Bear Hugs

Last Saturday I took my munchkins to Build a Bear at the Fashion Square Mall to help stuff bears for kids at Phoenix Children's Hospital (if you missed it, see my original post about this here). We got to meet Jacob, the 10-year-old who put this whole thing together, and he told us there would be over 100 bears stuffed that day. On top of that, his most recent fundraiser was so successful, he's raised enough money to have a second session. Saturday, October 25 at 2:30 pm they'll be stuffing over 70 more! Woo hoo! Contact Jacob if you want to help: jacobagoldfeld@resourcesforhealth.org

This is what we did. First we received a story/tag to fill out with our names.

(Sorry about the bad picture - but I'm too lazy to retype this. It's a cute story.)

Then we stood in a long line of people waiting to stuff bears:

While waiting, we rubbed the hearts that would be going into the bears, to make them warm.

(They got plenty of kisses too.)

Then we stuffed the bears:

Took them to get stitched up:

And gave them a "bath" and brushed their fur so they'd be nice and fluffy for their future owners.

Then Jacob's helpers attached the story to the bear with a ribbon.

(As an aside, we got to choose which color ribbon we wanted. See the colors, blue, orange, yellow, and red? Guess which one I chose. Go ahead guess. Red? No. The word that came out of my mouth was "yellow." I watched the girl grab the yellow ribbon and I thought to myself, "Yellow? What the?" I almost changed it to red, but then I realized I really wanted it to be yellow. Go figure.)

Chris gave his bear an extra hug and extra love for the little child who'd be holding it after him:

Then we turned in our bears to the young man behind the counter, who looked absolutely overwhelmed by all those boxes of donated teddy bears. To me, it was the best thing I saw all day:

I'll be honest, this did not feed the desire to do good that Three Cups of Tea inspired in me. I still feel like I want to do something. I want to do something that will make a difference, and that will not get done if I don't do it. Those bears would have been stuffed and delivered whether we showed up or not.

However, I'm really glad we went. I'm glad my children spent part of their Saturday doing something for someone else. I think this was a good learning experience for my kids; a good start. I hope we remember to look for ways to serve, and I hope this helps nurture a sense of compassion and responsibility in my children's hearts.

P.S. The answer to the Name That Foot post is forthcoming.

P.P.S. John McCain smoked in tonight's presidential debate! Even the commentators couldn't deny it afterward, though they did their best to downplay it. I'm very concerned about who our next president will be. When America is relatively healthy and strong, she can survive a bad president. But America is on dangerously unstable ground right now - we NEED McCain to win.

I just wanted to share the comment I received on my Bear Hugs for Phoenix Children's Hospital post:

Michelle Thompson said:

That's awesome! I think that's a great way for your kids to get involved with the community. PCH is a great organization, I have several friends who do fund raiser events for them. Have you seen the documentary videos they created for fund raising? They are incredibly touching and show the kind of great work the hospital is doing.
If you want to see the videos she's talking about, go to the PCH Handprints website. I've only had a chance to watch a few, including the one about Sean, a little boy who literally spent the first 13 months of his life in the hospital. (He's a cute little bugger too.) It makes me think about what the Zapatas are going through, and I can't imagine going through that when the patient is just a child. The specific video Michelle linked in her comment is below:




PCH really is an amazing hospital, where real children and their families are cared for every, single day. Thanks for sharing Michelle.

Bear Hugs for Phoenix Children's Hospital

So, first of all, after reading Three Cups of Tea, I decided to find out what kind of service me and my children could do here locally. Google (good ol' Google) led me to a site called Volunteer Match. This led me to a listing for a service project for Phoenix Children's Hospital. I've done service for them before when I was a leader in Young Women's, plus I've known two different people who've received excellent care there, so I already have a soft spot in my heart for them. The project is a donation of 100 ashtma friendly teddy bears and 1000 origami cranes. That, I thought, is something we could do.

I emailed the coordinator, who turns out to be a 10-year-old boy named Jacob. Ten years old people! I'm so impressed with this boy. Anyway, we've committed to make some origami cranes (a common get-well gift in Japan) and help stuff bears at Build-a-Bear in October. I also thought I'd post information about this project on the blog in case anyone's interested in helping. So here it is:

*A fundraiser will be held at Images of Nature Gallery at Fashion Square Mall, August 30, from 2:30 - 5:30. (We have no money for this, but I thought I'd at least spread the word.)

* Volunteers are needed to help stuff bears at Build-a-Bear, Fashion Square Mall, on October 11, at 1:00 pm. Kids are welcome to help too.

* Lots and lots and lots of origami cranes are needed, and regular paper can be used to make them. This cool site shows exactly how to make them (including an animated demo).

To sign up to help or for more information, contact Jacob at jacobagoldfeld@resourcesforhealth.org

Book Blurb: Three Cups of Tea

My post about this book will be a little different from my other book blurbs. I'm going to start with the blurb, and add my thoughts at the bottom:

"In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering he observed the village’s 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks. The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher. When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school.
From that rash, heartfelt promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time: Greg Mortenson’s one-man mission to counteract extremism and terrorism by building schools—especially for girls—throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.

Mortenson had no reason to believe he could fulfill his promise. In an early effort to raise money he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen, and other prominent Americans. His only reply was a $100 check from NBC’s Tom Brokaw. Selling everything he owned, he still only raised $2,000. But his luck began to change when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wisconsin, donated $623 in pennies, thereby inspiring adults to take his cause more seriously. Twelve years later he’s built fifty-five schools.

Mortenson and award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin have written a spellbinding account of his incredible accomplishments in a region where Americans are feared and hated. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has survived an armed kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. Yet his success speaks for itself. This year the schools will educate 24,000 children."

***

This book had me enthralled from the very beginning. Greg's story is simply amazing. The way he started on this journey to begin with, and the way he struggled to get that first school built, was inspiring. While at first I really had to concentrate to keep the foreign names and cities straight (I bookmarked the map near the front for easy reference), it was worth it. The people and culture of Pakistan are fascinating. And not at all what I expected. That story alone makes the book worth reading.

Near the end of the book, as the events surrounding September 11 take center stage, I began to see the connection between what Greg's doing and the war on terror. While he had spent several hard years just to get a handful of schools going, the Taliban (heavily funded by Saudi oil) sprouted up dozens upon dozens of their own "schools" in the course of just one year. These madrassas were everywhere, teaching extremist doctrine to poor people who had literally no other options or resources.

The madrassas are successful because the students are so often people with zero education, and therefore easily led down the Taliban's path. To call these madrassas a "school" is a stretch. The Taliban often forbids reading any book except the Koran. When the Taliban took over Afghanistan before 9/11, they held public book burnings. Even the medical school in the capital city of Kabul was forbidden textbooks, and Taliban guards monitored classrooms to make sure they did not so much as put anatomical drawings on the chalkboard.

These medical students in Afghanistan realized what was happening, and resented it. But the impoverished young men from the rural villages of Pakistan, with little or no education, were easy targets for the Taliban. The effects of their "schooling" continues to this day, to everyone's detriment. While reading about the events which took place in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the year leading up to 9/11, it was easy to see the critical importance of education for these poor communities. (For more information, the website http://www.threecupsoftea.com/ is a great site to visit, as well as the Central Asia Institute, which is the organization Greg operates to get these schools built.)

The majority of the book, however, focuses on the small scale events, long before 9/11 ever took place. I came to have such an affection for the Americans and Pakistanis who made the dream of these schools a reality.

This book touched me on so many different levels. It made me want to do more, somehow, for this world I live in. I'm still struggling to figure out what that means for a stay-at-home mom of three. Not all of us can be Greg Mortenson. But I don't believe we have to be. I think we're each supposed to figure out what we are meant to do. As I think about what it took to get those schools built, I realize that aid came from many people, in ways both large and small. And it was all needed. I think that's probably true for any humanitarian effort, whether it be building schools in Pakistan or serving the needy in our own communities. Something quoted in the book comes to mind:

"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." - Mother Teresa

No one can fill the ocean on their own, not even Greg Mortenson. So what is my drop supposed to be? I believe raising my boys is the number one thing I can do so they can go out into the world and be productive citizens. But is there something else I should be doing? If there is, wouldn't it teach my children to think beyond themselves as well? (Greg Mortenson's parents were humanitarians too.)

I don't think I have to do anything "grand," but at the same time it's so easy to do nothing because what we can do feels too small to make a difference. How do I hang onto this fire, and turn it into action?

Here's another quote from the book that makes me think:

"When your heart speaks, take good notes."

Judith Campbell

What is my heart telling me?

Scouting on Vacation

Did I say three-in-one vacation? I really meant four-in-one vacation. Before we left for the trip, I flipped through John's scout book and belt loop requirements, to see if there'd be anything we could do while we were up there. I figured there might be a few outdoor-type opportunities we don't normally get in the city.

I knew Brian planned to take the boys fishing, so I wrote down a couple things they could work on if they wanted to (like proficiency in casting a line, and cleaning a fish if they caught one). So they were able to do that. Turns out John is pretty good at casting!

I also thought it'd be fun to go stargazing. I love how you can see so many stars when you're high up and away from city lights like that. I've always wanted to learn more than the basic constellations (the north star and the dippers were all I knew). When I saw locating five constallations was a scout activity you could do, that was the final bit of motivation to get me to really do it. I checked out a few astronomy books from the library before we left and we took them along. Unfortunately, we had a full moon while up there and the light from the moon was really bright all week long. So some of the smaller stars weren't visible. But I had a lot of fun taking my boys and my sister's boys out into a clearing Saturday night to look for constellations. They loved it too. Ryan kept asking to go again, but there was too much cloud cover every night after that.

I didn't write any other scouting requirements down. Since I had just gone through all that material though, it was fresh in my mind and I just tried to jump on opportunities when they presented themselves. I told John that talking to a ranger about what they do was one of the things he could do for scouts. So after ranger Cindy at the Tusayan ruins was finished swearing the boys in as Junior Rangers, John asked her some questions. We learned a lot of interesting things about what rangers do. She started as a volunteer the year before, but they invited her back this year to do tours. She's up there something like six months out of the year. I'd love to do something like that when I'm retirement age!

Something unexpected was coming across the observatory. Visiting an observatory is an option for earning the Astronomy pin. I don't know if John has to go inside one to make it count, or if talking with the person who worked there was good enough. In any case he's still have to do a report. I still have to ask Anna about it (if she doesn't read the blog first, I guess, LOL). But either way, the observatory was a neat experience for him.

Another thing he could do was visit a fish hatchery. Brian knew there was one near Payson somewhere, so we planned on stopping there if we had time and energy on the way home. It turns out we did NOT have time or energy on the way home, so that didn't get done. Oh well. LOL!

For one of the awards John was trying to earn, he has to do a wildlife conservation project. Little did we know we'd find an opportunity for this right at our campground. When we were driving around deciding on a site, this is what we saw:

Now who does a thing like this, I ask you? I asked John if he wanted to make cleaning this up his service project. He said yes. (Don't worry, we would have cleaned it up anyway.) While we worked, we asked him why something like this is harmful to the little critters who live here. (I wanted to make sure he understood what this had to do with wildlife conservation.) I didn't need to worry. He answered my questions no problem.

Ben had to stop and show me his loose tooth. I swear this thing has been trying to fall out all summer!

We bagged up and hauled out the glass and aluminum, but burned the paper products (no different from using newspaper for kindling in your fire, for any staunch environmentalists out there). ;)

I meant to take a totally finished "after" picture, but forgot. You get the idea though. Looks a lot better, doesn't it?

Anyway, we got a LOT more scout stuff done than I thought we would, and none of it was stressful or anything. Encouraging kids to get scout stuff done is pretty easy, I've decided, as long as I'm familiar with what's in the book and zero in on stuff that matches John's and our family's interests. It's been a good experience for all of us.