Today, I got a hepatitis A shot in my left arm and a Typhoid shot in my right arm. My next step is to get a yellow fever shot, fill my malaria pill prescription, and get travel insurance. In the midst of all this, is the ever present thought,
"Lord, prepare me; prepare my heart for what I'm about to do." I am so excited about this trip, and I'm thrilled that God has given me this amazing opportunity. As my letters are reaching their destinations, people are wondering what it is that I could do for these people. What can one person accomplish?

I am reading the book,
Banker to the Poor
 by Muhammad Yunis which is about ending poverty with micro credit loans. (It's a great book, I recommend it to anyone.) This book is the testimony of how one man can make a difference to better the lives of many in poverty around the world. I'm reminded of a speech given to me by a wonderful professor to read aloud during the last few weeks of class. I've read this speech many times since that day, and I've grown to love and appreciate these words of challenge and inspiration. The following is a portion of a speech Robert Kennedy gave and is summarized by Ted Kennedy in the eulogy given in Robert's honor. The original speech was delivered to South Africans on their day of affirmation in 1966.

"There is discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. There are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows.
But we can perhaps remember -- even if only for a time -- that those who live with us are our brothers; that they share with us the same short moment in life; that they seek -- as we do-- nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can being to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. The answer is to rely on youth - not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to the obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They cannot be moved by those who cling to present that is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even the most peaceful progress.

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.

Some believe
there is

nothing one
man or
one woman
can do
against the
enormous array
of the
world's ills.
Yet many
of the
world's great
movements, of
thought and
action, have
flowed from
the work
of a
single man.

These men moved the world, and
so can we all.
  Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but

each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of a generation.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society.
Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle of great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.
All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event."

The main reason I am going on this trip is because
I love Jesus Christ. I believe every word of this speech and am convinced that the great commission of Matthew 28:16-20 still applies today.