The following is a speech that my 14 year old friend Bob wrote after watching the film Invisible Children again. He watched it alone on his couch and planned an event to raise money to help the cause. His school shot it down. I thought I would still share his speech with you...

"IT is not anyone else's choice...just yours. If you don't FEEL like it. Go ahead, don't

'It's not your problem, it's not my problem' If we don't want it to be, it won't be our problem.

But, see that is the mane reason every single person doesn't stand up and fight for what's right. Just those few, those blessed few, that say, 'LOOK AROUND! I've got everything I could ask for without working on second of my life for it. God gave me this, so why don't I give back all that I can. '

Not for pride

Not for fun.

But for love.

Love for others and love for God. Your creator. Your maker.

You can say, 'hey, I can't make a difference, look at me, stupid old me, I couldn't make a difference if I tried so what's the point?'

The point is..TRY. You might save a life. You might put a smile on a frowning face. You might feed someone a lifesaving cracker, or a sip of water.

NOW-I ask you today, right now, to think about someone other than yourself for once in your life. Smile at a frowning face. Give a hug to someone who needs it. Feed a hungry person and you have already made a difference, a HUGE difference, in your life and the other person's. Simply because you showed them goodness. You showed them love. And most of all, you showed them the smiling face of God. You showed them that there are people out there that CARE.

Now these children, these people that you see in Africa, are not less than one person in this room. ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL. So why aren't they treated that way?

There are people in this very city right now that are starving, cold, friendless, sad. But some people don't really FEEL like trying. They would rather cry over a cell phone they wanted but couldn't get.

ANYONE can make a difference. The only thing that is required is trying, not even trying hard, but trying. Try to help another person in need. DO IT.

and I promise you, you will know happiness that is unimaginable in the human eye."

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Bob called me last night to hear all about my trip to Uganda, so I summed up as much as I could. Then he asked me how old I was. I'm 23. And then he began to tell me how distraught he was because he was only 14 (soon to be 15 though) and he felt as if there was really nothing "big" he could do because he was so young.

wrong.

Yeah, so I bought a plane ticket, signed up with a program and went to Uganda. Bob very well can't do that right now. But my actual trip to Uganda doesn't matter. It's the stories of love surrounding it that do. It's the reason I was compelled to go there in the first place. It's because I fell in love with Jesus...and fell hard.

Everyday when people hear about my trip they tell me that they want to go back to Uganda with me. Maybe some of them do, but I think it's more likely that they are thirsty to learn about love and think that going to Uganda will show them how...because that's where I went, right?

Uganda only stretched my capacity to love and opened my eyes to a world that determines whether you live or die by where you are born. Not that I hadn't known any of this before...but when you see something for yourself, you really GET it.

However, Uganda is not where I learned about love.

I learned about love in a classroom the first week of 4th grade. Somehow over the summer, all of us had changed from 3rd graders who didn't care what anyone looked like to elitists who had to wear the right sneakers, shorts, ahem and stirrup pants to be part of the popular crowd...those who were loved by all. The girls that I had been friends with forever were the popular clique. I had it in easy with them. But I couldn't stand how they treated the girls who were not so lucky to be blessed with the right clothing labels and perfect hair.

It came down to two empty seats at two separate tables in an art classroom. One with my popular friends and one with my outcast friends. I headed towards the outcasts and the popular table asked me why I would want to sit with them. I turned around and said because they're my friends and they are good.

So ended my popularity career. It lasted a whole of maybe one week. That's when I started loving the blessed and the misfits alike, but I learned much more from the misfits.


Little Bob, you can make a big difference at 14. How? Simply by being like Jesus instead of just believing in him. God is love. Jesus is love. Created in that image we are...love. Love is the road less traveled by, but it's what makes all the difference.

p.s. your faith, Bob, has already taught me more than most preachers ever have attempted to. and those preachers were pretty old.=) Keep loving, my friend.