Let Us Help One Another

I haven't written a blog since last Tuesday, the day the horrifying 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti. When I write an article or when I am writing a book, I investigate the words I use, especially the adjectives. I want to be sure that the adjective, adverb, or verb I use is the best choice in conveying my thought about the person, place, thing, or action.

The earthquake that took place on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 in Haiti was definitely devastating. Devastate means to lay waste, render desolate, and overwhelm. While I was sharing memories of my childhood, and the recipe for my parent's delicious steak sandwiches, children were loosing their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, pets, their homes, and becoming critically injured themselves with no ambulance, or hospital to take away the pain, and treat their serious injuries.

Overwhelmed is how I felt from simply watching the horrifying images on the television, and on my laptop. I have family, friends, and online friends who have been going through tough times with loved ones who have been injured, or fighting off serious illness. It is not my intention to make light of the struggle they have experienced, but to bring light to the issue that each and everyone of them still have family, health care, and comfortable shelter.

On August 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated an area in the United States from central Florida, over the gulf coast all the way to Texas, with the greatest devastation occurring in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is estimated that almost two thousand lives were lost, and thousands were displaced. Many were without emergency care, and the few hospitals were overwhelmed.

In April of 1994, it is estimated that between five hundred thousand and one million people were brutally murdered, pets, and homes destroyed, and not by nature but by the hands of the fellow citizens of Rwanda in central Africa. The rebels took over the hospitals, and all governmental structures. The United Nation troops that were trying to save lives, and bring order were being attacked and killed. This devastation went on for approximately one hundred days. During this time not one other nation including these United States stepped in to stop the slaughter.

Presently, there is a similar genocide occurring in Darfur where an estimated four hundred thousand people have lost their lives since February of 2003. More that two hundred and thirty thousand refugees have fled to tent cities in Chad, and as many as many as ten thousand have died in these camps because of the unclean, and unsafe conditions. It has now been seven years since it began and little has changed, and although many countries, including the United States have sent investigators, and the U.N. had sent some troops, the violence, and displacement continues to this day.

It is truly wonderful how everyone has recently stepped up to raise money and awareness to the plight of the people of Haiti, yet there really needs to be a united front against poverty, and all the horrible violence that it breeds. With all the wealth there is in this world, one would think that poverty could have been eradicated by 2010.

The people of Haiti were already wallowing in poverty, and struggling to improve it's lifestyle when this earthquake hit. When looking for the good that comes from a bad situation, that is my only thought. That perhaps now the International Community can help rebuild this nation and give it's people a better way of life.

I just heard on the news that dozens of Haitian orphans have arrived in Pennsylvania. My first thought was about how I will feel when I receive my first e-mail complaining of the illegal immigration of Haitians to our country, and how they are receiving welfare to help them get by. These e-mail have always been disturbing to me, and now I just delete them.

My mother taught us to care for others, she often said this: "You could be entertaining angels unaware." Each of us on Earth are the children of GOD, and we are all in this thing called Life together. We must learn to love unconditionally, and help each other in whatever way we can.

Let us show our Father in Heaven, that we are Good, Responsible, Loving Stewards of HIS Creations. Let us help one another.

The following video inspired this blog:



This child, no longer has family to hold his hand in his time of great pain, he no longer has a hospital to help him, or a shelter to go home to.