Three Cups of Tea: Response to Text

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Three Cups of Tea

Mortenson’s New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea challenged me in many different areas and gave me a different outlook on the way other countries deal with poverty. To me the most challenging thing to understand about the book is how someone like Mortenson can go from a mountaineer to being such a great humanitarian. God’s plan for Mortenson wasn’t to be a mountaineer at all; his plan for him was to do great things in impoverished countries. The way that he failed to climb K2 then randomly wandered into Pakistan is miraculous, something even more inspiring then that is that he stayed around long enough to be moved by the people and to see the real problems that were going on in this village. He was moved by the way that the kids were trying to teach themselves using twigs and stones to draw things in the dirt. The children wanted to learn but they didn’t have the resources or the missing links to do so. When this book came out it challenged people to help and to do something about what was going on in these countries and it also presented a way to end poverty. The idea was to educate the people then they could do things for themselves and eventually set up a system. For the people of the United States to donate money and to give there time and effort would be a huge help in the long run. It is an investment in a way because investing in education is one of the greatest investments there is.

To invest in something where you don’t know where the money is going to go or what is going to happen even if the money is put in the right place is a challenge. This book challenges me to be more open minded. In order to understand why this guy would want to help knowing good and well that it could be a waste of time and a waste of money you would have to look at it with an open mind. The challenge while reading this book is to put your faith in God and to try and understand that in all of these schools the right education is going on, that the things that they are learning are going to make a big difference to ending poverty. At least with people getting educated they are learning the meaning of earning money and learning its worth because they are working for it. This is a great method because it isn’t charity. The government isn’t just handing out money and so they can do what they want with it. Its investing in education and saying learn for you’re selves so that way eventually charity won’t be necessary.

To see life through the eyes of someone else would be a great experience. It’s something that if I could do for just a short period of time I gladly would give it a try. Seeing life through someone else’s eyes would put a lot of things into perspective. Especially if it is a person’s eyes that lives a completely opposite life as I do. To walk in someone else’s shoes would be a great adventure and to do so would change your own life forever. My whole life I have only seen life from one point of view, that point of view is my own. I only have one set of view points and one set of moral values and I have a lot of biased opinions. To see life through the eyes of someone else would broaden my horizon and make me less biased toward ideas that normally nothing in the world would change my mind on. This book