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I am late in posting this for the contest – I am not sure if it will count or not.  It has been a crazy week preparing and coming here for the ELCA Youth Gathering.  My experience has been amazing so far and I can’t wait to share more about it with everyone.
However, I did make a promise to post something each week about a topic that is chosen for me.  This week’s topic is entitled:  “The Most Important Lesson” -  When I thought about it there is one thing that came to my mind.  Considering that I have to meet my group in about 10 min I am going to post it and reflect on it another time.  So please enjoy this post for what it is.

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don’t hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
• Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/ ]

I want to say I am sorry for the parents and friends who might be coming on here to check up on the St. Mark’s Youth Trip to New Orleans.  I have had some trouble getting my computer online here at the hotel.

I finally got online this morning but we have been so busy I have not been able to update at all!!!
I wanted to come on here and let you know that I will be adding pictures and a summary of our experiences tonight after we return back to the hotel.  I am sure that I will have everything all ready to go.  So come back late tonight or tomorrow to get all the latest stories and updates of our trip.

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