Lily

in the last 24 hours lots happened. I reconsidered another tour in the spring (you should all too. Right? I mean...live together again in the Villa? DUH) , i blew out and shredded a front tire, we flooded the back of the van in a flash flood, we did 3 screenings, ate vegetarian pizza and hung out with some pretty incredible people tonight.
We had a screening....a house party actually with some people from Love bags. They bag up supplies for the homeless and 2 nights a week they go all over the city and talk with their friends. We showed some IC films, ate pizza, laughed and cried, and then went out in the city to show this love we keep talking so much about.

I met a Shawn, a Sean and a Lily....and here's the clincher: Lily is 2, lives with her family on the streets of Ft. Lauderdale, and reminds me SO MUCH of another preciously Lily I know all the way in Newberg Oregon. I told her I had another special friend named Lily and she said, "Really? Did you know I'm really strong?"

I wish she knew how strong she really was. It wasn't that she could unscrew the cap on her bottle of water on her own, or that she could show me her rippling 2-year-old biceps....it was that she could here her baby brother crying from across the park, and that she could walk up to strangers and sit in their laps, knowing they were probably safer than where she lives.

It was a good and hard moment for me: thinking that I am on a tour to end a war in a country 10,000 miles away. Every day I talk about kids I have never met, who need love, families, help. But tonight...right in front of me, was a little girl with pink sparkling shoes who needed some love, a "family" and some help. It came in the form of splashing in puddles, giggling together in the park and holding hands.

Love and help doesn't need to just be sent to Africa...there are places to give it away all around us.
I can only hope that tonight, Lily has a place to lay her head down.
And I hope you are all seeing the faces who need love all around you too. That's why we're on tour right?

If Lily had fit in our van, I would have taken her with me. :-)
Love to you all from Miami!

Love, Bethany