Serving the Under-served

Christine and I had a speaking opportunity at a local high school (Fairport High School) in a forum that is meant to promote global perspective among the students.

We got to speak to nearly three hundred students in three groups / periods. We felt that we were well received. Even though the students did not ask many questions during our presentation, quite a few came and spoke to us very excitedly afterwards.

Our presentation titled Serving the Under-served, covered our backgrounds, the state of the poor of the world, the distribution of wealth and resources among the different people sections, why we should help the poor and the needy, our heart for the poor and the under-privileged, our involvements in humanitarian projects and mission trips.

The school's newspaper Lampion has a nice write up about our talk here: it is called Friday Forum Inspires FHS Students to Think Globally - the second topic on the front page.

The above article is fairly accurate, except for a few mistakes: only Christine was going to go to New Orleans for Katrina-relief work (actually, she is there now this week); and to India / Mexico as well in Summer for mission trip. Otherwise, we felt that this article was very well written.

After that talk, we have been getting knowing-nods and hello's from youth working in Target and Wegmans (local grocery shop chain) - it's neat! The other day the kid checking out my groceries at Wegmans, recognising me from the talk at the high school, went on tell me at lengths about how he felt compelled now to go and visit other countries and experience other cultures.

Christine loves these speaking opportunities. She has given two other well-publicised speeches since then. We enjoyed speaking together at the school.

That was the very first time for me to visit a high school in the US, while the school was in session. So I was very curious about the goings-on there. The principal of the school, a kind-hearted gentleman, gave us a nice tour of the school.