Kitten Mittons!

We can't stop watching this. No matter how many times we see it, it's still equally as funny.

Kim Phuc

Hello all! We've been meaning to update the blog for a while now, but life surely has been busy. Duncan will be doing his own update this weekend about his recent hair-style change :)

I, however, thought this weekend's guest speaker at North Avenue merited an entry.

Kim Phuc is the little girl in this Pulitzer Prize winning photo from the Vietnam War. Her anguish, skin afire with napalm, became the face of the innocent who suffer from war. Her village was bombed in 1972–Kim was literally in the middle of the bomb, her clothes burned off from the napalm. Kim explained that water boils at 100° C... napalm burns under the skin at 500°C. She, amazingly, survived. She was in the hospital for more than a year and underwent nearly 20 operations to begin the process of healing. She had to endure years of painful physical therapy, and still to this day suffers with pain and health issues as a result of the bombing.

This is film from that bombing, you'll see Kim running down the street. The other children you see are her brothers and cousins. Her grandmother comes out holding one of Kim's cousins, whose skin is literally hanging off from the napalm.

This is really hard to watch.

But this is what war looks like.

And not only was Kim dealing with physical and emotional pain after the bombing, but Kim was used by communist Vietnam as propaganda–pulled out of school, which was one the only things that made her feel like a normal child–and told what to do, monitored and watched for all of her early life. Finally, when she was married, she and her new husband defected to Canada on their honeymoon.

This is a woman that certainly has a lot to complain about. If anyone has a right to harbor hatred and resentment in that this could happen to an innocent child, only nine-years-old, it's her.

But Kim discovered Jesus when she was 19-years-old. And the Gospel answered questions that she could not. And as she read about this amazing Jesus, she stumbled upon the passage from the Sermon on the Mount: But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you (Luke 6:27-28). But this seemed impossible to her. Certainly, this would not apply to her, considering the circumstances.

But today, Kim travels the world sharing a message of forgiveness. She did forgive! When speaking at a Vietnam memorial service, Kim met a veteran involved in ordering the air strike on her village, and she forgave him right then and there.

She says, "I had to change my heart or die from hatred." And offered the illustration of black cup of coffee. This, she said, was her heart. And every day she had to poor out a just a little bit of the black coffee, until her cup was empty. And God refilled her cup with his love, joy, peace, compassion, forgiveness. She practiced every day in her prayers naming all of the people who had caused her pain. And then she got it, she understood forgiveness. Wow. She says now her "heart is cleansed, and it seems like Heaven on Earth."

"Forgiveness is more powerful than any weapon of war."

This woman is incredible. She is so full of joy, more than any person I have ever met. This was amazingly unexplainable to me, other than God really did fill her heart with his peace and joy.

Kim is now an advocate for children of war, largely focusing on children in Uganda.

If you missed it, you can listen to Kim's talk here.