It’s late Friday night, early Saturday morning. I have plane to catch in a few hours and I should probably go to bed, but I have a lot spinning in my head, and I have to get it down before I go to bed.

Tonight I saw the movie “Hotel Rwanda” at the dollar theater. I remember watching the news back in 1994 and hearing about the genocide in Rwanda. My mom explained that one group was trying to kill all the others of another group, but I was in high school and it didn’t register.

The movie did a great job showing that genocide is not just about an atrocious number of deaths, but the individual stories of real people murdered. What evil.

I took a two-week trip to Africa in 2000, and since then, there has been bloodshed in one of the countries that I visited. It’s startling to watch the news and see people dead in the a country where I was once a spoiled tourist. But what has happened in those countries cannot compare to the genocide ten years ago in Rwanda.

I’ll never really know what it’s like to live in a war-torn country. I walked out of the theater and to my car with a renewed since of gratitude. I live in a safe and peaceful country. I sat down in my car and looked at the wires spilling out of the huge hole in; my dashboard. Earlier this week someone stole my CD player while my car was parked in front of my home. It’s a bad feeling to know you were robbed right under your nose, but it didn’t really matter when I thought of the movie.

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I passed by my neighbor’s house on my way home. It’s the second house to go up for sale on my street in the past week. They sold it for a lot of money. In the two years that I have owned my house, the value of homes in the neighborhood have almost doubled. Doubled! I’ve made more money sitting in my house than I do; laboring at work all day. I can’t explain why this fortune was given to me and not someone else. I just no that I have to be thankful, and be generous to those who do not have anything.