 years old. This Sunday, we had our annual Congregational Thanksgiving Dinner; it always kicks-off the Holiday season for me in a way -- the Holiday Season that we all associate with a time to give, as if we shouldn’t give throughout the rest of the year or something. Anyways, after the meal was over, my husband stayed to help the kitchen ladies clean up and get everything back to normal for next Sunday’s services. He came and got me and I followed him as he pushed a rolly-trash bin through the crowd of people, through the kitchen and out the back door. He looked like he was going to be sick to his stomach. He explained to me why he was feeling so terrible; he said that he just watched a woman take tin pan after tin pan, each full, or mostly full of food, and throw it into the trash bin and proceed to ask him to throw it into the dumpster. That makes me sad.
What about all of the mouths that could feed, the stomachs that could fill?
What about the poor, those who are in need?
Jesus told us to give to these people, He told us to look after the poor, the widowed, the orphaned. He wants us to put ourselves second and them to be first on our hearts. We all had full bellies that night, and it was like I could hear the tummies growl of the too many children in Oklahoma, alone, who go to bed with empty tummies every night. The Central Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma reported that one in 5 children in Northeastern Oklahoma lives in poverty. And that is in our own backyard. Sometimes I forget that there is poverty and hunger and hurting all around me.
I love my church, don’t get me wrong, and they are great, good, loving, and giving people, I just think that this in a place where there was an opportunity to give, to help the poor, to take care of our brothers and sisters, and they neglected to think of it. They simply forgot. And I think that is the tragedy. I think that if someone would have thought of it, if they would have brought it up, they would have been more than happy to give what we have remaining, or in that case, to make a little extra to plan to give to others. That’s what I want to be; I want to be that voice that they hear to remind them of the empty bellies that can be fed. I want to open their eyes to the opportunity God has given us to give and to help the ones He loves. I was talking this through with a girl at work this morning, and she brought up a good verse…

…For I was hungry and you fed me.
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.
I was a stranger and you invited me into your home.
I was naked and you gave me clothing.
I was sick and you cared for me.
I was in prison and you visited me...
…I assure you, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,
you were doing it to me!...
{see Mathew 25:31-46}

…what if it was Jesus we could have fed?

Melinda gets it.

I came upon a CNN Blog called Young People Who Rock...and this is the latest post...

Using her new found stardom to impact the Kingdom is the most noble thing anyone can do with something that can be so self-focused and self-centering. Melinda Doolittle gets it. She gets that she can impact the world. She was put in a place, with her rise on American Idol, that she knew she could use as a platform. She traveled to the Malaria-belt of Africa with First Lady Laura Bush supporting Malaria No More, to raise awareness of the disease. She believes, as do I, and many others, that Malaria can be eradicated, wiped off the face of the earth, completely prevented, that people dying of Malaria is a tragedy because it can be prevented -- with medicines to treat it and insecticides and nets to prevent it in the first place. People of Africa just need to be aware of it and have the oppertunity and knowledge to seek the help they need to live, because there is life after Malaria, and it can be prevented. Doolittle's goal is to see malaria eliminated in her lifetime, and I think that is possible. Melinda does rock. God bless Melinda and the many people like her. They are the ones who are going to shape our generation, they will leave the legacies for us, they are the ones we will tell our children about. They are bringing the good to this world, the way Jesus intended it. Melinda rocks. Melinda gets it.

If we all just got it, if we all just did our little part to bring the Kingdom...O what a wonderful world that would be.

surely WE can CHANGE

and the problem is this

we were bought with a kiss

but the cheek still turned

even when it wasn't hit

and i don't know

what to do with a love like that

and I don't know

how to be a love like that

when all the love in the world

is right here among us

and hatred too

and so we must choose

what our hands will do

ahere there is pain

let there be grace

where there is suffering

bring serinity

for those afraid

help them be brave

where there is misery

bring expectancy

and surely we can change

something

and the problem it seems

is with you and me

not the LOVE who came

to repair everything

where there is pain

let us bring grace

where there is suffering

bring serinity

for those afreaid

help them be brave

where there is misery

bring expectancy

and surely we can change

surely we can change

oh surely we can change

something

oh, the world's about to chance

the whole world's about to change

I listened to this song on the way home from work last night. And on the way to work this morning, I listened to it 3 times on manual repeat (manual, because I had to push the back button...). And it opened my eyes. We have all this love in this world, it's all around us; in addition to all the hatred we find. And surely we can change. The world is about to change. If we just get up and be hope, be grace, be serinity, be brave, be that relief that the world needs.

We CAN change.