Jesus “saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (John 9:1-3).
On May 22, 2011, a multiple-vortex EF5 tornado ripped up Joplin, Mo., leaving 149 corpses and a city of rubble in its wake. The following July, I spent three days there as a volunteer. I wasn’t sure what one woman could do without muscle or power tools, and honestly it didn’t seem like much. The first day I picked up trash on a couple of city streets, but the next two days I confronted piles of used clothing, canned goods, and stuffed toys to pick through. It felt like one of those fairy tales where the heroine has one night to sort a pile of rice and barley into separate bins.
FARMINGTON, N.M.—The first time Taylor Benally made a snappy remark to his house parents, they silently pumped fists. Making snippy comebacks isn’t extraordinary teenage behavior, but it was a milestone for the 13-year-old Taylor. Like most other kids at Four Corners Home for Children, a childcare program mostly for Navajos in Farmington, N.M., Taylor came from a dysfunctional family. When he first arrived at Four Corners in 2013, the boy was so reserved and insecure that any time he showed signs of self-assertion, everyone cheered.
Charity | A big prize for a doctor who lived through Ebola, and honor for a genocide survivor
