Politics just frustrate me. It’s just a game of lies and blame. The best liars and manipulators are the most successful politicians. The “good” guys, regardless of political party, never make it very far. And corruption runs rampant in our political system with the deep pockets of the lobbyists and special interest groups. BUT, when compared with other countries, the USA is still looking pretty good.

brianna-6.jpgI’ve been talking with a family serving as missionaries in Equatorial Guniea, the Ulibarri’s. I really admire them for their dedicated service to the Lord. I became friends with Charles when we were both going to Waxahachie Bible Churh. Then we worked with their two kids, Micah (now a senior) and Brianna (now 14 years old) in the youth group there when we taught the Junior High. Brianna has become quite an artist. After seeing some of her artwork that she posted on the internet, I decided to create an art gallery here on my blog, and I put some of her artwork in there. I’m going to put some of my artwork in there at some point, and also artwork of other friends. I was so impressed with her art that I wanted to buy some of it, and I already had somebody else wanting to buy a piece also. So I asked Charles about the possibility of shipping the artwork from EG to the states. He said the mail there is very unreliable, and everybody knows not to ship anything of any value over there, because it often just “disappears”. Can you imagine living in a country where you can’t mail anything for fear of it never showing up where you sent it. We really take it for granted here in the US. Next time you mail something, take a minute to be thankful that you can have some peace of mind knowing that it will get there. Of course it’s not perfect, but at least here you can insure items you are mailing. In my T-shirt business, I mail a lot of valuable goods, and I haven’t yet had one come up missing. Thank God for that.

I wrote about another friend of mine in a previous post, Jimmy Grant. He grew up in India and won the Mr. India bodybuilding competition in 1979. He was supposed to go on to compete in the Mr. Asia competition, funded with money that should have been allocated to them from the Indian government. But he said the government was so corrupt that funds like that usually never got to the people they were allocated for. The local newspaper ran a story and people from Jimmy’s hometown raised the money for him to go compete in Mr. Asia.

So when you start feeling down about politics and the economy, just think about what people in other countries have to deal with. It should make you feel a little better.