The wall that made me remember

One of the things that we did with the samplers today was drive them downtown to the state capital. In front of the building there are two monuments to those who are Ohio natives who have served in the armed forces. The memorial itself is comprised of letters home from soldiers in all of the wars from WWI to Desert Storm. Some of them are sweet love letters to a girlfriend left behind. Some are "that letter" that nobody wants to write or mail. One of the letters was even from the Secretary of the Army informing a family that their son had been killed in action and instructing them not to release his position or assignment since it could aid the enemy. Reading all of those letters took me straight back to second and third grade while my dad was away in Desert Storm. He told us all that he was safe the whole time, and I believe him, but I really felt for those families. It really makes you think about the cost of war, not in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of the human toll that it takes, even on the homefront.

After we were done at the wall we headed over to faith mission. This is a housing and job assisstance program which is also a soup kitchen. They do great work there, but it is a never ending stream of needy people who come through their doors. The thing that was weird to me was that for the second day in a row I ended up having a conversation with someone who was very disenfranchised. "They'll come in here like a bunch of animals" she told me, "I don't know where they get the nerve." I really wanted to ask her why she volunteered there if she was so disgusted by what she saw, but that didn't really seem appropriate.

This group of kids is different. They have bonded well as a group, and since there are fewer of them, they are less work to "watch." But the fundamental makeup of this group seems to be different. The last session was filled with all of the church overachievers, the ones who did everything in the church. That doesn't seem to hold true for this group. For some reason in this session I'm really getting the feeling that the kids are getting to "sample" different kinds of ministries, which I think is supposed to be the idea.

I'm really missing Robyn and I can't wait until we are both back in Columbus together. Things just seem to be easier to deal with when she is around. 369 days and counting!