Will You Remember Me?

This weekend I'll be in the studio again. We've been making a lot of progress on the album. In fact, three songs are completely mixed. (I put one of them on my music player on my MySpace page, it's called Forgive and Forget. Check it out when you get a chance.) We still have background vocals to cut on four songs...and a bass track to finish on another. But this weekend, I'll be focusing on something else. This weekend, I'm going to be recording a song I wrote for Compassion International. I wrote it after my trip to Kenya last August. While we were there, I met a single mother, named Anrietta, who was HIV positive. During my conversation with her, she asked me twice: "Will you remember me?" I thought it was an odd question. I told her, "Of course I will!" Later, as other members of our group were talking to this same lady, she asked them the same question: "Will you remember me?" And it dawned on me. She was afraid. She was afraid that she'd be dying soon, leaving her young daughter to fend for herself. She was afraid she'd die...and be forgotten. Then I started thinking about the 1-billion plus children who live in extreme poverty in our world. They struggle just to survive. 30,000 children die everyday, from things that could easily be prevented. Who will remember them? I suppose we all want a legacy, right? We all want to leave this world a better place than the way we found it. We all want to be remembered. So, I'm going into the studio this weekend to start recording on this song...and to remember Anrietta. I'll upload an mp3 file of it once it's done. In the meantime, here are the lyrics: Will You Remember Me? VERSE: I am naked and I am poor I’m an orphan but so much more Won’t you look beyond your own front door to save? I’m just looking for some food to eat A pair of shoes for my two bare feet And I was hoping you could meet those needs today. CHORUS: When you hear my cries, will you rescue me? Will you just walk by through the moment? When you see my tears, will you comfort me? If I disappear, will you notice? I want a legacy…but will you remember me at all? BRIDGE: What’s it matter, how I got here? What’s it matter, where I’ve been? All that matters, is I should matter… Yes, I should matter to you. CHORUS: When you hear my cries, will you rescue me? Will you just walk by through the moment? When you see my tears, will you comfort me? If I disappear, will you notice? Yes, Anrietta, I will remember you.

Role Reversal

What if the US reversed roles with a developing country in Africa. What would that look like?

• First, there would be no healthcare system. Forget about making an appointment with your doctor every time you get a sniffle or aches and pains.
• Instead of driving to your job where you sit in an air conditioned office all day, you walk a couple of miles to work...and once you get there, you spend the next 10-12 hours doing vigorous manual labor.
• At the end of the day, you get your pay. Two bucks.
• Your children are in danger of dying of a disease that Africa managed to eradicate decades ago.
• For as little as $10 each, you could protect your children from the disease. But you just don't have it. That's a whole week's pay!
• When you get home, tired from a day of work, you've got to find a way to feed the entire family on the two dollars you made today.
• There's no trip to the vending machine during the day for a snack. There is no vending machine. And you couldn't afford it anyway. In fact, you may have to choose not to eat tonight, so your children get enough.
• There's no sink to turn on for clean water. One of your sick children has to walk a mile down the road to get water from a well.
• You can't afford to send your children to school. The supplies alone are out of your budget. (In one country, I met a mother who sifted through old notebooks in a landfill, hoping to find enough blank pages to sew a notebook together so her daughter could go to school.)
• Forget about the house you have today. Your entire home is smaller than your current master bedroom.
• Your "closet" consists of two outfits...one pair of shoes.
• No TV, DVDs, video games.
• If you have electricity, you likely stole it by illegally tapping into a line that runs through your neighborhood. But most likely, the only light you have at night is provided by candles or the trash fire you set in your yard.
• You don't get to take a hot shower every morning. But once every few days, you can make your way to the watering hole to bathe in the filthy, cold stream.

So what's the difference? Longitude and latitude. But for the grace of God you were born here...and not there. And why should that determine whether a person has their basic needs taken care of? Where a person is born should not decide whether they get a fair chance at life. Do something. You Can.