Happy National Cleaning Week!

This week we are celebrating National Cleaning Week, which always occurs during the fourth week in March. This is a time where we get our environment clean…where we live, where we work and anywhere we spend most of our time.

Since we just celebrated the first day of Spring last week on March 20^th, typically everyone is in the mood to toss out, give away or tidy up to make that transformation from Winter to Spring.  We are ready to get out of our winter dormancy and spring forward into newness and action!

Spring is a time of revitalization and letting go of past weights that seem to put you in a state of complacency and pull you into depression! Don’t allow the blues of Winter to drench your spirit and your environment with gloom and despair. Throw in some vibrant colors, whether it’s in your wardrobe, home or outdoor living spaces. You will be amazed just how a dab of color can change the mood of any environment it is introduced in!

Happy National Cleaning Week and Happy Spring Season!

Saluting Derreck Kayongo: Saving Lives with a Bar of Soap!

What do you do with that tiny bit of soap that has melted away with each shower or bath? Have you thought about donating it? Yes, donating your used soap!

Derreck Kayongo, a top ten 2011 CNN Hero, has an Atlanta-based Global Soap Project that collects used hotel soap from across the United States. The soaps are cleaned and reprocessed to be shipped to areas like Uganda, Kenya, Haiti and Swaziland. More than 2 million children die each year from diarrheal illnesses due to poor hygiene. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these deaths occur primarily among toddlers living in poor countries.

Each year in the United States, hundreds of millions of soap bars are thrown away and end up in landfills. With the support of his wife, friends and many Atlanta-based hotels, Derreck began his Global Soap Project in 2009. Three hundred hotels nationwide have joined the soap collection effort and so far generated 100 tons of soap! The hotel soaps are collected and shipped by volunteers from across the United States, to the group’s warehouse in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta volunteers assemble at the warehouse on Saturdays, to clean, reprocess and package the bars of soap. A batch of soap bars will only be released once the samples are tested for pathogens and determined to be safe by a third party lab.

Derreck is very familiar with the stress created by poverty and displacement. He fled Uganda with his parents almost 30 years ago due to the mass torture and killings by former Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin. Derreck’s work was recognized by the Atlanta City Council and they declared May 15 as Global Soap Project Day in Atlanta.

We salute you Derreck Kayongo, not because you were chosen as a CNN Hero, but because of your humanitarian effort to make sure that poor children get something as simple as a bar of soap to keep them from dying due to the lack of access to basic sanitation. Find out how you can help with the Global Soap Project. http://www.globalsoap.org/. “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure!”

World Water Day Kickoff With Indian Trail Elementary School

What a great way to engage elementary school kids, by bringing awareness and helping them to understand the issue of the global water crisis. This is a great article to read from the Filtered Files World Water Day Kickoff With Indian Trail Elementary School to teach these children how they can help people in poor countries gain access to clean drinking water.

Divine Intervention

The paths of our lives can sometimes take the most unexpected twists and turns just when we least expect it. In circumstances more often than not, when I focus on something other than something for myself, I discover an interesting inter-connectedness of multiple resources that open some amazing doors of opportunity for me.

Although sometimes it seems hard to make decisions solely for “self” you can do it unselfishly and reap the rewards of divine blessings, because you are blessing someone else. Recently, I found myself in several different scenarios that initially started out as a good gesture, but as things develop, these little gestures become more magnificent and empowering than anything I imagined. Because of this, I learn that God is leading me down the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Although these paths can often appear to be frightening and I may feel a little apprehensive about traveling down them, an inner peace lets me know there is a reason for journeying down these roads and inevitably, everything is going to be all right.

I learn important lessons of being still during my daily meditations and asking God to show me what my mission is going to be for that day. I don’t go searching for those missions, but allow God to order my steps and give me the solutions and instructions, based on the tools and gifts He has given me in order to handle my assignments for that moment and time.

When things begin to transform and fall into place in a more than favorable way, I don’t think of this as luck, but Divine blessings through Divine Intervention. I feel that God is aligning things in the order that He predestined them to be and I am grateful that through the years of Godly influence from those around me, I learned to trust and depend on my Heavenly Father in a way that is higher than my ways.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths!”

- Proverbs 3: 5-6 (KJV)