4emersons
Posts : 4 Join date : 2015-03-06 Location : Minnesota, U.S.A.
| Subject: My Fun Day Sun Mar 29, 2015 12:40 am | |
| Decided I'd post it in here since it is easier than saying it in-game on the server. So my youth group was having a 30 Hour Famine Friday/Saturday (today). Stopped eating at noon Friday, met at the church at 8 P.M. Friday night, stayed there over night, did community service work all day today, and then had a meal at 6 P.M. this evening. I won't talk much about the stuff at the church because the majority of it was just hanging out with friends, but there is a super cool video that we watched that I want to share about. I'll start with the community service. We split up into groups and the different groups did different things. Not sure exactly what all the other groups did, but I can tell you what mine did. We had 8 bagged lunches (sandwich, chips, and water bottles) that we were handing out to homeless people around St. Cloud (Minnesota). There is one corner right by a Taco Bell that usually has someone asking for money or food or other stuff, but there wasn't anyone there. We actually had a lot of trouble finding homeless people to bless, but we ended up getting them all handed out. We ended up going by that Taco Bell again, and there was a man there with a sign saying "Homeless Veteran, anything helps." We really wanted to do something for him, but we had already distributed the sandwiches, so we ended up buying him food from Taco Bell and going to give it to him and talk to him. His story really broke my heart and all I wanted to do was buy him a house but I obviously don't have that kind of money. After that, we went to put up posters and raise money for the Pregnancy Resource Center, a non-profit organization that helps young women (any women that need the help, but it is mostly teens and ones in their young twenties who accidentally get pregnant that come to PRC) get resources to help with their pregnancy and help take care of their child. PRC is a Christian organization and they do not support abortions (and neither do I). It is amazing the impact they've had in the community here. After we did that for a long time, we went to a park area to meet up with the other groups and we spent the next hour picking up trash. There is some wooded areas there with paths through it, and a friend and I went down the paths picking up whatever trash we could and putting it in a trash bag, but at one point we started noticing a bunch of diapers. We ended up finding 20+ diapers sitting nearby the paths, and later on we found a little man-made hut that looks like someone was living in at some point. I fear that the person living there had the baby, but it is very likely. Again, breaks my heart. That all happened this morning/afternoon, but we watched a very informal documentation video Friday evening about gendercide, defined as the systematic killing of members of a specific sex, most visibly happening in China and India. - WARNING: Disturbing things to think about, but important nonetheless.:
In China, they have the One Child policy, which limits most families to 1 child (with the exception of ethnic minorities). Families living in rural areas were allowed to have a second child if the first was a girl, though.
In India, the dowry system is very prevalent. A dowry is a payment that the bride's family gives to the husband's family along with the bride. It usually consists of expensive stuff such as money, electronic appliances, furnature, etc.. It has been illegal since 1961, but the laws against it go mostly unenforced.
As you might guess, these cause a lot of greed which lead to terrible things such as physical and mental abuse and even murder. This is all led by greed. Because of the one child system and the dowry system, many parents want a a boy child so much that they would even abandon the child after birth if it is a female, or even kill it at any stage of pregnancy or after birth. That is considered normal. If you want your family name to go on, you need to have a boy child. If you have a girl, not only will your family name not continue, but in India and other places where the dowry system is prevalent, when your daughter marries, you must pay a dowry, otherwise the husband might get angry because he feels entitled to get stuff, which likely turns into him abusing the woman and, in some cases, killing her. It is really heartbreaking to even think about.
But anyways, that is the gist of it. | |
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Gweedo358 Owner
Posts : 153 Join date : 2015-02-23 Age : 57 Location : A cold Bunker deep underground
| Subject: Re: My Fun Day Wed Apr 01, 2015 5:57 pm | |
| Vet stories are always the most heart breaking... to see someone who gave so much and now has very little
Glad you had a great day | |
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