One of our parenting goals was to have each of our kids go to a Third World Country on a short term mission trip before they graduated from High School. We did accomplish that goal, and they went to countries like Vietnam, Haiti, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The reason for this goal was so that they could see how poor many other people in the world are, be both moved to do something to help if possible, and also to appreciate living in the United States, having a spirit of gratefulness as opposed to a spirit of discontentment, criticalness, and selfishness. Also that they would see how bad the governments in many of these countries are, how oppressive, controlling, corrupt, inefficient and ineffective, and again, appreciate what we have here in the USA.

People who are grateful, positive, and happy are attractive to others, and they influence others, things change, get better because of them.

I have six, 12-volt batteries on my pontoon boat. They run my electric trolling motor, start the 85 hp outboard motor, power the fish finder and GPS, supply power for the lights that I have on the boat for night fishing, and provide electricity for my two electric downriggers that I use when trolling for kokanee. Between fishing trips I carry them into my shop where I hook them up to a battery charger so that they are fully charged the next time I go fishing. Occasionally when I am not paying attention I will clamp the leads from the charger on the wrong terminals on the battery. When that happens, a light starts blinking with the words, ”polarity reversed.” If I left it that way, the positive terminal would become the negative one. It seems like a lot of people, somewhere in life, got charged backwards.

Often as I see pictures and videos of recent riots I think, I should make another trip to West Africa, invite a bunch of those people to go with me to build a school, help in a medical clinic, or drill a well by hand. It is a nice thought that won’t happen because I don’t have the funds to pull that off and they probably wouldn’t go, if asked, but I am pretty sure it would change their life. The polarity of their thinking might get changed back to where it should be.