Pigs or Muslims?

I know.... what an odd title for a blog. And I swear this one is light. Need a light note to cancel out the previously heavy pontification :)

So I was told the other day that the Muslim children who are coming to Good Shepherd Orphanage that we support are no longer coming for school at the facility. Rocky said they had found out about our "plans" of raising pigs as a way to help them sustain themselves and the parents freaked, immediately pulling out the children. The little cultural aspects you learn through making mistakes. Well, what is odd is we never really were planning on moving forward with pigs. And Rocky had taken it on himself to do the numbers of what it would cost to set it up and had mentioned it to Jane who takes care of the kids. (This is a good thing that Rocky takes it on himself to run with projects but this situation got out of control) We were in a pickle. We would NEVER jeopardize any children for the sake of pigs or anything else for that matter. So now we are patching the wounds. All children and families have been told there will be no swine and they are always welcome. PLEASE COME BACK!!!

It's such an interesting look into cultural awareness. Most of the children, say 90%, at the home are Christian. But we never thought of what a pig project would mean to the small group of Muslim children. I wonder if this is not a reflection of how we as people often think. We make decisions without looking at how they will influence the minority and ow we may ostracize a group when there is no need to make that division. I feel really bad for not seeing this coming and making those children not feel welcome. We are learning for sure and in the end it falls on my shoulders. I need to be more aware! But then isn't that also the tag line for CTC, BECOME AWARE ! Guess I am learning also to open my mind constantly. To look at situations from all angles. Even if for a short time it seemed we chose pigs over Muslims :)