#Sunday Thought Week 4

Straight up – simple thought for Sunday!

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt

#Guest Blogger A view of afar

Hey MDY3ers,

This week has been crazy personally for me and for those who do everything and the kitchen sink, you understand. The week started with best intentions and somewhere by Sunday afternoon, it went into crisis mode and stayed there.

And for doing everything for MDY3 from my kitchen table to the virtual world to MDY3 staffers’ kitchen tables, well, the pile only got higher and deeper – and the rest of the world stuff was on top of it…. so very early this morning (Saturday) I started attacking the piles and that leads us here…

Our guest bloggers for this week are Sonja and Mike. They live in Venezuela and they are some of the kindest people I know. They did what many can only dream of, they made caring their life work. By walking away from the legal and construction fields to start a lifetime of caring for kids in a different country. They learned more of a new language & made family and financial sacrifices all in the pursuit to care a bit deep and to love stronger – to give forward.

Please read and enjoy and then do something….. 🙂

 

Create Ripples.  I Double-Dog Dare You!

If there is anyone more renowned than Mother Teresa for their personal sacrifice to help others, their name escapes me.  She once said “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”  The “Missionaries of Charity” began with a small band of 12 nuns in 1950 and grew to over 4, 500 operating orphanages in 133 countries around the world.  There’s no way to count (or at least no public record) of the number of volunteers who are working diligently on a daily basis or those who might visit for shorter periods of time.  But I think it’s safe to say, there are literally millions of people involved with this organization.

Okay, so maybe living a life of avowed poverty on the dirty streets of Calcutta isn’t for everyone.  I get that.  We have lives.  Families.  Hobbies.  You don’t have to have a passport to make a difference.  But you do have to a purpose–a reason, a resolve and an intention. 

When my step-son was in middle school and then high school, he was required to complete several hours of community service in order to graduate.  Now, as any good parent would do, we asked Jon where he’d like to volunteer his time.  His top two choices were the Humane Society and Habit for Humanity.  Excellent.  But both of those organizations required–you guessed it–parental supervision!

Kitty Kuddlers and Dog Walkers unite!

With school, homework, sports, our jobs, lots of family and myriad of other activities it was difficult to find the time.  But we made it work, and we had fun doing it.  When the hours were completed, we tried other things.  Like volunteering to serve Thanksgiving dinners at a local rescue mission or helping a single-moms ministry.  There were lots of opportunities to help others in the community.

Eventually, my husband got to go on a short term missions trip to Prague.  A team member couldn’t go at the last minute, and Mike was asked to replace him.  It was a great experience and one that he enjoyed so much, when the next trip was announced to El Salvador, he didn’t hesitate to sign up!  After he returned, he encouraged me to join a medical team that was going to the same area.  That started our love affair with missions that landed us in Venezuela full time working at a children’s home called Samuel’s House!

Some of the kids here come from atrocious circumstances.  One boy’s head was essentially used as a “dart board”, only they were sharpened pencils thrown at him.  Others were permitted to be raped in exchange for drugs or other things.  But this stuff is not limited to Venezuela or other developing countries. 

The US Department of State estimates between 14,500-17,500 people (mainly women and children) are trafficked to the US.  There are over 100,000 children in the foster care system waiting to be adopted and every year, more than 20,000 “age out” of the system.  One-forth of our nations children grow up without learning to read.  And this directly relates to high juvenile crime, welfare, and teen-age pregnancy rates.

Hunger.  Juvenile delinquency.  Teen pregnancy.  Eating disorders.  Alcohol abuse and binge drinking.  Texting while driving.  Environmental issues.  Animal rights.  For just about every problem, there is a “cause” purporting to have the solution.  “The greatness of a society is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”  I believe people were not intended to live in isolation.  We were meant to live in community.  To me, this implies shared responsibility.  Responsibility not only for the mess we’re in, but also responsibility to clean up after ourselves. 

 

You can’t do it all, but you can do something.  Pick up a stone and wing it.  Cause some ripples.  You could start at your local library.  Or maybe a nearby senior center.  We are an aging society and many of our elderly are left without friends and family.  Feeding centers or food banks; a local rescue mission; a nearby school.  Make an investment of your time, your expertise.  You can reap great rewards.

#Sunday Thought Week 3

After a VERY busy Fourth of July Weekend, I am glad it is actually Sunday.

I need a nap from all this weekend activities!

But alas, last night as the skies unfold until an array of twinkling lights….I think of this past week and the words of Dr. Mae Jemison the First African-American Woman in Space…..

“It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.”

I think I will skip the nap and go help out on a few Moving Difference projects happening in the area! 🙂
Hope to see you out there!!

Happy long weekend? #MDY3

Hey MDY3ers!

Since MDY3 is an international thing, it is hard to wish a Happy Fourth of July to the world, but if you aren’t in America, then you might be taking the special long summer escape or watching the World Cup from your desk…. so with this in mind, the MDY3 headquarters voted to just wish everybody no matter where in the world they are a great weekend…. nice huh?

So have a great  weekend!

Be safe, do good and love life a bit more!

And keep reporting those lovely hours – it is so wonderful to read all the good happening in the world because of people like you….

 

Thanks from everybody at MDY3!!!

 

Thanks!!

 

 

 

#Sunday Thought Week 2

Welcome to the second Sunday of Moving Difference Year 3!

The first week and change has blown by and honestly the amount of hours and emails are beyond amazing… it is in the mind-blowing range….

The thing is though, we need to talk about something serious on this Sunday Thought – we need to address keeping the motivation going for the rest of the summer…

Sure a great first week, but there are 11 other weeks of summer ahead – so in that spirit today’s quote is something for that…

 

 

 

Welcome to Tuesday night /Wednesday early morning

My, my – it has been busy – and there has been some technical humps too!

So the desktop’s wifi crashed officially on Saturday, and with that meant everything that was anything on the computer was being done on my phone – yep – the small screen blues – but hey all is well that ends well – Sunday was spent in part buying a new wifi card and the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how to install it…. and then install the software and drivers…. ah… life is a challenge…

Got the wifi back on Sunday evening to help out the MDY3 staff with over 145k of emails that had come in over the last three days…

Then Monday – it rained and that meant the power decided to quit for the afternoon and be sketchy the rest of the evening so back to the small screen blues and tons of phone interviews instead of Skype calls. But we patch it thru and we do what we got to do with what we have at the time….. and that leads us to right now…..

It is 1:25am and I am still going thru all your report emails and it is awesome. Sure, the wifi is working and sure, the power is on, but it is all of the cool stories and all of you that rocks right now….

We estimate that we are over 100,000 hours for the first weekend on MDY3, we will know better come Saturday as we are doing a weekly report of the hours….. yet 100k in hours is awesome….. and we got the rest of the summer to enjoy and do this amazing project….no matter what life throws at us….

I keep thinking one thing in my mind – when life gets all strange and crazy…. it is this song HERE

See you tomorrow….. and remember it’s all right.

 

#Sunday Thought

The first Sunday of an amazing summer is here!

Time to go old school – very old school with a quote from Socrates!

 

An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates

 

Have some fun on the first Sunday of summer and remember you are amazing people!!

After Midnight – The start of the MDY3

At midnight sharp begins MDY3

And if you have not started – well start!!!

 

To kick things off, listen to the very talented Scottish Rocker Maggie Bell singing After Midnight….

And with reason, I will actually be up at midnight my time and talking over the airwaves in Scotland – Edinburgh to be exact…. (I will post the link to the radio station on Twitter!)

See Moving Difference is over there as well, there are a bunch of people (last number was 2000+) that are kicking off Moving Difference by an entire day of volunteering for various charities….

and I hear that they have a pile of questions, laughs and stories to tell me and everybody listening…. it should be a great time….

 

What is happening after that you ask, well, depending on the time, I am going for a little 8 mile walk and then the MDY3 staff takes over and everybody is out and about in several different states helping at a food bank, pet shelter, homeless youth safe place and a children’s hospital – until roughly 5pm and then we are going to drop in on some people that inspire us too with some cookies and cards- either nursing home or veterans homes or the hospital before going home to see all the emails about what you lovely people did on the first day of MDY3!!

 

 

It is only fitting that the first day of MDY3 is a 24 hour day for me, I wouldn’t have it any other way…. 🙂

 

Until the clock strikes, midnight, – be good to yourself….

 

 

In the moment –

By all counts, Moving Difference is a working success. It is less than a week old, it is steady and strong and making the impact on the world.

            I have read a lot of emails over the last week, thousands actually. Every one excited to share, wanting to do something, or reporting what they have done. Each email is special and unique. From the guy that wrote to proudly report that he didn’t pass out when giving blood to the young woman in the different country asking if it was okay to do a Moving Difference inTurkeywith her friends. Amazing emails, simple and beautiful.

            To those of you still getting out there to do the Moving Difference or having a hard time selecting what to do, I firmly believe that you already know it in your heart.

Like Moving Difference for me, I really never thought “Hey I am going to put together Moving Difference and change the world.” What I thought was “Hey I am going to put together Moving Difference and do something besides complain about yet another hot ugly summer.”

Being a bit selfish in my thinking now looking back but I never thought it on such a huge scale that Moving Difference has grow to.

            Honestly I am glad that I didn’t think of it to the huge scale, because I probably won’t have done it. Hey! I am human – I would have worried, fretted and stall like everybody else.

            Now that Moving Difference is going and going to large numbers and going completely beyond what my little first thought was, well, it is a moment of awe.

            Sometimes you don’t get to choose the moment that takes your breath away, it chooses you.

Tomorrow starts it!

Hey Everybody, I know what you are thinking – tomorrow is June 20 and you just can’t wait to start Moving Difference.

Okay – maybe that is how I feel and I am thinking it is going to be great…

This is going to be a short blog – because tomorrow is going to rock n’ roll

and I still have a lot of emails to reply back to tonight. Because I want everybody to have the information they need to start the summer right!!

So as the day ends – please politely bid ado to spring –

and tomorrow bounce out of bed saying – LOOK OUT WORLD – I’M ON A MISSION TO MAKE A MOVING DIFFERENCE!!

See you on the first day of summer!!