Heroes

I have a new hero. His name is Greg Mortenson. I ran across a book about his story while wasting time in Barnes and Noble the other day. Turns out it was not a waste of time! It's called Three Cups of Tea and I HIGHLY recommend the book. It's truly a story of what one person can accomplish when they are passionate about their cause and refuse to give up.

Greg grew up in Africa where his parents were Lutheran missionaries. When they got back to the States, he joined the military for 2 years where he trained to be a nurse in combat situations. He went to college on the GI Bill, but was a bit aimless in life for awhile. He spent most of his time working late shifts and crazy hours so he could have plenty of time to go climbing up in the mountains. When his youngest sister Christa passed away from a seizure, he pledged to honor her by summiting K2 in Pakistan. He didn't make his goal of reaching the top, but instead he stumbled upon a small village in Pakistan and found a higher goal: promoting peace by building schools in one of the most violent areas in the world.

Greg's experiences fascinate me. What started as a promise to build one school has resulted in 81 schools, including 15 schools in Afghanistan. All of this came to fruition through Greg's sincere desire to build relationships with people, to embrace their religion and customs, and to give them tools to help themselves. Greg feels that literacy and education is the best long-term solution to violence in the Middle East. Empowered children who see a bright future ahead of them will have less reason to join violent extremist movements. It is an uphill battle to be sure, but Greg is making the journey one school at a time.

In my view, Greg is right up there along with Gary Haugen from International Justice Mission and Catherine Rohr from Prison Entrepreneurship Program. All 3 of these folks are on my hero/wish I could meet someday list because they are using their talents to directly help those less fortunate and do their small part in making the world a better place. I'm sure all 3 of them could be working somewhere else for more money and more stability, but they are living off their passion and wouldn't have it any other way. Great inspirations to all of us.

If you are interested in buying the book online, purchase it using the links to Amazon through http://www.threecupsoftea.com/purchase-three-cups-of-tea/ and 7 percent of your book purchases will benefit Greg's non-profit organization.

What do you hope people gain from reading THREE CUPS OF TEA?
That ultimately to achieve global peace and defeat terror we must do it with education and books, not edicts and bombs. I also hope it inspires our younger generation to know that anyone can make a difference and be pro-active. Martin Luther said that even if the world would end today, we should still plant seeds and trees for tomorrow. Even in America, we have extreme poverty, but I think the greatest poverty we face in our country is a poverty of compassion and that we live more in fear than in hope. If you fight terrorism, it is based in fear, but if you promote peace, it is based in hope. Ignorance is the real enemy, wheather it is in Afghanistan, Africa or America, and it is ignorance that breeds hatred. We can overcome that ignorance with compassion and courage, and encourage all children (and adults) to promote peace and have hope through education. -- Greg Mortenson

Stories

This weekend, DC was hit by one of the biggest snow storms in its history. A blanket of snow covered monuments, buildings, and roads; it was beautiful, and peaceful.

In the midst of a busy holiday season, I took advantage of this weather-induced free time and caught up on some reading. I started out with Crazy Love by Francis Chan. The Foreward by Chris Tomlin is what reeled me into the book. I did enjoy the book, but it seems to be "just another one of those books". I mean, it seems like today I am bombarded by messages that seek to awaken a sleeping church that has become too comfortable. And I admit, the church probably HAS become too comfortable. I guess I'm just tired of reading about it. Instead of passionately preaching to people to get them to wake up, shouldn't we be passionately seeking to create opportunities that people can participate in and see what lives lived for Christ really look like? Don't get me wrong, Crazy Love has a good message. It starts by helping us remember that God is so much bigger than we are, and life is not about us. It goes on to explain what a lukewarm Christian looks like. And it encourages us to be absolutely in love with Christ, regardless of how crazy the world might think that is. All this is good stuff.

Then I started reading Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. And I absolutely loved it. There's just something about the way Don writes that make you feel like he's right there, simply having a conversation with you. This book is about Don's experiences while writing a screenplay about his life. He compares the elements of a good story to the elements of a meaningful life. In his own unique non-assuming way, He helps the reader realize that God wants to help us write amazing stories with our lives, stories that fill our lives with meaning, memories that we will share and cherish. But these stories don't necessary equate to comfort and success. Just like a character in a movie, we must overcome conflict. Unlike a character in a movie, our stories don't always have a nice and tidy ending. At least, not in this life. Not yet. "We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them."

Essentially, both of these books have the same bottom line: God wants us to live a life that points to Him. If we give him our heart and our trust, He will write an epic story through us.

A few quotes:

It's like this when you live a story: The first part happens fast. You throw yourself into the narrative, and you're finally out on the water... You think that you'll paddle for a bit and arrive on the other side by lunch. But the truth is, it isn't going to be over soon. The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle.... I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. And they go looking for an easier story.

It's a Donald Miller book, I can't leave out a quote about love:

I was interviewing my friend Susan Isaacs after her book Angry Conversations with God came out... Because so much of her book was about relational needs, relational fulfillment and unfulfillment, one of the questions asked was whether she believed there was one true love for every person. Susan essentially said no. And she said that with her husband sitting right there in the audience. She said she and her husband believed they were a cherished prize for each other, and they probably would drive any other people mad. But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn't going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts. I thought this was beautiful.

Like A Melody

I heard this song at the Penn State volleyball game and couldn't get it out of my head... shaking head...

Shawty's Like A Melody In My Head

Sounds Like Life

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. -- James 1:17