Saving Pagan Babies

When I was going to Catholic grade school. nuns would come each year to talk to our class about their mission work in Africa. And each year we would receive a small cardboard box with a coin slot in it to collect money for their cause. I remember a stout, red faced nun with an Irish accent  imploring us to help her "save pagan babies." I am totally not making this up, I can still hear her voice. Of course, at that young age, the thought of children suffering was nearly unbearable and so it wasn't difficult at all to put a quarter in the slot (if I had a quarter).

I remember collecting soda bottles from the neighbors because we could turn them in for cash. So I would pull a wagon with my best friend or maybe with my brother and sister and ring door bells asking for bottles.  Then we would designate some amount for pagan babies. When we weren't collecting for pagan babies then we would get something from the ice cream man or walk up to the drug store for some trinkets or candy.

Later when I was in (an all boys Catholic) high school one of the pagan babies showed up to talk to us. She was from Swaziland, well she wasn't a baby any longer, she was probably in her early twenties and she talked about her life in Africa. She demonstrated her dialect which was primarily clicking sounds made with the mouth. But of course, we were stupid teenage boys and we cared little about what she had to say. It was more interesting that a beautiful young African woman sat on the desk in the front of the room. I'm sure I imagined what she looked like in Africa, after all, I had seen the covers of National Geographic!. Of course, simultaneously, I felt pure Catholic guilt for having such impure thoughts, a war raging in my head even as I gazed upon this former pagan, now turned child  of God.

I had remembered all this because, as we cleaned out the garage a while back, we came across a little cardboard box with a slot in it. This one is called 'My Lenten Bank' with a place for you to write your name and boxes to check for each coin you put in. A picture on the side shows an open Bible on a tabletop and superimposed on it are a cross and a crown of thorns. I opened it and the coins are from the 1960s.

You can't read the news today without learning about the atrocities happening in places like Sudan. There are still babies that need saving, and not just babies but whole families, whole villages even. Our small change may or may not help someone a half a world a way, the real change that is needed are people who care about what happens there.

Tim Bulone is an ardent observer of life on the swirling blue marble. He works at Davis Group Consulting and creates fine art and canvas prints which he likes to sell from time to time at http://www.MyFamilyArt.com He is an early morning pedestrian in Belmont Shore, where he resides with his wife and a variety of dangerous and sleepy pets.