Our beans and rice challenge...:)

I am convicted...

How many times have I let veggies in my frig go bad before we use them up?
How many times have I walked into my overflowing pantry and thought, there is nothing good to eat in here?
How many times have  I thought I really don't want to eat those same left overs AGAIN...
How many times have I heard these words uttered from my own children's lips, "I don't like the taste of that."

Far too many... and my heart can't take our self absorption and ungratefulness for the OVER ABUNDANCE that we have...

Really, where in the world can you literally eat for days, maybe even weeks or months just off of the food in your pantry??  It is actually sickening to me...

In all honestly, my kids are great eaters and rarely picky... they eat what is put in front of them... I am not a special order cook... but even with being great eaters there can be such ungratefulness for all that the Lord has put before us...We are blessed with variety of food like you wouldn't believe... yet we are still ungrateful or discontent with what we have to eat... So so sad!!

So we as a family decided to come up with the beans and rice Challenge.... Thanks to Linny at www.aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com we were made aware of World Hunger Day last week... We totally stole their family idea to eat beans and rice with or hands for lunch that day.

We had some amazing discussion about how different other people have to live.  We talked about how many people only get 2 meals a day to eat, sometimes not even that... We also talked about how those 2 meals are likely a variation of the other in many cases... i.e.  corn meal mush in the morning... corn meal cakes for dinner.  We discussed how there are kids in Honduras that are literally picking through the garbage at the dump and are finding food that had been thrown away to eat... i.e. half eaten banana (days old) piece of chicken (days old) 1/2 rotten veggies (days old) all possibly thrown right in the trash next to a dirty diaper.... and that might be all they have to eat that day.

We in America have such a warped sense of reality at times...

So we decided we will eat beans and rice for lunch till almost Thanksgiving.

We are praying it:

Simplifies life...
Gets our focus more where it ought to be...
 Makes us so much more grateful for all we have to eat...
Makes us so much more grateful for all the blessings we have...
 Takes our eyes off of ourselves and puts them on others...
Makes our hearts more sensitive and tender for the great needs of others...

and in the MEAN TIME raises some extra money (the money we saved on what we would have spent eating different stuff for lunch, and whatever else we each individually in our family, feel led to give at the end of our challenge) to take and deliver to orphans we meet and care for in Uganda in January!

Really, I know this is nothing... no big deal... eating beans and rice alone for lunch for a month or so... Nothing...

But we are praying that God uses this little thing and teaches us BIG THINGS in the process...
Want to join us?? :):)