Hunger Banquet

On Saturday night, Troy and I went to the Hunger Banquet at BYU. They split everyone up into lower, middle, and upper class based on the color of our tickets. Troy and I were in the middle class. They told us that the middle class makes up 25 % of the world's population. They live on about $900 dollars a year. We watched the upper class eat their 4 course meal, while we were fed a slice of pizza. The lower class got even less than we did - a plate of chips, and a bowl of rice a beans, split between 5 or 6 people.
This experience really took me back to the couple weeks that I spent in Zambia. As I watched the lower class split up their food, it hit me a little too hard. I had spent 2 weeks, watching kids split up the only food that they would get for a couple of days. It was heartbreaking to hear the stories that were told about people who live in these kinds of situations.
Luckily, Troy and I had the option to run through a drive through later on that night. But most people who live like that on a daily basis don't have that choice. Rice and beans might be the only things that some people eat for a couple days at a time.
I feel so blessed to have been born into the life that I have. Why did I get so lucky? And why are there some who have to suffer? Sometimes I think that we have people in all sorts of situations in this life so that we might all be able to learn compassion. Without the poor that I lived with in Zambia, I probably wouldn't have learned to feel this way, or to have the kind of compassion that God wants us all to have, the kind of compassion that I'm still striving to have. All of us are brothers and sisters. I think I need to remember that and start helping them the same way I would help my biological siblings if they needed me.