Saturday, May 28, 2011

Education Quote

I was watching the documentary Darfur Now, and there was a really good quote from Hejewa Adam. Her village was burned down and (if I remember correctly) she was beaten severely while her baby was on her back and her baby died from the beating. Others in the village had their throats slit and boys under 5 were killed and the girls were taken away. Since she lost everything, she joined the rebels, fighting against the government that condones such violence against the people of their country, which is basically a genocide. She said, "The massacre in Shatia humiliated me and convinced me to join the rebel Army. I decided that I must help liberate our homes."

A little later in the movie she said, "Fighting alone will not solve the problem in Darfur. Those people who go to school and get an education are the ones who will solve the problem. But fighting with guns, that will not solve it. Even in a hundred years." (emphasis added)

I also like this quote from Don Cheadle in the movie, when asked by a random person "What can I do to help?" He says, "What can I do? I don't know, but more than nothing, a lot more than nothing."
Here is a link that explains a little more about the movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988102/

Monday, May 23, 2011

Free to Choose

This quote is from the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, the subject on Agency and Accountability:
"You are also responsible for developing the abilities
and talents Heavenly Father has given you. You are
accountable to Him for what you do with your abilities
and how you spend your time. Do not idle away your
time. Be willing to work hard. Choose to do many good
things of your own free will."

Before that it talks about making good choices and how we are free to choose our actions, but not free to choose the consequences.
I think the above quote goes one step further, in that we are responsible to develop our talents. Sometimes we have to try different things to discover our talents, but all talents require time and effort to make them seem effortless.

strange dreams

A few days ago, I dreamed that I was shopping at Target in the baby section and someone had left a baby on the store shelf. It wasn't a brand new baby, it was a rather plump probably 3-5 month old. I was pretty happy to find him/her (I didn't know which flavor it was) and thought I might just take him/her home and leave my name and number and address with the store so that if whoever left the baby changed their mind, then they would know where to find him or her. I'm not a kidnapper, after all.
But, in my beginning to wake state, I realized that the powers that be probably wouldn't let me just take the baby home. They would want to call child protective services and all that, not like in Moses's day when you could just draw a baby out of the water and keep him because you're a princess.

That's o.k. I'm going to have a new baby of my own in a few months, thus probably the reason for the strange dream.

I think it was the next day that I woke up dreaming about junk food. At church, there is a person or two that brings day old bread to give away for free. Lately, it has been from Trader Joe's, the good bread! I dreamed that we rode bikes to church and were just loading up on all kinds of stuff. There were bags (huge, clean garbage bags) full of day old kettle corn and there were different kinds of bags of chips and I picked up a donut bar with chocolate icing and just started eating it.
I haven't had a donut in a long time.

Oh, in that dream, I was so thirsty, but the drinking fountain spouted the water up through a bag of popcorn at first, then it switched so that it was running down the outside of the plastic bag that the popcorn was on, but it was still hard trying to slurp it off the plastic.

I hate dreams where I'm drinking and drinking, but I just can't taste the wetness of the water. That's usually when I have to wake up and get a drink and then the water just tastes heavenly.