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By Tim Hunt
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About this blog: I am a native of Alameda County, grew up in Pleasanton and currently live in the house I grew up in that is more than 100 years old. I spent 39 years in the daily newspaper business and wrote a column for more than 25 years in add...
(More)About this blog: I am a native of Alameda County, grew up in Pleasanton and currently live in the house I grew up in that is more than 100 years old. I spent 39 years in the daily newspaper business and wrote a column for more than 25 years in addition to writing editorials for more than 15 years. I have served as a director of many non-profits in the Valley and the broader Bay Area and currently serve as chair of Teen Esteem and on the advisory board of Shepherd?s Gate. I also served as founding chair of Heart for Africa and have travelled to Africa seven times to serve on mission trips. My wife, Betty Gail, has taught at Amador Valley High (from where we both graduated) since 1981. She and I both graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, as did both of my parents and my three siblings. Given that Cal tradition, our daughter went south to the University of Southern California and graduated with a degree in international relations. Since graduation, she has taken three mission trips and will be serving in the Philippines for nine months starting in September.
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Christmas shoeboxes come full circle
Uploaded: Nov 23, 2017
My church, GraceWay, has participated in Operation Christmas Child for many years and this week we saw the results first-hand.
The ministry, which delivers shoeboxes to children around the world, has reached more than 146 million children since 1993. Franklin Graham heads Samaritan’s Purse, which operates Operation Christmas Child in more than 150 countries and territories.
Some of our volunteers at our regional collection site received an unexpected blessing when a woman and her children dropped off a shoebox. She had seen publicity about the shoebox collection and recalled that during her childhood in her native country she had received a shoebox at Christmas. Her gift of a shoebox brought it full circle and allowed her to share the love of Jesus with a child like her.
This Thanksgiving Day my thoughts turn to Africa where Robert Mugabe who was forced to resign this week as president of Zimbabwe at the age of 93. During his tenure, he transformed the country from sub-Saharan Africa’s breadbasket into a country that cannot feed itself.
That’s how tragic his rule has been for the people of his nation. His 37-year tenure was initially marked by outreach to the west, but, as sanctions mounted after he seized farms and triggered huge inflation, he embraced communist countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, also ruled by equally ineffective leaders.
Zimbabwe citizens will not celebrate our Thanksgiving today, but you can bet they are thankful that Mugabe’s rule is no more.
The contrast between his shameful leadership and that of the late Nelson Mandela in South Africa could not be starker. Mandela built bridges between people in South Africa and then gracefully stepped aside after eight years when he could easily have been president for life.
Democracy.
What is it worth to you?
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