Day 9 - False Paranoia

First, I want to apologize to my wife for my last Blog. Upon reading it, she became VERY concerned and tried to call me. Unfortunately, My BlackBerry is set to shut off automatically at 11:00 p.m. (10:00 a.m. central) so I will not be awakened at night by the constant flow of email. When she could not reach me, she logically assumed that the secrete polices had already abducted me. While that would definitely had been Blog-worthy, it didn't happen.

And now for the rest of the story...

The morning following my paranoid freak-out, I was telling my HNI host, Vivianne, about what happened the evening before. After taking several minutes telling her step-by-step details and informing her that I Blogged the whole encounter, she said "I told him your room number in Chinese... Do you really think you are that important?". I let out a belt of laughter that startled the taxi driver. She thinks it is very funny how I repeatedly look like a fool (think numb nuts). The Chinese keep me humble. Oh well, at least people don't think I am a fool in the U.S.

Right?

A Country of Contrasts

The supplier that I am working with is completing a state-of-the-art furniture factory. In spite of the great sums of money they are spending doing this, grueling manual labor still takes place. While this picture of people shoveling sawdust is the exception, rather than the rule at this factory, China continues the prove that it is a country of contrasts. All of the new divided highways have constant, extensive, and well tended landscaping. Each square centimeter of every shrub is trimmed and shaped by hand.

At my hotel, I regularly see limousines, Porsches, and Bentleys parked out front that display incredible wealth. Conversely, tonight when I was returning to my hotel from a nearby market, I saw a woman sitting on the sidewalk, digging rice out of a trash can and eating it. What's more disturbing, she had an infant sleeping on her lap. People walked past, as if she were invisible. How can we allow this as God's children? Christ died for her and for the infant in her lap. I should not curse my wealth, but how do I use God's financial blessings responsibly? How can I repair this woman's lifetime of damage? I wish there were a simple answer. Unfortunately, this is a worldwide problem and I do not have all the answers.