Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace

Goodbye to Americaland! I’ve had a great leave barring a few small things. Here’s a run down of the important details:

2pm Wednesday EST: leave the great Hoosier state for Georgia.
7pm EST: leave Georgia for Johannesburg, SA
8 hours later: somewhere over the Atlantic
12 hours later: still on that dang plane!
16 hours later: eating the last of my packaged meals and getting off flight 2 of 3.
Noon Friday Central African Time (CAT): reach Lusaka airport!
???: time my luggage arrives
Anytime in the future: you and I catch up on SKYPE.

So I’ll still blog about as often as I did before. I also will be more able to stay in communication with all the important people (even you!) in my life thanks to Skype on the ipod touch. My Skype name is: butemwe. My physical address is updated under the “contact Beth” page.

Beth with an Ipod touch?! Oxymoron? Let me tell the story. This is a truly good story where everyone wins. My original touch was stolen, no worries because the situation allowed alot of beautiful acts of generous kindness. A woman immediately donated her older model to me. Only a few weeks later another family from Michigan who’d heard sent me the touch I have now.

This family has a long standing tradition of pooling money to donate to a deserving person or group. Simply, this has now inspired many others (the entire extended Dickey family for starters!) to adopt the same tradition. Now even further deserving groups or causes will benefit.

It is very humbling and honoring to be their deserving person because so many others are more deserving and in need of more. Or call it an opportunity to be used as an instrument of peace and goodness. St. Ignatius of Loyola had a good idea in asking and praying to be used in this way. Sounds good to me. Please keep using me in this way.

Mwende Mutende.