The Power of One...

I've been thinking a lot this week about the influence that a single person can have to touch another person's life. A few years ago, a girl named Charlee Hawkins from my home neighborhood, lost her life to cancer. Despite the tragedy of facing death as a senior in high school, Charlee was one of those people who smiled when everyone else was sad. She had a profound effect on my family, my neighborhood and the community at large. You can read more about her in a New Era article called, "A Girl Called 'Nine'." See the link here

Although Charlee's life was cut short, her legacy is still continuing. My sister, Jennie, just 15-years-old, received the inspirational idea to create a scholarship fund in Charlee's name at her alma mater high school. She has already collected over half of the money required and (with a lot of help from my mom and other wonderful people) is putting together a benefit concert where the proceeds will go towards the fund. I'm just so impressed that ordinary people are enabled to bring about miracles with simple charitable acts. You can read more about the concert by clicking the link here

To be honest, I feel surrounded by people who have shown how tremendous an impact a person can have, not just within their family sphere, but in the world at large. My mom, for example, has devoted a good part of the last five years trying to adopt a boy in Mozambique. She became involved with a humanitarian group called, "Care For Life," whose motto (that I love) is the following:

Go to the People
Live with Them
Love Them
Learn from Them
Work with Them
Start with what They Have
Build on what They Know
And in the End, when the Work is Done
The People will Rejoice:
"We Have Done It Ourselves!"

Mozambique is a country with many needs, but you can probably tell from the 'Care for Life' motto, that the focus of this large humanitarian effort is to build upon principles of self-reliance. This is the charity that keeps on giving! You can learn more about Care for Life here

A great portion of their efforts is extended to the large population of orphans in Mozambique. There are simply too many children with not enough resources to care for them. On one of my mom's trips to Africa, she met Kelvin (now app. 10-years-old) and immediately recognized that he should have a place in our family. The problem is that there is no standard system for adoption in Mozambique, meaning that my family is continually given the political run-around and continually waiting for a definitive "yes, you can take him home" answer from the courts. In the meantime, my mom has helped put together an effort to place orphans (including Kelvin) in good and stable Mozambican foster homes with American sponsorship. A little bit back, an orphanage was closed down and there were twenty-four children left homeless. This wasn't acceptable, so a solution was found. For a small amount of money donated each month, a family is paid to help take care of the orphan in their care. It's really a great system. The family who provides the foster care benefits by having a larger income. The foster child no longer has to deal with the food shortages, sicknesses and neglect that are common in the orphanages. And the American sponsor, without a large financial loss, receives the greater gain of saving a child from the streets. Obviously, I am a fan of this effort and I have been thinking about it more and more--it probably has something to do with the fact that I'm putting together a scrapbook detailing the last 5 years of work in Africa for my mom. This project has truly shown me the effect that one individual can have...I really hope that someday I will do something so worthy with my time.

Lindy Packard with Kelvin!