Date post: | 09-May-2015 |
Category: |
Travel |
Upload: | elton-sherwin |
View: | 124 times |
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SHOULD YOU TAKE YOUR CHILD SOMEPLACE
DANGEROUS?
Should you take your child someplace
where the water is not safe?
Where they could be injured far from an
English-speaking doctor
Someplace where the police might take bribes?
Yes
And it might save their life when
they are a teenager.
My wife Katharine and I have gone on five church mission
trips with our daughters:
three times to Mexico and twice to
Guatemala.
Our first trip was a short hop across
the border to Juarez for two
days. Twenty-one children, twenty parents and one
grandparent built two houses.
The homes had three rooms, each 12 feet by 12 feet.
Our younger
daughter had just turned seven.
I don’t know which was scarier: Watching my 7 year-old climb up
on the roof with a hammer or…
Or watching her run around, playing with barefoot children
who lived in packing crates in the desert.
Nine years later, when she was a senior in high school, and we chaperoned 60 American high
school students on a mission trip to Mexicali.
These two busloads of teens came home with a
changed view of life.
They are less concerned about designer jeans.
They are less worried about their problems—which somehow
seem smaller.
How can short trips like these save your child’s life?
How can trips that immerse our children into a world with less safety and comfort actually protect them?
Because it builds compassion
It builds character.
Because it inoculates them from consumerism
Because it helps protect them from depression
Is playing on an unpaved Mexicali road
safer than the keys to your car on a
Saturday night?
Take your child someplace dangerous and find out.