so i was skimming this book

called be the change. it's by this 14-year-old kid with a serious desire for the abolition of slavery. and he sounds like me a couple months ago.

anybody that's ever written a research paper knows that you get completely consumed with your subject. i spent a month and a half chin-deep in newspapers, websites, books and blogs talking about slaves. i wouldn't recommend it.

researching the gross subject of slavery was particularly horrible for me because i got passionate about it, but i had nowhere to take that passion. i had no job, so i couldn't donate to organizations. it was too late to register for a mission trip. there wasn't really any club or chapter i could jump on board with. etc. i was impassioned and immobilized.

but my passion died like *insert snap here*. i hadn't really, really, truly, cared all that much. it was like being sorry for mars or something, i was sorry and angry at something far far away that, if we're honest with ourselves, we can't really do anything about because it's so far far away. sure, if i lived in asia or africa, abolition would probably consume me.

but i don't really care about foreign missions, personally. i like that God decides for other people to go bonkers about ukraine and preach from the curb and make friends with strangers and smuggle bibles and cool stuff like that, people that actually have an idea of what the vague christianese word "evangelize" means.

see, me, i care about church people here in america. i guess a lot of other people would think church people are "safe" as in "saved," because you can't lose their faith, so okay, as long as you pray the prayer and show up on sunday you're okay, right? let's go out and get more magical prayers prayed so we can have more people next sunday.

i do not belong to this mindset.
no, not all home missionaries think like that, of course. but the saved people need saving too. the saved people who don't understand the stuff they think they believe, or even worse, the ones who think they have it all figured out. that's who i hurt inside for.

if you're passionate about the dying people across the pond, i think that's amazing and i want to encourage you. [and if you have an extra plane ticket...] i still do my part, i'm a strong supporter of fair trade, yada yada, but it's great to see people actually make a difference over there. i'll stick around here in america, cause there's lots of people here that need help too.