Our family has been inspired by Jordan and Katie’s example! A few weeks ago we created our Raising Purpose plan. One of our goals for the year is to spend more time with people who come from different backgrounds and different walks of life than we do.
Today, we put some ACTION in our plan. We visited the Karen New Year’s celebration organized by people who moved to our community as refugees from Burma. My kids liked the dancing, the music, and the traditional costumes. They were surprised to see how many people were in attendance, rock music, and the different style of letters used to write happy new year. I was impressed with the hospitality extended to our family. We were made to feel welcome immediately.
To be frank, it took more than a little encouragement to get the the kids out the door to go the event. They had their faces glued to Minecraft and one of those reality shows about Alaska. They resisted. I persisted. (We promised to be real on this blog. I wish I could have told you they skipped out the door as soon as I suggested we attend.)
I’m grateful that we had written our goals down as a family to give me more accountability to follow-through. It also gave the kids the context to understand why it was important. In the end, we kept our visit short and the kids enjoyed themselves.
Since the beginning of Raising Purpose, Jordan and Katie have said that they wanted to help families become more intentional in their action and conversations about important issues While attending the event wasn’t a huge commitment for my family, it did require us to be intentional and to act. It also gave us a lot to talk about and to learn about (what are refugees? why did they have to leave? what languages do they speak? etc.)
Of course, we know that visiting one celebration in our community isn’t enough to fulfill our goals. So, today, when we got back to the house we signed up to be part of the “International Friendship” program at the local university. It’s a program that pairs university students who have come to the US as part of an intensive language program with families from the community. I felt like we were making purpose when our daughter used our Raising Purpose goals as part of the response to why we wanted to participate in the program. This is all still the beginning, but we see some hints that we’re on course to raising purpose in our family.
Raising Purpose 