My wife and I always encourage our children to help others. We model the behavior by serving in our church, volunteering at the homeless shelter, or delivering meals to people who cannot leave their homes. We also like introduce them to other people who make service a priority.

One evening, we invited a missionary to our house to talk to the kids about her experiences in China. They were so excited because they had never met a real life missionary before. My five-year-old son, N, was beside himself with anticipation. 

The missionary’s name is Christine and she works for Campus Crusade for Christ. As she shared this information with us, N, interrupted.

“May I ask you a question,” he asked.

“Of course,” she answered.

“Did you vote for Barack Obama?”

“No,” she replied with a surprised look on her face. “I voted for John McCain. Did you vote for Obama?”

He looked at her as if she were crazy and said, “Of course not. I’m too young to vote.”

We took a seat in the living room and Christine proceeded to tell the kids about her work. A few minutes into her talk, she pulled out a book to share some photographs. N interjected again.

“Is this the part where we give you money?”

Christine chuckled and continued with her presentation. N kept interrupting her with questions. It really bothered him that some of the pages in the album did not have photographs on them. N told Christine that she needed to fix that. Meanwhile my daughter, Nee, sat as quietly as a church mouse and only opened her mouth to ask Christine what her favorite color was.

When it was time to actually give her money, N, said, “Wait. I’ve got to get my piggy bank.” He ran upstairs and quickly returned. My wife, K, asked him if he wanted to give her a dollar. He said no.

“Two dollars,” she asked. Again he said, “No.”

“Three dollars?” He thought for a moment then replied. “Yeah that sounds about right.”

Christine felt a bit awkward about taking N’s money, but we assured her that he would have been extremely hurt if she refused. N has a heart full of love and wants to share all he has with everyone.

A few days later, we received two cards from Christine. The smaller card was address to K and me. It was a standard “thank you for contribution” card. The bigger card was for the boy. Christine wrote a treatise on how N’s generosity and curiosity touched her spirit and filled her heart with joy. When I read the part about how his donation bought a Bible for a Chinese child, N’s face beamed with pride.

What started out as a lesson on giving for the children, turned into a lesson in love for the adults.

Stay Strong,
Mocha Dad

Question: How do you teach your children to help others?

Tags: barack obama, bible, campus crusade for christ, china, church, daughter, john mccain, missionary, piggy bank, son, volunteer, wife

My work in Iraq is finally done. Despite the hardship on my family, I was glad I got to visit the country. Things are not nearly as bad as they are portrayed. For the most part, I felt safe and secure. Obviously, there is much work left to be done to rebuild the country, but I have faith that the Iraqis will make their country strong again.

My only regret is that I was unable to really venture into the country to visit the religious sites. At various times, I was a few kilometers from Ur, considered by many to be the city of Ur Kasdim mentioned in the Book of Genesis as the birthplace of the patriarch Abraham, and the ancient city of Babylon. I was awed by the fact that many of the people mentioned in the Bible walked the very land that I was walking on. I’m looking forward to the day when I can safely tour these sites.

As I was preparing to leave, I decided to get a haircut. The barbershop was staffed by six Bangladeshi men. Before going in, I asked some guys about the quality of the haircuts. They said that they barbers did a good job considering they only charged $3.00. If I really wanted to get a tight cut, they informed me that I should go to the guy who walked with a swagger. When I walked into the shop, I immediately knew who they were talking about. This guy was cool and confident. He gave me one of the best haircuts that I had had in a while. It was definitely worth the price considering that cuts in the US average around fifteen bucks.

In addition to the Bangladeshi barbers, several local Iraqi and Turkish vendors have been allowed to set up shop on the base where I was staying. I visited a few of the shops and was sorely disappointed. I expected to see handcrafted items that reflected the local culture. What I saw was cheap gifts designed to appeal to American souvenir seekers. They sold bootlegged DVDs, counterfeit designer clothing, gaudy jewelry and trinkets made in China. Some of the more resourceful vendors sold Cuban cigars. I did manage to find one interesting thing during my shopping excursion. It was a small book of Arabic poetry that featured some famed Iraqi poets. I was most intrigued by the poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab and his poem “Rain Song.”

On the day of my departure, I stepped outside my CHU (containerized housing unit) and realized that I could not see the sun. That was a bad sign. A sandstorm, which could prevent us from flying out, was brewing. I immediately started praying that the storm would pass. I was really eager to go home.

After a few delays to monitor the weather, we were finally cleared to leave. I was glad to see an armored SUV waiting to take us to the airport. The bus episode was a bit too harrowing for me. At the airport, we discovered that our plane would be delayed by several hours because another sandstorm was passing through. Planes could only fly out when the visibility was 800 meters so we had to be prepared to board the plane at the first break in weather.

As I waited in the airport, I noticed a stern looking Iraqi man, chasing and scolding litterers. A piece of trash would hardly touch the floor before he was all over the offender. It was obvious that the Iraqis were working hard to rebuild their tattered country. I interacted with a few Iraqi men in the airport and they had mixed feelings about the war. They were glad to be experiencing freedom like never before, but they were tired of the violence and ready for some normalcy.

Our plane was finally cleared for take-off and we quickly boarded. A feeling of joy overwhelmed me as the plane lifted off and turned towards Dubai. I was finally headed home.

Stay Strong,
Mocha Dad

Tags: abraham, babylon, baghdad, bangladesh, bible, bootleg, china, cubanbadr shakir al-sayyab, dubai, dvd, genesis, haircut, iraq, mideast, rain song, religious, turkish, ur

When I checked my e-mail this morning, I had a message from a friend asking if I had sent her a message about an opportunity in China. I had not and I was wondering why she was asking such a bizarre question. It turns out that someone hacked into my e-mail account and sent spam to all of my contacts. I was very angry and felt violated. Why my e-mail? I’m just a lowly blogger with a small set of friends.

Being concerned about identity theft, I quickly logged into my account see if there were any sensitive information accessible. Luckily there was none. I proceeded to change my password and remove all of my contacts to prevent my e-mail address from becoming a spam-bot. I went further to install new firewall, anti-virus, and spybot software. I guess I had been a bit careless with my online activities, but this incident was a wake-up call. Please have a look at your computer security and make a point to practice good password management. There are many full and part time hackers who are diligently working to gain access to e-mail accounts and other databases. While I was looking for security software on the web, I came across a website that sells passwords for Yahoo!, Gmail and Hotmail accounts.

I got off lucky with some spam being sent from my e-mail account. With identity theft on the rise, it could have been much worse.

Stay strong,
Mocha Dad

Tags: china, computer, e-mail, hacker, identify theft, password, security, spam