11 PM - Christal Earle’s Blog

I wonder if what is purple to me is the same color combination through your eyes? I wonder if the tones and sounds that I hear are the same for you? I wonder if I would have the same sense of justice if I had been born somewhere else, had fewer opportunities, and didn’t have as many people believing in me? What if my intellectual capacity was diminished or my cognitive abilities were restricted - would I still feel as motivated to reach out to the world? Would I give in to discouragement? Would I give up completely? Unless you have walked in someone else’s shoes, it is impossible to completely understand them. Although we are unable to ever completely see things through their life lens, it never hurts to try. In fact, it is sometimes the best gift we could give them and ourselves. We first met Ricky in the summer of 2006. He was about 12 years old. At least, that is what the workers at the orphanage guessed to be his age; no one could be sure as he just showed up on their doorstep one day, abandoned by all family and provision. He was tiny. Small, bony limbs, atrophied beyond use caused him to remain curled up in a little ball in an oversized crib. His crib was by the open door of the one room orphanage. One of 60 children in that small place, his life was one of endless monotony. Confined to that bed, he rarely left that location for anything. He was fed, changed, and bathed there. From his crib, the sun was visible – barely. To see it, he had to look through the open door over his left shoulder, with his neck craned at an awkward angle. I stood beside his crib that day, watching as he strained to see the sunlight. I felt helpless, angry, guilty, overwhelmed by all the emotions that assaulted my sense of justice and equality. I listened, tears running down my face, as he mumbled and groaned to himself, lost in the unknown world of his mind. What was he seeing from that perspective? Did he see life as I saw it? Did he see himself as being different, or did he embrace his life and give thanks for every breath like I do? I wanted so much to reach him in that place in his mind. I couldn’t go there, but maybe, somehow I could touch his heart with love. I began to stroke his cheek and sing to him, as I had seen so many of our Hero Holiday team members do when they stood over the other kids in the room. Slowly, the more I sang, the quieter he became. I began to whisper to him words of love, telling him how precious he was and how much he meant to the world. And then the miracle happened…Ricky stopped rocking and groaning, and for one brief moment, his liquid brown eyes turned to my face. His hand that I thought would be unable to do anything reached up to my cheek and touched it. And then he smiled. Not a patronizing smile to make me feel better about myself or to get me to stop. It was a genuine smile, full of life and trust. It was a smile that made me want to stay there forever, allowing myself to be lost in the innocence of it. I don’t know what Ricky sees when he looks up from that crib, but I know what we see when we look at him: precious, irreplaceable life. Ricky is one of over 200 million children around the world. One in every 10 children born in the world are born with a disability, and of those, 80 % are born in the developing world. Many of them are not as severely disabled as Ricky, but many are not as fortunate, either. In this orphanage, Ricky is fed, clothed, cleaned and cared for. He is known by name and treated with respect. Many of the children in the world’s disabled population are forgotten, shamed, abused, and exploited. They are the extremely vulnerable being made more vulnerable each day. In the home that Ricky is in, Hero Holiday has helped to build and paint a new building for the children. This new building has many rooms, clean floors, and colorful murals on the walls to make it cheery and accepting. Each one of those kids needs to be surrounded by security and inspiration, just like you and me. On each of our Hero Holiday trips, we endeavor to empower participants to realize what a gift their life is and how much their compassion can help to change lives. For all the Ricky’s of the world that we will reach, thank you. Thanks for your time, your passion, and your support. You are a part of his story.

Over 3000 years ago, the Chinese were first recorded to chase around a ball on a field, trying to kick it through a small hole in a piece of silk cloth, competing against Japanese and other Asian adversaries. As it moved across the continent, Ancient Rome and Greece began to enjoy their own versions of the game. By the middle ages, a game that would seem to be an ancestor to what we know today was often played by entire villages - with the whole population at the same time! As it made its way across the Chanel to England, it became known as a wild and unruly sport (surprise!), and was even banned by the monarchy for a while. By the mid-1800’s, it had become the most popular sport in England and most of Europe, and today, it is followed by more than 3 billion people worldwide. It is what we North Americans have chosen to call “soccer”, but the rest of the world refers to as football. I never fully understood how the whole world could seem to be so captivated by a sport revolving around a little black and white ball until that incredible day on the side of a mountain, in the middle of a cane field.

All around us were endless fields of tall stalks of sugar cane. The sun was high in the sky, and though the ocean was miles away, we could see the coastline perfectly from up this high. It had the perfect makings for a movie scene: it could have been in a time period long before any of us were ever born, as there were no vehicles, buildings, or even fashions that would really indicate the current date. Small huts made of tin and cardboard, clustered together around a central meeting point, the smell of cooking fires in the air, and most of all…the shouts of each person as they cheered for their favorite team. Yes, it’s true: we were attending an international soccer competition!

With Hero Holiday, we had been coming to this tiny village in Dominican Republic. We were working alongside the Haitian people who worked in those same cane fields that we were surrounded by, helping to dig the ditch that would bring a pipeline for fresh water to their village. They were amazing people, and they made us laugh and feel at home. They were welcoming and eager to have us there, and we loved every minute of it. What we weren’t expecting was what happened at the end of the first day, and what became the way we ended every day that we were with them: the international soccer competition - villagers versus Hero Holidayers.

Imagine the rush of knowing that you are doing something that others may have only ever have dreamed of? A moment brought on by total spontaneity, resulting in the rush of feeling a part of a moment that makes you feel so alive that you wonder how you will ever convey that experience to someone else. It was that kind of moment! The whole village would come out and cheer from the sidelines as husbands, brothers and sons, all in their bare feet, heartily took on the Canadians, most of them in their Nikes.  In those 45 minute games on hot July afternoons, I would watch as even the young daughter of the village leader, confined to a broken down wheelchair due to Cerebral Palsy, came to the sidelines with everyone and laughed and cheered for her friends and family. The nets were made of cane stalks, and the field was where the sugar cane had been cleared. The competitors could not speak each other’s language, and they were from opposite worlds in every possible way, but that summer, as I drank in the sounds of laughter, the cheering, and the simultaneous Creole, English, French and Spanish, I realized that this is why the world loves this game! It is the reason why camaraderie can exist, why sportsmanship is a time honored virtue, why the only thing that ever really separates us from others is what we perceive, and why it is so important for us to learn from each other and pull each other up. With the exception of income levels, educational opportunities, family backgrounds, and opportunities, underneath it all, we are all still the same, and we all need moments to remember, to inspire us, and remind us that we are not so different.

At the end of the last game, knowing this was our last day with them, we had an idea. We were going to capture the moment on camera, and we took pictures of each team around their net. With pride, each team member linked arms and clasped shoulders as we realized how important moments like this are to remember. As we climbed back on our truck to go back to where we were staying, we were all chattering about how incredible it had been to be a part of the whole experience, and realizing that we were leaving a little part of ourselves back in that village: the part that lives for crazy moments of love, life, and laughter.

PS…Yes, they defeated us every time!

Absolute runs Hero Holiday trips to Dominican Republic every year. While there, we focus on building schools and helping with sustainable development projects.  This is possible because of people like you! You can join us on a Hero Holiday in one of our locations that we go to. Please check out www.absolute.org for more information on how you can get involved in what we do in high schools, our School Of Leadership, and our Hero Holiday trips. Your life makes the difference!

Friendship makes prosperity more brilliant, and lightens adversity by dividing and sharing it.~Cicero

The harvesting of pearls is an age old tradition, steeped in legend, surrounded by stories of love, life, and loss. From the tiniest treasures worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, to the largest pearl (registered at 14 pounds!), pearls have been an ever-present part of our human history. Their worth has been calculated according to the societal demand, the trading options, and of course, their true physical beauty. A pearl’s humble beginnings happen when an oyster or mussel has something harmful introduced into its living space. It produces something called nacre, which is what begins the pearl-forming process. A pearl is a beautiful result of something that wasn’t meant to happen to that oyster or mussel - it is the result of pain. Although they are traditionally harvested largely in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, there are many valuable pearls that have been found in the most unlikely of places. They have shown up all over the world, hidden in dark places, on street corners, and even in remote mountain villages. We have found some of those pearls in Haiti.

Trying to describe a place like Port-Au-Prince to someone in our culture is often a challenge. How do you convey the level of human hurt, the deafening silence of poverty in the darkness, or even the simple realization that comes with being able to experience life at that level? Streets filled with the full gamut of human life, passion, desperation, and misery. Listening to the sounds of commerce happening at street level while you are stuck in traffic: toilet paper being sold by the square at a street stall, wood being sold for cooking, water that is promising to be clean, cell phone rentals, rice for sale, chickens hanging from clotheslines above stalls, children and adults begging for money, food, help. It is a lifetime of sensory overload in one afternoon! Yet, if you could see past that initial shock, you would see something else at work: you would see the quiet cry in children’s eyes that are enslaved behind those places, peeking out from doorways, quickly running errands for their owners, trying to avoid harassment and danger, always fearful. These are the faces of restaveks, and they are slaves.

Official estimates would say that there are between 250,000 to 300,000 child slaves in Haiti. They are enslaved in homes, some as young as 3, forced to provide everything from meals to sex for their “owners”. Their owners are generally not rich; in fact, they are often desperately poor themselves. They have taken the children on a false promise to parents, stolen them off the streets, or found them in remote villages far away from the city.  Modern day slavery has changed from what we have known it as, but it is slavery nonetheless. A restavek is a piece of property, and therefore, there are no rules. They are beaten, abused, abandoned when they get sick, and have virtually no hope of a future or education.

However, there is a puzzling and eternal law that is always at work throughout the world: when the light is shone in the darkness, the darkness is the entity that recedes - it is never the other way round. We have seen that eternal law at work even in the dark places in Haiti. Though it may seem small and sometimes dim, the light refuses to go out: as long as there is human kindness and compassion, it will survive. As other lights are added to it, it can even begin to thrive. David is one of those lights.

We met David through a Haitian friend in Dominican Republic. We came to Haiti to see him and to begin to plan how Absolute can partner with him and his ever-growing “family”. At last count, they were numbered at around 70, but as they are able or as the need arises, they continue to somehow always find room for one more. Their family consists of escaped restaveks, former street children, orphaned siblings, and children that have been abandoned due to medical needs that could not be met. They are a part of a growing presence in Haiti, and what they do is desperately needed. They are providing these forgotten children with shelter, food, education, and most of all hope that is rooted in love. They are leaving an imprint on history because of their dedication and compassion. How could we not want to partner with them?

As one of our staff members met with David on a recent visit, they sat at a laptop looking over the photos of the children that they had captured through the camera lens that week. David has never had a laptop, as he currently has no power in any of his houses. They have one cell phone, and it is powered by a solar battery. They cook on an open stove, transport each meal by public transit to each home, and in true form, the workers and volunteers often go without to ensure that the children get all that is possible on such a limited amount. They have a heart of compassion like none other. For David, this moment to see photos of his kids was a rare luxury that he savored with pure joy. As they sat and looked at those pictures, laughing and pointing out the beautiful faces, David said something so profound…

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they? They were lost pearls, but I found them, I cleaned them up, and now they are my treasures.”

This simple statement has managed to completely capture what it is inside of each of us that aspires to do something significant in history: to capture a treasure and allow its worth to shine and be acknowledged for what it is meant to be. Yes, David, they are treasures. They are a treasure that will be remembered throughout eternity, and they are the reason why we believe in you and want to join you in the pursuit of that treasure. Each one of us has a gift we can offer to the world around us. Whether it is our abilities, our compassion, or even our resources and finances. We all play a part, because we are all in this together.

Hero Holiday endeavors to not only educate the Western World with experience and opportunity, but also with the life-altering gift of being a part of something that brings hope and opens the way to a better future. Because of normal people like you and I, we are able to partner with heroes like David and others like him. We can all play a part in being able to empower freed slaves, educate street children, and provide shelter and security for many more like them.

And the Light shines on in the darkness, for the darkness has never overpowered it ~ John, First Century Christian Apostle

The following is a blog from one of our participants, Danielle Clouse, who has been on our Hero Holiday Thailand trip with us:

Christmas came early this year. The gift of giving has left me humbled and at ease. These past two weeks I’ve spent my time meeting amazing new people from all over the map and working together to achieve a common goal. We started out thinking we would be building a medical center for a group of well deserving kids but instead we learnt that the best gift we could give was simply love.
In Northern Thailand I have been faced with the surreal reality of how prominent child prostitution is in this world. We shield ourselves if it happens to come up in the media and we would turn a blind eye if we ever encountered it throughout our day. I believe it is human nature to keep the peace in these situations rather than getting involved, but at what point do we stop and realize what part we must play?
Today I was privileged to meet a wonderful woman named Kru Nam. She has started something amazing just simply by taking an interest in something bigger than herself and following through; rather than forgetting. We can’t all be the hero running into brothels and rescuing the innocent but we can all be the hero of finding our role in bettering the life of others and discovering the personal reward of happiness when helping someone in need.
On my flight to Thailand I read a terrific book by David Batstone titled Not for Sale. Krunam is one of the many stories illustrated in this book. To meet her in real life was a blessing. I left feeling like I met a latter day Martin Luther King or Harriet Tubman. She is an amazing individual and will not be forgotten.
Her accomplishment has blossomed from something that started just as an afternoon activity. She is an artist who walked across the bordering bridge in Burma (to Thailand) and noticed a bunch of “cute kids”. She thought it would be nice to paint with them, only to discover the terror in many of their drawings. This now is a method of therapy for the children. With the support of others Krunams simple act of kindness has turned into a safe house for kids wanting to escape their harsh reality. Children from bordering countries and tribes around Thailand are welcome to the home as a solution. Our role initiated by Krunam has been to help fund development and to love the children and show them how special they truly are. These kids all come from different situations but they now share a common dream of safety, happiness, and good health.
The knowledge I have acquired over this trip has helped me to see a clearer path of what lies ahead in my future; a fantastic experience to say the least. Some events that we have participated in on this Hero Holiday are the best memories of my life and you probably wouldn’t believe me if I shared (powder party anyone!?).
Thank you Christal for being my leader, inspiration and teacher, you are a hero who has found her place and now helps teach us the purpose of life. It`s refreshing to be around a group of amazing people who realize their power to change the world and I am graced to have had the pleasure of working with you all.

Danielle Clouse <3

The following entry is from Heather Bourque, one of our adult participants here with us in Northern Thailand. Heather is a flight attendant with Air Canada (which is how she first heard of Absolute: she was on one of Vaden’s flights!) and she is also a professional photographer. Much of her work can be seen in our book, ONE: A Face Behind the Numbers. Heather has been with us in Thailand three times, and she says that every time is a new adventure and full of amazing memories! Heather is from Montreal.

I can’t remember her name but I will never forget what she did that day. Although I had met her earlier and saw her bright smile, it was not until later that I truly saw her. She sat on the Thai-Myanmar border amongst the street kids and opened up her very basic first aid kit (a small plastic box with a few medications). She pulled out a pair of protective gloves and put them on. I watched, closely anticipating that she would pull out some medications or ointment for the children, as the were in need of various medical treatments. However, instead, a small pair of nail clippers came out. Starting with the smallest child, barely 1 year old, she clipped his tiny little fingernails with great precision and love. With a beautiful smile on her face, she than went on to his toe nails with equal meticulousness. As she came close to being done, another street child would be waiting in line, in most cases anxiously, to get their nails done.

She went from one tiny dirty fingernail to the next with great care and love. Giving 60 seconds of love to each and every child. The hugs and kisses came her way endlessly as she did this humble job with such finesse. Without hesitation, she reciprocated every hug and smile that came her way. These tiny, filthy, beautiful human beings craving love, even for just 60 seconds of it, would come soak in what they could. And still, she continuously gave. With a few more hugs and many more smiles thrown to each one, she went on.

Soon the children would return to the bridge to beg in their torn up clothing on their dirt-laced little bodies. But now, they would returnwith a memory of love. Even if only for a brief moment that day, they were loved like every child should be. And in a simple chile worldview, they trust that she will come back. They know she will return, as she always does.

This morning, as I sit on my bed and reach for my nail clippers, a smile comes to my face.

Although at times I question humanity with the countless struggles we have in this world, today I wake with hope. Hope for these few children because they are loved.

My apologies, but we are currently unable to upload our photos to this blog site from where we are at. We will do our best to get them up asap!

When you are on a Hero Holiday, there is no telling what kind of adventure is waiting for you around the corner, across the street, or really from the moment that you wake up and realize you have been blessed with another day to do something so life-giving. Yesterday was one of those days.
We thought we were going to be helping out at the drop in centre, in the border city in northern Thailand where we are here to work for two weeks. We arrived and thought that this would be a day of cleaning, meeting stateless families that are affected by the presence of this centre (they are able to get food, community support, medical help, and even stay overnight if they need to stay warm and safe) but we didn’t count on the adventure that would ensue!
We met up with the staff that work day after day with the stateless street kids that surround this bridge between two vastly different countries struggling to co-exist. The workers are full of love, grace, and compassion for each individual they meet and it shows in everything they do. We crossed the bridge, went through customs, and were now standing in the border city in Burma (Myanmar). The street was alive with chaos, conversation, and underneath it all, the struggle to survive. The workers put us in tuk-tuks (3 wheeled taxis) and we were off to the edge of the city to meet up with families and street children that they work with to educate, feed, and try to keep safe from exploitation. As we were going through the streets of this small Burmese city, I burst out laughing, as I looked over my shoulder to the other tuk-tuks with the Hero Holiday participants as they smiled and waved at me like this was a part of their everyday life! I think they somehow failed to see the irony in the scene that I saw as I watched them smiling and waving at the curious bystanders on the streets, laughing and joking as if they were the best of friends from years back. They have only known each other for a few days, but somehow, experiences like this, bond you together like no other.
Our world is so vast, yet experiences like Hero Holiday remind you of how humanity is still the same: each one of us needs to know that we belong, that someone cares, and that there is a place in the world for us. Today, watching these students with us, I saw them embody that hope and be changed in the process. I watched as they played tag with street children, brought them treats, held young mothers’ babies, hugged and were hugged back, laughed at childish antics, and cried at the pain of reality for the hands that they held. Today was a day full of the human experience and full of new understandings of the part we play to make the world a better and safer place.
On the tuk-tuk, I was chatting with one of the workers from the home. She is an inspiration to me and she is one of my heroes. She was laughing at the participants with us as we watched them buy birds in baskets from the children at the Buddhist temple in Burma and try to release them and ease their guilty consciences for buying the birds in the first place! She showed us how to love people where they are at, no matter how much you approve or disapprove of their choices, and she encouraged our participants to be that kind of humanitarian worker too. Today was a day of inspiration and realization, and today marked a change in how each one of our students’ saw themselves: as individuals who have a voice and a life that can bring change and love the world around them.
Tonight, during our debriefing, we talked about what this experience can mean when each one of them goes home. There was much laughter, inspiration, and tears. But underneath it all, there is hope.

This past summer I went to Haiti and I witnessed first hand what paralyzing poverty looks like, what it smells like, and what it even tastes like. In Haiti, my heart was changed and my memory was etched forever with the experience. I met people who were former slaves, who were destitute and who were literally starving. In Haiti, everything took on a new perspective and my trip there helped me to better understand the needs and issues that we deal with in Dominican Republic on Hero Holiday. In Dominican Republic I have many Haitian friends, and they have moved from Haiti in hopes of a better life and in the hope of survival for their children. My Haitian friends have given me a new level to reach for in  faith, hope, and love, and they have shown me that the greatest of these truly is love.  My friend Bernard is one of those people.

Bernard has worked with Absolute as a translator in the Dominican since 2006. He is a Haitian living in DR, and he is one of my truest friends. He has impacted my life in ways he is not even aware of, as he has challenged me to love with compassion and to give unconditionally no matter the cost. Bernard grew up in Haiti, and was very poor. From the time he was 8 until he was 14, Bernard was a “restavek” in a home of a family living in Port-au-Prince. This term is really a Creole euphemism for a child slave. He told me that the people he had to serve were kind to him, but for those 6 years, they allowed him an education in school as long as he washed the car, cleaned the house, took care of the kids and did everything they demanded of him; if he did not, there were severe beatings as a consequence.  His own family couldn’t afford to care for him, so he was ‘loaned’ to this family in exchange for food, school, and many long and relentless days of child labor.

If you met Bernard today, you would never know of those times. Bernard is a man of joy, integrity, honesty, and true compassion. He is a trusted member in his community in DR, and he has become a refuge for many other kids who have experienced what he has walked through. This past summer, Absolute decided to make Bernard the recipient of one of our Hero Holiday projects. Bernard was living in a one room house and was continually taking in young men who had run away from slavery, violence, and who had been orphaned. He has spent the past 4 years volunteering in orphanages and supplementing his own income with translating, as well as sending almost all of his money back to Haiti to support his other brothers and sisters in hopes of keeping them out of slavery and exploitation. Bernard has given many of us a character value to aspire to and we are grateful for his time, his many talents, and most of all, his passion to serve and make a difference.

At the end of August, Vaden and I hosted some people from League Assets on a Hero Holiday in DR. The members of League have become a major sponsor of what we do, and because of them, much of what we do is even possible. As we showed them Bernard’s new house location, we shared with them the plan of what it is to become: Bernard wants to use this space to eventually have a safe house for young men needing some help getting on their feet, perhaps getting an education, and wants it to most of all be a place where they feel dignity, respect and hope for what they can grow into.  However, League Assets saw even more than that: they saw what could become a template for change in communities as they began to create a plan for home ownership for the desperately poor. Because of this inspiration, Bernard’s house has set off a chain of events that is leading to opening the way for more families to get homes through sweat equity, micro-finance, and many other creative and viable economic opportunities.

This home is a tribute to the lives of many people. It is a tribute to Bernard and people like him who have the courage to move past the limitations of poverty and exploitation.  It is a tribute to the many hundreds of Hero Holiday participants who have joined with us and others to become instruments of change and help to write a new history for the people we work with. And most of all, this home is a tribute to hope, because when we have hope, we have the ability to dream, and when we have the ability to dream, we have the ability to see lives changed. Thank you, Bernard. I believe in you, in what you do, and I am proud to be counted among your friends.

Mary Poppins had it together. She could get those little brats to do whatever she wanted, as long as she coated it with what they thought they wanted. She made them speak the truth even when it hurt, and she pushed them to live with integrity, even when the old mean guys are trying to get your penny..Plus, she could fit that 6 foot lamp into a bag that was the size of a laptop. She knew how to get the job done - and teach meaningful life lessons at the same time! But really, if we were to be honest, who wouldn’t want to learn about how to be a better person while sailing across the London sky under an umbrella?

Today I joined our road team as they performed in a school in downtown Toronto. They did a great job (yay!) and we got a great response from the staff and students. I closed the show with my own life story (see my May 2007 post for the whole story) and it was well received…However, after the show, two teachers came up to me and were saying thanks for coming to their school, etc. They told me how they were both weeping as I was sharing my story, and then one of them asked me how I deal with loss. But before I could answer her, she asked me if my story was actually true!

It took me back for a moment, as I didn’t quite know what to say, and then she quickly replaced the question with a statement that was something to the effect of  her just wondering because it would be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect…

No, I am sorry, but it wouldn’t be ok if we made up the story for dramatic effect. It’s not ok to blur those lines, even if there is an intended good outcome.

One of the topics that we are dealing with this year in our high school presentations is the character value of honesty. The video segments that we are using is from an amazing company called Make You Think, and the statistics that they highlight about honesty are quite disheartening: the average person lies about once every 7 minutes; 51% of high school students admitted to cheating on tests; fake ID’s run rampant.  Am I getting old, or does it seem like there is so much more open acceptance for dishonesty in our culture? People we trust seem to lie to us. National leaders seem to twist the truth. Spin doctors are actually getting paid great salaries for professionally spinning the facts. Vows made are easily broken.  Where is that line where truth is drawn and embraced-even if it isn’t comfortable to face?

All over the word right now, as I type this, we can only imagine some of the pain and anguish: young women murdered because of a hatred for their sex, people dying for their faith, children losing their parents to diseases that could be so easily prevented, families choosing who will eat tonight when the few tablespoons of food are prepared, and we are cheating on mid-terms because we couldn’t be bothered to get help or study a little more and we are lying to save face and try to win the approval of a group of friends that will probably change in a few months anyways…hmmm….I can totally see the equality in that!

There is a verse in the Bible that says let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’. What would the world look like if you and I chose to actually not assimilate into the relativity of our culture but instead chose to take the high road, to be honest, and to not give any room for interpretation according to what we felt was best for us?  The real face of dishonesty is actually selfishness, because it is about getting my own way, no matter what the cost. No one would like to say that they are selfish, yet we would be willing to stretch the truth or blatently cheat to get our own way, and if it came down to it, we would probably even willingly compromise many things just for our own personal comfort…And sadly, somedays when I examine my own life, I am not much different. I have to continually examine my own motives, thoughts, words, and actions, and sometimes I fall terribly short because I, too, am painfully human.

But I am finding that character is not something that is given to me; it is something that is worked out in me. The only way I can see my character is to have it tested. I want to be someone who is known as being a person of integrity, and who is known as being honest. We all fall short many times, and like you, I am nowhere near where I wish I could say I was- but that isn’t a good enough reason to not try.

And that is the honest truth…

Fours years ago, Vaden and I were driving down a road that seemed to go nowhere: it was washed out in places, had almost no traffic except for the odd motorbike or donkey, and it had houses lined along the side of it, full of people who shyly waved at us as we rumbled along. Somewhere along that place we found a man with a  dream, and his name was Garcia…

Garcia is a musician, a husband and father, a pastor, and a man with a vision bigger than what was in front of him. He had a community back on that road that we  found ourselves on that day, and he traveled  every day of the week from his own village, Maranatha, to serve that community and help it move forward in whatever way he could.  He came to help out because he loved them and believed in them. They had a local area where they had a church, held community meetings, and one day hoped to have a school. It was  a small area, about 20 feet by 30 feet, and it was covered by four posts and a tarpaulin. All around the area, many feet out, was a trench that had been dug at one time, but was now covered in by weeds, grass and life. Five years earlier, Garcia had inspired some men in the community to dream of what a school could like in that place, and so together, they dug the trench, in hopes that someday they might see a school for their children.

In that area, we, like Garcia, saw what could be, but not yet was: a school that could change the future of the hundred plus children in that community. This is what faith and dreams are made of  and what Absolute wanted to be a part of, so the following summer, our Hero Holiday teams began to work with Garcia and the people in Arroyo Seco to accomplish this dream. It is a labor of love that has filled our lives with laughter, warm memories, huge community parties, and tearful good-byes. And in some way, it has changed us all.

This past summer, we put the finishing touches on the school. As we drove away, I looked over my shoulder and saw a bunch of children waving good bye, with Garcia and his family in the middle of the crowd, smiling and shouting out blessings…It felt good to be a part of something so incredible. Over the time that we worked in their community, over 700 Canadian teenagers and adults who joined us on Hero Holiday had witnessed the fulfillment of a dream, and it inspired us all.

Yesterday, however, I got an email with an update of what has happened in Maranatha, the community where Garcia lives. This past Friday, while many of us got together with friends and had Halloween parties, Garcia, his family, and the thousands of people that live in Maranatha, his own village, fought for their lives and homes as they faced a flash flood. Many of their homes were covered under two to five feet of water and sewage, and many of them lost every last earthly possession that they had. Garcia and his family lost most of their possessions, but managed to salvage some valuable items such as beds and food. However, the local grocery store, where many of them were only able to buy their supplies on credit, was swept away and food is scarce.  Like so many of the world’s poor, they are now forced to rebuild their lives and start over…at the beginning.

Why is life so blatantly unjust? Why do the poor always keep losing, and the rich get drunk on the excess of the world? How is it that our governments can find trillions of dollars to bail out multi-national companies in a financial crunch and still manage to employ hundreds of thousands of people at salaries that keep growing, and yet many of the world silently slips away and struggles moment by moment to exist? What is my part in all of this? How do I live my life in light of what I know to be true both here and there?

I don’t have all the answers, I just have a conviction that I can’t give up: I can’t stop doing what I know I am called to do, and I MUST NOT quit just because things seem difficult where I am at.

So, Garcia, when I see you again, I will tell you this in person, but until then, I will put it in black and white: you are a great inspiration and friend, and your struggle is my struggle, and we are linked by a common faith and purpose that is deeper than culture, skin color and economics. I will continue to pray for you and will do what I can to help ease the burden. You and your family have done so much for a community, their children, and their future, and now it is time for a community of people to do something for you.

If you would like to help us get some money to Garcia and his family, please email me and I will let you know what you can do.

Hey Everyone!

We love what we do: we get to travel, see the country, create change and bring hope. We also love to be able to pass on cool info that we think students might benefit from…this is one of those moments:

Ashoka’s Youth Venture, recently launched in Canada, is proud to announce their first global competition to recognize and support young changemakers worldwide.

If you know young people with IDEAS or existing PROJECTS for change, please encourage them to enter the Staples Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition by October 15, 2008.

The various prizes include seed funding to implement their ideas, a free trip to attend the next Youth Venture Summit in the U.S., and special opportunities involving MTV and Nike for environment and sports-related projects.

For more info, check out changemakers.net