Sunday, March 30, 2008

Camping has left me thinking.

I promised some friends a description of the latest camping trip by this afternoon, but alas, my sleep-deprived body won. Having just finished my two hour nap, The Good, the Bad, and the Unconscious will have to wait until tomorrow. But lest you think I have fallen off one of those cliffs near our campground, I share the following.

I came home from this trip considering one of the great dichotomies of life. I live in America. Land of the free, home of the brave. There are men and women all over the world right now living day and night in grave danger, fighting for my freedom to go out and live like a homeless person for a weekend, if I so choose. And when we got home last night, one of the newspaper headlines stated that, under Raul Castro, all Cubans now have the right to own a cell phone. The attached photo showed people lined up in the street outside a cell phone store in Havana. Since I sent my oldest daughter to Cuba on a missions trip in 2003, we have some understanding of how most Cubans live, and for many of them, it's like we lived on our camping trip this weekend, but without the heated bathrooms. These people are dirt-poor with no hope of their economic situation ever improving.

Last week Raul sent a national soccer team to Florida and guess what? Seven of them immediately sought political asylum. I'm sure it was for more than a cell phone.

Be thankful ~

Karen

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