Treasure

With Thanksgiving behind and Christmas ahead, I've been thinking a lot about gratitude and truly appreciating the things I've been blessed with. My mind keeps returning to the kids in Ghana, especially this little boy.

Looking back through my journal, here's his story:

"My favorite part of the outreach clinic day always comes after we finish the vision screenings, while we wait for the bus to come pick us up. Today there was a crowd of children, as usual, so I pulled the little bouncy ball from my backpack to play with them. Most of them have never had the chance to play with anything like it.

"There was one little boy who I had noticed earlier in the day. He was particularly grubby, with flecks of straw stuck in his hair and such dusty clothes that the underlying cloth print was almost indiscernable. But the most notable thing about him was a bulge low on his belly, which I had taken for a huge umbilical hernia. Things like that are common here, since surgery is usually too expensive or too far away.

"When I got out my ball, his face suddenly beamed. Like a connoisseur extracting his most treasured specimen, he reached into the front pocket of his overalls and produced a tennis ball. Completely stripped of its fuzzy green skin, cracked and scaly and brown; the most valuable prize of a 4-year-old boy in the middle of nowhere Ghana."

There is so much to be thankful for.