An item caught my eye in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's front page on December 5th.  It was an article on Iraqis and Afghans who have recently moved to the United States.  While some have faced hardship here, they love their adopted country.  (For all America's faults – and perhaps because of some of them – it is still a country that many dream of coming to.)

President Elect Barack Obama campaigned on the platform of change.  Throughout the year he spoke at hundreds of rallies across the country, promoting his ideas for a better tomorrow and launching his goals for change to the American people.

It was an especially hot summer day growing up in rural Tennessee! Relief from the heat was nowhere to be found—unless we disobeyed my mother’s direct command, “Do not go swimming in that nasty cow pond!” Boys will be boys, the saying goes, as five brothers formulated a resourceful and cunning plan to go swimming without getting caught.

A couple months ago, to celebrate one of God's biblical Holy Days, some very good friends mailed me a small gift – a little tin of chocolate covered espresso beans.  They are delicious, so to make them last I have only a couple every few days.  When I eat a few of these tasty little treats, I remember my good friends – and their friendship.

It is too easy to be overwhelmed by the statistics and not consider the agony.  It is too easy to dismiss the headlines as something happening "far away."  But today, men, women and children just like you are suffering and dying in Zimbabwe in a hopeless, hellish nightmare.