from patty this morning....

i want to share these.......
this woman has truly captured my heart.
this is from her latest letter to her friends.

Dearest Friends,

I have a new roommate. She is an 11 year-old Zulu girl and will stay with my roommate from Holland and myself for 3 1/2 weeks. She speaks English too so that makes life for us so much easier! Her name is Nonhlanhla and she's had a rough life! Even in the short time she's been here, she is blossoming and beaming and I think she's a survivor with so much talent that is just aching to be realized.

At night, when we have dinner, I've made a house rule that we all must share 5 things that happened during the day that made us happy or grateful. One night, I shared that it made me really happy to see this tree that was covered in brilliant purple flowers. The flowers also covered the ground beneath it and it looked like a purple carpet. The next day, the driver that takes several children under Bobbi Bear's care to school told me that Noni begged her to please stop the car. Not knowing why, the driver pulled over and Noni jumped out, ran to one of these trees and gathered handfuls of the purple flowers that were on the ground and handed them out to all the children and the driver. Mmmm, joy!

She is tall and thin with long longs legs and I asked her if she liked to run. She lit up like a light! I told her that my brother ran marathons and she said she wanted to run long distances. I also told her that while running it is important to think about nice things and that my brother always drew a smiley face on his hand to remind himself that he was having a good time. The next day she came home from school and said she ran. She must've run like the wind because the high school coach saw it, and he timed her and has had her running with the high school team (even though she's 11) everyday since. She will do her first race Oct. 30th. She said she either holds a flower when she runs or puts one in her hair. Breakthroughs!