OUT OF THE COMFORT ZONE. . .

On Saturday a few girls from my senior high church Bible Study that I co-lead with Crystal Fricker met in Canby Oregon to assist at Saturday School which Claudine started for her struggling 3rd graders. After helping the students with school work and feeding them breakfast and lunch as they had not eaten that morning, we dropped them off at their apartments at about 1:30. Okay, we have so much in our comfortable lives, and sometimes we do not realize it until you see how others live.
One of the boys named Angel, what a sweetheart of a 9-year-old, so polite, lives in a small apartment with his mother who has health issues and cannot pick up the apartment. When you walk in the apartment, the blinds are all closed and it is dark in there and you have to straddle over clothes and shoes and food and toys and crackers all over the floor in every room, and Angel’s room had no sheets on the bed, which was two mattresses on the floor; his young mom has two other children who are younger and one is in diapers and she had run out of diapers.
Every room needs help, bless their heart, and we are going back tonight as a Bible study to assist in some small way. We only have about an hour plus, but with several of us we can get a lot done and bring her some hope. The mom said she is embarrassed to have us see her apartment but she is so overwhelmed. May we bring some light into her home and life.
Cornelia Seigneur
www.writermom.net

Cheerleaders beat up fellow teen- One mom needs to rethink response

I woke up to the news about the Orlando Florida cheerleaders who beat up another cheerleader for 30 minutes and posted the beatings on YouTube.

When questioned about it later they said, Oh, I guess we might miss cheerleading practice and, Oh, I guess we will not be going to the beach this weekend.

The girl they beat up has sustained hearing loss among other injuries. At the hospital where the victim was taken, her parents could hardly recognize her.

One of the girls’ moms, who was interviewed on the Today Show about the incident, said her daughter did not do the beating, but also did nothing to stop it, though the mom said her daughter warned the victim before hand. The mom’s initial response was that the incident was blown out of proportion, a comment which Matt Lauer of the Today Show did not let pass lightly.

Good thing. This mom should have been so sad that her daughter was involved in this horrific crime. Sure, she did not do the hitting, but to do nothing and watch, well what good is that. The mom finally did say her daughter should have called police.

This was very serious and no joke. And, that these girls posted it on YouTube tells you how they viewed it. They wanted to be famous. What comes next? A book deal?

The mother who was interviewed should not have downplayed the incident. That was almost as troubling as the incident itself. She should have been so ashamed of her daughter and her daughter’s friends and said so right from the beginning -- not only later when questioned more in depth by the interviewer.

There was note that the girl who was beat up had said some mean things previously to the other girls, and somehow that was reason enough for the beating, which the police called “animalistic behavior,"

No one deserves this kind of beating up. And, no parent should be defending their child who had any involvement in this whatsoever.

Cornelia Seigneur
www.writermom.net