Monticello Animal Shelter

Justin & I are starting to volunteer at the animal shelter here in Monticello. There are so many sweet dogs out there! My first mission is to start up a website with all the dogs pictures and bios. Here are a few pics of my favorites... (they're not the best pictures... the dogs were so excited and did not want to stay still... plus quite a few of them were scared of the camera... literally)

Justin got me a new camera for our anniversary and since we don't have any kids to take endless pictures of... I took a ton of our babies. Here are just a few

To the left is Rita... Justin's baby... and probably one of the most spoiled dogs ever.

The silly looking black lab is my baby- Tigo. People are always scared of him, but he's the biggest baby... and he loves kids! When we lived in Little Rock he would continually get out and I always found him at the local elementary school playground.The next three are dogs that we foster. We're currently working with an animal rescue out of Little Rock.

This is Bailey- dog #3. Justin found her on the side of the road near Dumas last January. She was a sad sack of bones.

This is Molly. The rescue asked us to take her this summer since the family she was staying with already had 8 dogs. She's up for adoption too.

This is our latest addition. Apparently she doesn't like her picture taken, Justin found her out in the median on a highway near Dumas. We've been calling her "newbie" (since she's the new dog and we can't agree on a name). She is also up for adoption, but she's so sweet I just may want to keep her.

Culture Shock

So the longer I live in Arkansas (or the South) the more I am shocked by how different culture is here. A group of teachers and I were sitting having lunch one day this week and somehow the topic of interracial dating/marriage came up. I won't go into how I feel about that because that's another post in and of itself and it's not really the part of the conversation that shocked me. Eventually the conversation lead to church and one of the teachers said that if a black person were to walk into their church, they would probably be run out the door or at least made to feel uncomfortable enough that they would never return. I know things here are a lot more segregated than back home, but I was floored. How can people who claim to be children of God have so much hatred and prejudice for another human being? Do they not know that Jesus was not the white, blue eyed man portrayed in so many Americanized pictures hung in the fellowship hall. Did they ignore the "baptizing all nations" part of the great comission. Apparently they did not sing "Jesus loves the little children" growing up. It literally made me sick to my stomach that people could honestly feel like that was an acceptable thing to do... that their personal comfort and prejudice beliefs are more important than the kingdom.