NOVEMBER 15, 2006

Dear Friends,

It is storming here tonight in Washington State and I listen with great delight to the untamed wind rage, and watch the rain beat endlessly to the earth, the lights begin to flicker warning me that soon I will need the candles I've set out. As I scramble for matches, I randomly retrieve a book, any book, to read while I am able. I perch with it beside the fire to keep warm wrapped in my favorite Pendleton blanket. I read:

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur, l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux," I read from a child's book. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry

This past month after receiving the challenge to love by serving the least of these from honorary chair of REACH, Tony Campolo, an additional 89 college students from Multnomah College and Seminary, children of a generation raised on the internet, committed to volunteer as REACH mentors, educators, and camp counselors. As they put aside their iPods, they will begin a journey of dispensing compassionate justice by establishing face to face relationships with the HIV/AIDS children and families of REACH who are in great need of love.

They are wise beyond their years, these students, realizing and accepting that you can't download compassion and justice; that only by human touch can love be extended and received. Their hearts are beginning to "see rightly."

Blessings,

Susan K. Slonaker