For over a year now...since returning from our first trip to Ethiopia....my meal planning for Thursday nights has been quite simple. Rice. Oatmeal. or sometimes both.
The idea wasn't mine.
But as soon as I heard Dave (the leader of our mission trip to Ethiopia last January) mention that his family made a habit of eating rice or oatmeal once a week as a time set aside to pray for/talk about world hunger, I was determined to give it a try.
And I am glad we did.
At first I thought it would be a flop. I was afraid that my older kids might revolt. Or that we would "fizzle out" after a couple of months.
Instead, we seem to be gaining steam.
Now, on most Thursday evenings, we eat our rice/oatmeal and do any combination of the following:
- PRAY for Laura, Wakuma, Sudharani, and Hindafta (our sponsored children through World Vision and Compassion International)
- READ letters from our sponsored children (if they arrive during the week, I put them in our binder and save them for Thursday)
- WRITE letters to our sponsored children (not every week, but WAY more than we have ever done before!)
- LEARN about the hardships of poverty and hunger around the world (often looking at statistics, etc. in Operation World)
Please know that this is a "work in progress" for our family.
I realized early-on that I needed to come to the table with realistic expectations (ie. that we would not necessarily have a super-in-depth-life-changing-revelational-earth-shattering-moment every week). Some dinners are filled with engaging discussion. Some are not. I never know when we sit down which way it will go.
What I DO know is that I am thankful Dave shared this idea with Chad and I.
And, I am thankful that my family seems to have embraced it as a SMALL way to have an ongoing awareness of some very BIG issues!!
