13 yr olds view… on poverty

I came across this today, James wrote this when we got back from a mission trip three years ago. It’s powerful.

This trip carved the path he wants the follow the rest of his life but more on that later. First his reflection statement:

Written by James Velde in 2022:

Jesus stood for helping the poor and disenfranchised. He stood to help people in places we don’t typically think about. When I went on a trip to Guatemala I got to see first hand for the first time the need and suffering that that Jesus asks us to aid. 

       I went on a mission trip to Guatemala in January of 2022. When I was there I helped to build a 3 room brick house for a family living in a house with corn stalks for walls and dirt floors. The family had only one income because the wife had to stay home to take care of their 4 kids. And their dad earned only $4 a day working in the corn fields. 

The realization that 100’s of millions of people are condemned to living off of first world pocket change, and then seeing that for relatively low cost, it doesn’t have to be like that, has led me to stand strongly with Jesus’s believes that as well off people we have an obligation to help those without. 

         One thing that really stuck with me when I went to Guatemala was the hearing the parable of the starfish for the first time. It goes like this, an old man walks along the beach everyday and throws all of the washed up starfish into the ocean. A young man comes up to him and asks “what difference can you make throwing them? It doesn’t matter if you throw the starfish into the ocean because they will continue to wash ashore”. And so the old man picked up a starfish and he threw it as far as he could into the ocean and he said “it mattered to that one.”.

        This story stuck with me because it really helped me get over some of my nihilist thinking patterns. Even though I couldn’t help all of the homeless I was still able to make the lives of one family much easier. Even if I couldn’t fix all the problems of that one family, that one village, or the whole country, I could still fix one problem for a family in need and I realized that that was enough.

      I couldn’t spend 100s of thousands to feed everyone but we could donate a relatively small amount of $200 to build a kitchen for the family and make their lives significantly easier. 

       This kind of personal community based aid it the exact kind of thing that Jesus always speaks of. I am early in my faith journey but I think that helping others is a way to get closer to God and to carry out his work here on earth as Jesus would have wanted.

 

 I’m back! Upon returning from this trip he was focused to become a doctor so he could do Doctors Without Borders. That’s the program where doctors provide medical care to people in need. Because he was 13 at the time, I supported him but did not think much of it. However, he thought about it a lot. He got straight ‘A’s, joined a couple of sports just to build a resume for college (even though he dislikes sports), national honors society, just got his ACT scores back at 97% level. He registered today to do First Aid and CPR certification so he can work in healthcare for summer jobs before in Senior in high school. He really wants to make his goal to help people a reality.

What I’m most proud is he’s figuring most of this out on his own. If he asks me questions I answer them but he digs in and owns his dreams. That is a key. Parents can’t own kids dreams. I repeatedly remind him that he can change his mind. He also has a real passion around plant 🌱 science. But he tells me that’s a hobby. Ok buddy.

Parenting has ups and downs. This element with James is certainly an up. To be fair and balanced I should a post on Victoria’s journey on getting diagnosed with ADHD and autism. Wow, that’s been a rat race. It’s to a point Nick and I get an email from the teacher when it’s a good day. Yup. It’s that bad. A couple times she’s raised a chair over her head when she gets real sad or mad. Not good. She is funny, sassy, smart, sad, silly, and vert challenging sometimes.

Friends of young ones, in case it helps- James has ADHD and had issues in school in early grades. He was not always a high performer. Sometimes kids just adjust at different rates and ways. We just love them. We expose them to the world as parents we desire to do so. Pray for them. And try our best not to stress.

God has a plan for all of us, that includes each of our children.