Dear Friends,
Too Close For Comfort
Last Friday, we had a fun Glow-in-the-dark Stop Drop and Dance fundraiser for the Can Do! Education Foundation supporting the Miller Creek School District. Kids from all the different grades took turns dancing on the stage, and we even got the parents to show off their moves! Thank you to the hosts who helped to make the event happen: Suneela Jain, Heather DiGiorgio, Amy Poirier, Susanah Gasper, and Leah Curran, and thank you to some of our regular dancers who joined the party: Gina Daly, Jaclyn Cannici, and Paula Duncan.
At the same time as our party, halfway across the world and exactly 12 hours ahead of us, my parents (who you always hear me refer to as "Puo Puo Gong Gong" because they Zoom into class 4x a week) had just flown to Dubai for the first time. They enjoyed a full day of sightseeing from the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, to the luxurious Palm Jumeriah island, to the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel.
However that night (our Saturday morning), my sister and I went down a dark spiral as we learned that the attack on Iran had resulted in a missile strike back to other countries in the Middle East, including Dubai, where our parents were.
Thank God they are okay and now sheltering-in-place at a hotel until the airports open.
Thank God we have technology that allows us to communicate with them and track their location.
Thank God they are in one of the safest places in the world, and the UAE government has demonstrated that they really care about protecting everyone because they even offered to pay for extended hotel and food costs for stranded travelers.
It has been an emotional, stressful, and humbling few days, and this uneasiness will not go away until my sister and I know they are home safe.
I am sad our world is what it is, filled with hate, shootings, fighting, selfishness, hunger, power, sickness... even freak natural disasters. Some things are totally out of our control.
But some things are.
Would you please join me for a few moments right now to stop drop and pray for peace for our world, and specifically for my parents to return home safely?
With immense thanks and love,
Grace
