Here's the post I started last week, before the Christmas cards, holiday parties, and yet another fundraiser for my next trip....
The $2 challenge
The $2 challenge
$2 to feed our family of four today has been an inconvenience... it has been thought provoking, made us prayerful, honestly, it is making me very hungry... I even had us avoid a party today, because I felt it would be "too hard" to watch everyone else eat in front of us. How crazy is that?? And yet, tomorrow I will once again eat to full or even over-full, while mothers send their children to bed hungry because their $2 had to be used for the rent, clothing, transportation and other necessities as well as food...
WE LIVE IN ABUNDANCE... OVER-ABUNDANCE... that is what we learned. Obviously that isn't a surprise to me. I am however surprised at just how much time it took to think about how to stick to this budget. Not only that, but it is STRESSFUL!!!! Families do this EVERY day! By the way, before you begin to think that $2 goes sooo much further in places like Ethiopia. Think again.. My friends there who did this challenge had just as much trouble (if not more) feeding their family during this challenge. Partially because they also had to buy water and other things that we don't...
Here's how it ended up
$ 0.50 6 eggs (breakfast)
$ 0.57 2 large bananas (lunch)
$ 0.50 10 slices of white bread (lunch)
$ 0.32 2 packages of Top Ramen
$ 0.08 1/2 a carrot
$ 1.97 total spent on food
Two things that almost ruined
this challenge for us...
#1 This... my pantry (excuse the mess, it wasn't expecting photos) Not only can I afford MUCH more than $2 a day for food... I have a large amount of surplus within arms reach. Our Ethiopian sons do not have this luxury, money is tight! Our oldest, who lives on his own, had a few oranges, onions and tomatoes in his "pantry". That's it.
#2 I am embarrassed to admit this, but this cake about did us in today.
You see, yesterday, my husband asked me to make this for us to eat while his parents were over for a visit. Fresh apple, crumb cake... Instead of eating this, his parents took us out to dinner, (Let's not talk about how much we ate...) that meant that THIS CAKE sat on the stove taunting us all day. Someone, (one of the kids?) even put a cookie sheet over it halfway through the day, so that the temptation was less.
Now, this could be just a test of our willpower... or this could be something that causes us to help fix the problem. I like option #2.
Here are some of our favorite organizations:
The Shannon Family in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
I had the immense pleasure of
meeting Christy on my 2nd trip,
and by trip 3, we had picked up a
beautiful little baby girl as our sponsor child.
I believe 1000% in what they do.
I could explain it to you, but they say it so much
better, so please, check out their website!
A great team of people who love the locals down at Korah,
where our teenage sponsor girl lives.
They really attempt to give a hand up, not a hand out!!
An amazing family in Montana,
with hearts for the people of Gojjo, Ethiopia.
She is always running some type of project,
for fresh water, sponsorship, Christmas dinner,
or currently lambs for the kids there to raise.
No comments:
Post a Comment