Day 41:

Today has been a pretty normal day. After classes I went to the grocery store for some bananas and also got to talk to mom on skype for a few minutes. Caught up on some journaling/blogging. Dinner. Nothing too fancy.

After dinner I watched a movie with a few other students. It was a movie that made me cry a bit. Anyone who knows me can attest that there's nothing so unusual about that. But even though my eyes are dry now, I continue to think about it. The movie was about a man named William Wilberforce, an Englisman in the late 1700s who dedicated his life and his career to passing a bill to abolish Britain's slave trade and to making the world a better place. There were no political or social incentives for him to do this. His career, in fact, was nearly jeopardized as an impeding war with France led opponents to declare his intentions seditious and his motives revolutionary. Yet he persisted to gather facts, to form petitions, to convince anyone he could of the inhumanity and utter brutality of slavery. The stories he heard and the truths he learned pierced his soul and almost haunted his mind with a sense of urgency and importance. He refused to give up until, nearly 20 years later, his bill was passed and the British slave trade was forever abolished. How grateful we should be for people who care. But thank Heaven for the people whose courage and strength of character encourage them to do. I want to do.