Low income countries have an infant mortality rate NINE TIMES HIGHER than wealthy countries (like the US). I don't think rich babies are worth nine times more, though.

I always thought I was called to work with the world's poor- the "poorest of the poor', if possible. Now that I'm going to Serbia I'm struggling with what it means to be a servant to people whose primary burden is not poverty (although Serbia certainly has more than its share of poverty)but violence. The more I read about the history of the region, the more confused I am. My questions are not so much how people can do these things to each other, because quite frankly, I understand the tendency to react to pain by hurting other people. What I don't understand is how people can live through the things that these people have lived through. Maybe I'm just being a pessimist, but I'm not as shocked by the violence and the hate as I am by the strength and the perseverance of the people. I'm almost afraid to meet people my age who grew up in Belgrade. When I was 13 I was thinking primarily about glitter eye liner and the boy whose locker was two down from me. When people my age who grew up in Belgrade were 13, they were living through the bombardment of their city (by my government!). What does that even mean? What do you do when bombs are falling? When actual bombs are being dropped on your city, what do you do? Do you go the basement? If you live in an apartment building do the people in the basement apartments let you in? Do you stay where you are? Eat dinner and try to talk about something else? My closest point of reference for something like that would be sitting in the bathtub in the basement hugging my dog during thunder storms, which, needless to say, is not even on the same graph as a war. I have so many questions... so many questions.

Lord, give me a humble heart. Make me a servant. Use me to lessen the suffering, Lord, but if I can't change the suffering, use it to change me. "Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God".