Oh, and one more request

On this day of glutenous fun, our niece has to go into the hospital for another bout of chemotherapy. While she is doing exceptionally well and seems to be responding to her treatments, the idea of Caylyn having to sit in a hospital on a day when we celebrate children, at least that's how I see it, breaks my heart. So while you're out celebrating today, even if you'll only eat a handful of candy corn at the office, please give a thought to Caylyn. I ask that you only do what comes naturally: say a prayer, light a candle, tell a friend or just send your thoughts her way.

Missing the US

So two things happened in the States this week that Brad and I are not able to take part of. The first is daylight savings time. The second is...duh duh duh...Halloween.

Countries can decide whether or not to participate in Daylight Savings Time. Not only that, but they choose the days of the year to move their clocks ahead or behind. India doesn't change their clocks. (Read more at Wikipedia, if you're so inclined.) This means that 1) we are now 10 1/2 hours ahead of New York and 2) we didn't get an extra hour of sleep on Saturday night. And as the rooster just outside of our hotel room in Chennai started very early, and the frog went on and on for the rest of the night and the trains like sounding their horns all hours of the day, we could have used that extra hour of sleep!

Halloween is not celebrated here, which is a bit of a bummer. However, I have gone to the store and bought candy bars. I watched my yearly viewing of The Nightmare Before Christmas. If you have not seen this movie, it is a must. The animation is amazing, the music is inspired and the story always warms my heart. Basic plot: Jack Skellington, the King of Halloween, becomes fed up with the ease of the holiday. When he discovers Christmas, he hijacks it in an attempt to broaden his horizons. Simply extraordinary. We also bought candy for Shyla and made her go to the front door, ring our bell and say "trick or treat!" I don't think she entirely understood, but hey, good times!

So we ask you today, while you're revelling in the joy of being rested from the weekend, to do a little bit of trick or treating for us. Go to that extra house. Jump out at a little child and scare the crap out of them. Egg the house of someone that you know we wouldn't like. In short, make this Halloween one to remember. Oh, and take pictures.

Update on Women for Women

After discussing it with Brad, we have decided to sponsor another woman. Their are 500 women in Iraq who have been chosen to be enrolled in the program and WfWI is doing its best to match these women with sponsors. Due to the security risks involved, we will not be able to communicate with our sisters, nor will we receive pictures of them or know their last names.

I urge you to look into your heart (and finances) and see if you can afford the $27/month that the program needs. I know it's not a paltry amount, but as the US created many of the problems in Iraq, it is up to us to do our best to fix them. While going there is not an option, this is a small step to show that while we may have helped to create a civil war, it was, perhaps, done with good, albeit naive, intentions.

International Book Club

In an attempt to always have things to talk about, my mother and I have decided to start an online book club together. We've chosen our first book and thought it would be great if more than just the two of us were involved. So here is your invitation! Join the B&EIA Book Club. (With an acronym like that, we should get t-shirts.)

Our first book is called Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God by Jonah Blank. Here are some blurbs from bn.com:

Publishers Weekly

Blank, who has reported on Asia for the Dallas Morning News, traveled the length and breadth of India, retracing the footsteps of the god Rama, hero of the ancient Sanskrit epic (portions of which introduce each chapter). Coupling journalistic detachment with piercing lyricism, he samples the subcontinent in all its horrific, multitudinous, overwhelming diversity, from Bombay's Hollywood-style dream factories to Calcutta's leper-filled streets. He ponders the nation's lingering caste divisions, with their "BMW Brahmins'' and destitute untouchables. He meets Sikh separatists in the Punjab and, in Sri Lanka, tracks down Tamil Tiger guerrillas, young boys carrying AK-47s. He converses with holy men in ashrams and probes the erotic intensity of the Krishna cult. He scuffles with Indian's venal, infuriating bureaucracy. Blank writes beautifully and taps into India's elusive, indestructible soul with a clarity few writers attain, as he ponders the paradoxes of a country where deep-rooted fatalism clashes with Westernization and a new social mobility. (Sept.)

From the book jacket:
The two-thousand-year-old Sanskrit epic Ramayana - one of the greatest literary works of the ancient world - chronicles Lord Rama's journey from one end of the Indian subcontinent to the other and his spiritual voyage from man to deity. In Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God, anthropologist and journalist Jonah Blank retells the ancient story in a lively prose while following the course of the epic her's quest through contemporary India and Sri Lanka.
In his adventures, Blank encounters a chimerical subcontinent caught between the ancient and the modern, from swamis who wrestle both physically and metaphysically, to prepubescent Tamil guerrillas barely able to lift their AK-47s, to television actors who are worshiped as living manifestations of Hindu divinities. Sparkling with humor and cultural insight, Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God is an up-close look at the multifaceted jewel that is India, in all its poignant, picaresque and paradoxical beauty.

We don't have a strict format for our group yet, as far as how much to read and by when. If you want to be involved, just post a comment and we can decide by when we should have the first chapter or four read.

My sister

A little over a year ago, I became a sponsor through a program called Women for Women International. From their website their mission is:

"Women for Women International helps women in war torn regions rebuild their lives by giving them financial and emotional support, job skills training, rights education, access to capital and assistance for small business development."

This organization was started by an Iraqi woman in 1993, and now supports women in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sudan. I wanted to share my most recent letter of the woman I sponsor. She lived through the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. (For a phenomenal movie on the subject, see Hotel Rwanda.) Her name is Perpetue. She can neither read nor write and does not speak English. Here is her translated letter.

To my dear friend Elizabeth.
How are you? Allow me first greet you with too much love. May the Lord Jesus be with you. I have written to you, just due to the way I do miss you, and I need to extend my news to you and to know more about yours. I wrote to you, but you have never replied it, up to date, but this time I trust that you are going to reply to my letter.
At the moment, I am fairly okay slowly by slowly due to sickness, I encountered horrible cuts and dislocation to my body, during the 1994 genocide-war. It's not easy for me to do anything that demands physical strength. I thank you greatly for your sponsorship that has enabled me to solve much of my encountered problems. It's my hope that I will acquire basic foundation in what I am supposed to do shortly before the end of the program. I still hope to maintain our friendship to you, even in the near future. Just due to the way you did select me among others, when you didn't know me, this makes me never to desert you at all.
In fact, I am an orphan, though I am grown-up. I survived together with my young sister, who is now a student and both of us live in orphanage organization families, for we can't be able to care for ourselves and worse to this I was left disabled physically. I thank you greatly for your sponsorship, that has enabled me to come out of a solitary life. Prior to this, I had so many problems and I had no possible ways and means to solve them, but today I have hope in my life, and I hope to survive better than before. Let me thank them that you always send to us through the organization of Women for Women International of Rwanda, for they pass on our message from you and they also give us lessons that are beneficial to us. To me, I wish we would be meeting on a daily basis, for they render their services to us in love.
We have just been celebrating our Easter day and during this time I did seek forgiveness, through repentance of my sins, to God, so as to bear the righteousness of the Lord. By resurrecting with the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not easy for we do sin every day. But our God is full of mercy for the forgiveness of our sins daily. Hence we should always seek never to do contrary to God's will. It's my prayer for you, for the Lord to continue to protect you and to maintain your gift of Love. I always pray for you, in God's will, for he is the very one, who made you to know me and to know much of my problems. Let us maintain our prayers for each other and our God will always be with us.
Thanks from your friend,
Perpetue

I ask you to take only what you want from this. I want to point out that I merely requested to have a sister from Rwanda. I did not choose Perpetue from a list of women. Also, this organization is not a Christian one, although Perpetue is clearly Catholic.

If you feel so inclined, please consider sponsoring a woman. They have recently opened up their program in Iraq again, even though the safety of those involved cannot be guaranteed. I believe that we need to empower those who are poor and powerless in order to truly attain peace. Peace cannot be reached through an act of war. Perhaps if we (and by we I mean the empire that is America) showed love and compassion to our global neighbors, we would be able to reach the peace that we all so desperately crave.