Wow.
I can't believe that there are only 9 days left for me in the Philippines. I have the strangest feeling that my life before coming here never existed. Maybe it's because of the huge difference between the status quo in middle class America and the status quo I see all around me. Or maybe it's because right now, for me, there is no status quo. Or maybe it's the huge difference in the amount of rice I've been eating...Who knows. One thing I do know though, is that I won't look at the world, life and other people the same way I did before I came here to work with Mercy In Action.
  Do you realize that having a refrigerator, a car to drive and having enough food to wonder what to do with your leftovers before they go bad, are actually rare occurrences as far as the most people living on this earth are concerned? Maybe you do. Do you know that 1/3 of the children on this planet are  chronically malnourished and 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient deficiencies? Do you know that 1.8 million little kids, kids younger than 5, kids like your little brother, your daughter, your nephew, your grandson, 1.8 million little kids die of diarrhea every year? We tend to laugh at diarrhea, because where most of the people have a refrigerator and leftovers to fill it with, we don't have to worry about whether or not there is sewage in our only source of drinking water, and we know that if we get diarrhea, our bodies can handle it because we are well nourished, and if things get really bad, we can always get our cars and drive on safe, well paved roads to make a trip to the emergency room, where there will be a health care professional who showed up for work that day, and who will treat us quickly and effectively, and will not require us to first pay the full cost of our treatment, and then send us out with a list of required medical supplies to first purchase and bring back.
    There are a lot of people in pain in this world. Pain from starvation, pain from disease, pain from war and death, pain from hopelessness.
  This is common as far as the whole population of the world is concerned.
    Corruption, suffering and death are common, as far as most people in the world are concerned.
This is the world that Christ came to give his life for, these are the people along with you and me, who He came to heal.
  This is the world that Christ put the church in, and this is the work he gave, and if you are a Christian, that means it's the work that he gave you. You personally.
    So use your feet and go, use your hands to heal and use your heart and compassion to show Christ's love.
Lets get up, lets get to work.
Because there's a lot to do.