Blessings!

Hi all,

Yesterday as I was sitting at a stop light waiting for it to turn green, a man rode by on a very old bicycle and on the back of the bicycle he had strapped a lawn mower. I'm not sure how you can even accomplish such a thing but he had. I could only imagine he was off to his next job of taking care of someones lawn for mere penny's. He had on flip flops, long pants, long sleeve shirt, and some cloth wrapped around his head and was just sweating profusely. Remember it is still well over a 100* here and the humidity is still getting up around 70% on some days. You still can't go outside without immediately starting to sweat and that's just standing, now imagine riding a bicycle with a lawn mower strapped to the back of your bike.

I thought to myself how blessed and lucky we all are and I do mean everyone reading this blog. Sure we might have a bad day now and then or a bad year. Money might be tight or you might have complaints about a little man in a little office but when it comes right down to it one of our biggest gifts we ever got in life and no one really ever thinks about it because it was given to us before we were ever born is to be born in the United States. A country where girls/women are valued and educated. A place where if you work hard you can accomplish so much, no matter your background or station in life. Seeing this man on the bike, working so hard, really made me appreciate everything that I have as an individual, as a family and as a country.

Another thing we have learned is that people are really all the same. We might have different religious views, speak different languages but at the end of the day most of us just want a good life for our children, food on the table and a roof over our heads. (And all our children like the crust cut off their sandwiches, even over here to!)

Just like the man riding the bike, I'm sure he was just trying to provide for his family. And that's the other crazy part imagine your husband, wife, mother having to leave the US to earn a living. Not being able to see him or her more than once a year. I can't even imagine not being able to see my husband or girls for one week. There are so many people here that have done just that and come to a country with very little laws in place to protect them from being taken advantage of...like the woman we met who came to Dubai from the Philippines to work for a cleaning company. They provided her a way to get here but once she was here paid her much less than what was promised, worked her 6 days a week, 15 hours a day and then let her go after about 3 months with no way to get back to her home country.

So lets give a moment of thanks for all of our blessings in our lives and I will say a prayer for the man with the lawn mower on the back of his bike that God give him the strength to get through another day.

Love,

Jennifer