16 Thankfulness

Thankfulness. It's an interesting thing. No matter how poor a person can be, they still have SO much to be thankful for. Notice that capitalization. God has given us all so much, including a whole world of people to bless and be blessed by. A whole world of people who by choice could by faith give you all their belongings if so called. Now, I doubt anyone reading this has either given EVERYTHING away, or been the recipient of such generosity, but to simplify, we all have so much to be thankful for.

For all of you who have seen me in person... or seen photos of me of the past 4 years or so, you know that I have quite a collection of bracelets on my wrists. I tend to be rather sentimental (one might even say semi-mental over it) and have a reason to wear each one. With the schedule that I'm living by, Mike and I work with El Jordan every Friday. El Jordan works with families from hard situations. So today, after going out to a property and setting up a game for tomorrows events, and doing other things (all the while, carrying a baby spider monkey in a little "monkey murse" on my back... awww!), we got to go work with the children at El Jordan. (By the way, the "J" is pronounced like an "H" and the emphasis is on the "a.")

So how does this connect with bracelets?

Well the kids were rather into my bracelets, and wanted them. Thoughts of giving and kindness ran through my head along with emotion-based thoughts of sentimentality.

"Well not all of them are extremely sentimental to me..."

With not a large number of kids, and a smaller number of children with wrists to small to fit such bracelets, and attention spans too small to stay focused on what was happening, I started removing the less sentimental bracelets from my wrists. Understand that the newest one I gave away had been on my wrist for almost 2 years, minus maybe 3 weeks total for which my wrists were rashey or burned. So sentiment builds up none the less, just from them being there, but hey, these kids don't really have much, and from what I've seen and what I've heard, these kids are so thankful for any small gift.

BUT

They ravaged them fiercely, trying to all get the one they wanted, none thanking me or even paying attention to the fact that they had received a gift. What bothered me much was the one girl (who looked about 15) who took 2 bracelets for herself. I asked her to give one to someone else, as not everyone got one who apparently wanted one. Bad counting on my part. And the one girl who didn't get one was Monsurrat, who, if you remember, was one of the kids at the house we helped build. The only kid there I already knew. So this double-braceletted girl offered her bracelet to her little 3 year old brother, who's wrists were obviously too small to support such a thing, but soon said "oh, it won't fit him. I'll just keep it." But in Spanish... So Monsurrat wasn't very happy, and I was feeling the same as she was. Eventually, the kid's mom showed up, and that always helps. Monsurrat has a bracelet now, and I think she's thankful.

It has been a day during which I wish I was fluent in Spanish.

So I am trying to convince myself that I should be thankful for the opportunity to bless these kids with gifts. And I should be excited for the possibilities of all the items I might fill my wrists up with again. But that's hard. Please pray for my attitude. I need to... I don't know. I need to be wise with giving, though I didn't feel foolish in my giving today. I just felt unappreciated. I'm not sure if I would be informing all the Internet community of this if I wasn't so exhausted and disappointed, I guess, but the thing with people is that as much as we get to know ourselves, we always tend to forget that everyone is just a fragile little mass with emotions on a weigh scale with life events on the other side. We're all just so topsy-turvy. Please pray that I can smile and let it go. I don't do things to be thanked, but I guess I've grown up expecting it.

So remember kids, say "thank you" when you feel it slightly appropriate, and you won't end up with the emotional missionary blogging about his lack of being content with his kindness... I don't know what I'm saying. OY! Time to relax.

In closing, let's all be thankful... and... I want a pet monkey.