Easter Sweaters

White cardigan children's sweaters with bunnies and birdies at Etsy.

Appreciation

My youngest daughter Catherine decided this spring that more than anything she wanted as a gift for her graduation from high school was to go on a mission trip with a local church to Kenya. More specifically, they went to a slum on the outskirts of Nairobi. Kibera is said to be one of the poorest and largest slums in all of Africa. She raised the money to go and on June 6th, two days after she graduated she left for ten days of the most glorious work she has ever done.

She has come home changed and she is changing me. Through her eyes and heart, I have seen that the troubling things of my world can seem trivial when you think about the children of Kibera. They do not beg and she said they ALWAYS have a smile on their face. Catherine snuggled up close to these precious ones as you can see from the photos.

They told her that on "school days", they get to eat. Any other day there is no promise of anything.

She has returned with a new found appreciation for education. She wants to make a mark on her generation, to hold out a light in the darkness. And the little ones of Kibera have led her to that yearning. How precious. I will be forever grateful.

Stay tuned for stories from my other daughter Mary Moore who is spending two months this summer in Malawi, Africa working in a crisis nursery.

New Book

When my first book came out in 2004, the first thing someone said to me was,"When does the second book come out?" Well...it's finally here!! The title  is "Be Kind Be Sweet Be Nice to Everyone You Meet". My middle daughter Mary Moore and I created it this summer. We had talked about how we were not hearing "please" and "thank you" from  children we were coming in contact with and decided to do something about that. So we made a manners book along with counting. One is to count the kind words. So for instance one kind word is "please". Two kind words are "thank you" and so on up to twelve kind words. Then each page has a rhyme, a thought and a scripture to back up the kindness. Here is a sample page. It is 8 kind words. The page reads "When you make a little mess at your home or as a guest, clean up after yourself, that will be the best."