The Problem with Reading...

It's more fun than TV!

Every day after lunch we let the kids watch 20 minutes of a movie in English before we start reading. 

The problem is, many kids claim their book as soon as they get in the room, and they start reading while the TV is still rolling! 

Reading is just more fun and novel for them! It makes my heart happy.

El Rey Leon

Every day after lunch while we are waiting for everyone to finish eating, we watch an English movie upstairs. This helps us corral all the niños in an organized way, but it also doesn´t matter when they arrive. This helps us to all start reading at the same time afterwards.

This week we have been watching El Rey Leon- The Lion King, but in English. Today we watched the scene where the stampede in the gorge kills Mufasa and Simba sees his father die. The kids usually understand mas o menos what's going on, but today they understood it all.

I always hold my laptop in my lap so they can all see the screen, and I watch the best movie- them. :)

But today it was so sad. Their eyes were so terrified. So pitiful. They saw Simba's suffering, and it hurt them too.

It was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen- 50 Peruvian mountain kids, worried and afraid and sorrowful for the absense of Simba's father in his life and the pain at his parting. They didn't need it to be in Spanish and they didn't need translation. Death is life, family is life, and they knew it.

Life is the same for all of us. Things that make someone cry, like losing a parent, usually hurt just as bad for the next person.

It makes me want to be more compassionate towards others I don't understand. Some people do weird things I really disagree with- but at their core- they too are human. They want love, family, acceptance, public success. This motivates all of us. People that do weird things usually just have different means of achieving what I too am trying to achieve, they just attempt success differently than I do, usually because their culture or family or hard circumstances have trained them to fight their wars differently.

So let us be compassionate.

How to make people do things they really don't want to do:

This requires a story from Romania.

There was a little girl in Chloe and Madeline's room. She was handicapped. Very handicapped. She sat in a wheelchair all day where her stick-thin legs hung over the frame, and her head seemed too big for her body that was withering away. She could barely hold her head up, because she had no neck muscles, and nothing to look at, so her head just hung there, attached by a small neck, drooping over the front of her little body. A life long of never wanting to hold your head up robs you of all your neck muscles.

In the orphanage, Madeline and Chloe would work with her. Their goal for her was to hold her head up by herself. She could do it, but she just never wanted to try. But they would smile at her, and say "Keep your head up!" every time they caught her head hanging down. She was usually lazy and wouldn't hold her head up for the workers, but when Chloe and Madeline were watching, and told her, "Keep your head up!", she did better.

This little girl lived her life in the orphanage, except for the few occasions she would leave to go to the hospital because she was sick. Orphans get sick a lot. Perhaps because they do not have a lot to live for. Perhaps because of sanitation. Perhaps because of too many children within too few walls.

So, again, this little girl got sick. And had to go to the hospital.

In the afternoon, Chloe, Madeline, and Hannah went to the hospital to visit the orphans there and were surprised to find the girl they knew from the orphanage! The little girl immediately recognized them and started smiling. They went over to her, took her big but fragile 10 year old body out of the crib, and just held her. She was sick. She needed love. She needed rest.

As soon as they took her in their arms, however, without even being asked, this sick little girl started grunting, and soon enough- her head was up. Madeline told her, “Oh, little (girl), you don't have to hold your head up today. You're in the hospital, you're sick, you can just rest and get better today.”
But her head stayed up strong, because she wanted to be good for them.

Why is that? She doesn't like trying to hold up her head. After a lifetime in the orphanage, she had lost her neck muscles because she never wanted to hold up her head. It wasn't worth it to her. Even babies want to hold their head up. But she didn't. So why did she try so hard, without being asked, for Chloe and Madeline?

Because- THEY LOVE HER, and she knows it, so she wants to please them and be good for them. Hannah said she was really touched and she almost started crying.

That is the secret to making people do things they really don't want to do. Loving them.

Now Forget to Be Content

I was watching the Prince of Egypt, one of my favorite movies, and learned something.

It's during the part where Moses finds out that he is a Hebrew and yet has been living among the palace Egyptians all this time.

His mother sings some very deep and touching lyrics:

Now you know the truth, love

Now forget to be content.

When the gods sent you a blessing

you don't ask why it was sent.

Those lyrics really stood out to me. Moses didn't know before. He didn't know he should have been doing back-breaking labor with the Hebrews. But he shoulda. He was Hebrew. By blood.

He didn't realize how lavishly he lived.

Growing up, he didn't know he was so so lucky that his Egyptian mom found him in the river, but now that he knows, he is so much more grateful for what he has. 

Now you know the truth love, now forget to be content.
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There's a lot of truth in this world that I didn't know before, either.

Now you know the truth, love.

The truth about how many people wash their clothes.

The truth about many people's homes.

Looking off our roof onto our neighbor's home

The truth about what they do for a living (like sheer sheep).

The truth that people eat rice and lentils day after day because that is all they can afford.

The truth of how many children are abused.

How many children do not have parents.

Romanian orphanage

How many children with parents have no where to go after school because their parents are working.

Very common site in Peru. Kids waiting while their parents work.

How many children cannot ask their parents for homework help, because their parents don't know.

How few people can play the piano at church, because no one can afford a piano to practice on.

How few children own a book for pleasure reading.

Most children at El Bichito do have have a book at home. Nor do they at school. Nor are there textbooks for everyone. The teacher just teaches out of her textbook and everyone else copies.

The truth that most kids can't go to college because they cannot afford it.

How few trips and vacations people can go on. They just can't afford it. Some people have never set foot outside their small village their entire life.

View from our roof

How the majority of Europeans drink. A lot. Get wasted. Often.

(And then stumble around on the streets and scare American girls visiting. :) )

How many prostitutes there are. How lavishly it is advertised. In Romania, most stores had bright pink, glowing signs. They even passed out flyers on people's windsheilds in Bucharest.

How many gypsies. Whose parents teach them, explicitly, how to lie, how to steal. Well.

And homeless.

-------

Now forget to be content.

Being content means it's good enough. I deserve it. I was born this blessed for a reason. No. I wasn't. Forget it. Forget to be content.

Content with my house.

My family.

My faith.

My friends. Good, clean friends.

My education.

 

Books from the time I was itty bitty.

(We had so many textbooks in high school we got rid of them and got new editions every 10 years. The library was full of books no one read. But literacy isn't as much of a problem, so we spent our time and money on things like... school spirit.?)

The ability to pursue my dreams. (ballet point shoes are expensive)

The ability to find a job quickly and work.

My apartment at college. Warm. Safe. Food and to spare.

My washing machine and dryer.

My money. 

Grandpa's money- treating us to rafting.

Money to save up, and go to theme parks. 

Most Romanians and Peruvians could never do that.

Money to buy save up and buy prom dresses. 

Healthy relationships where I am not abused.

Community money- to make available clean and cheap swimming pools.

So many Christmas presents the wrapping covers the floor.

Food and to spare- given to us for free by farmers who left it unpicked because it wasn't "good enough" for the American market.

--------

Moses's eyes changed after he found the truth. He didn't see the glory in the riches and the buildings. 

He just saw the suffering of those supporting it.

It was like that for me- but Romanians and Peruvians don't necessarily directly support the wealth of my family. But.... kinda.... I guess- all economies in the world are connected.

It's just hard to see and love and appreciate wealth- lots of cute clothes money to go out to eat all the time, money to go to college, when I knew people who only bought brown sugar and oil from the store. Everything else they grew or made themselves.

Forget to be content. I thought to myself, "Your life is not normal. Who's to say what normal is- but you are extremely blessed. Way more than you ever have or ever will deserve."

I do not believe that God sent me to a well-off, happy family in America because I was more faithful, more righteous in the previous life. I can't believe that. Because if I was born into a poor, broken family without good solid principles and examples of how people can live with high morals, self control, and loyalty in their lives and families, I can't say I would have made choices different from the choices of people I know who come from those backgrounds. But I do know that I will never know what that feels like. And I will always be thankful that I was so so so blessed
 beyond my deserving.

Now forget to be content.

Forgetting to be content means refusing to be okay with just saying, "Oh- yeah, I must have been more righteous in the preexistence. I deserve this.It's okay. It's supposed to be this way. Everyone else just isn't as good as I am." That's called pride. Read about it in Alma 31: 27-28. It also means refusing to say, "Well, this is bad, but I'm just one person. I can't do anything about this.
I guess I'll just do nothing."

Because you can do something! And it can matter! Mother Teresa said, "We outselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." Something small to you may be small to the world, but it may be the world to one other person.
So it's worth it.

I don't pretend to know what that one drop is for everyone. I don't even know exactly what it is for me, but I try to figure out a couple drops here and there and add them. I know for sure that everyone's drops are different. A couple drops I have decided to continue adding when I return to America:

1. Reading to my kids at a young age.

2. Getting married, and trying my hardest to maintain a healthy, nuclear family for my kids.

3. Providing shelter, food for my children.

4.. Maintaining my faith as a priority.

5. Giving away more money. I do not need it.

6. Hugging those I love a little tighter.

It's different for everyone. But I hope you can find drops too to show God
how grateful you are for everything we have been given.

Forget to be content.