Been thinking a lot about youngsters. Couple of reasons; next week I will be home in Crestline caring for Andrew’s five children! (More about that later.) Another reason is that I’m just interested in young people, and certainly as I grow older, I admire their strength, vitality and freshness. The youth of this generation and that recently passed have in great part received a “bad rap,” and in all honesty, it is likely they deserve much of that description. I’m aware of the shortcomings and ills of this group of human beings, but I want to remind you that there are some really great kids among us. There are drug-free, upright, honest and ambitious youngsters hanging out around us. I read about remarkable ones yesterday and want you to think about them.
The first one is named Jennifer Sharpe…
She has broken a record for the sale of Girl Scout Cookies, having sold 17,328 boxes.
Jennifer Sharpe, a 15-year-old from Dearborn, Michigan, sold 17,328 boxes of Girl Scout cookies this year, which shatters the old record for her local Girl Scouts group and is believed to be a record, though the national organization, Girl Scouts of the USA, doesn’t track individual sales.
“It’s always been one of those goals I wanted to accomplish,” Sharpe said Wednesday.
The annual cookies sales are the main way in which members of the Girl Scouts raise money for activities such as trips. For a limited time every year, Girl Scouts sell the cookies, which this year cost $3.50 a box.
And the second…
Moshe Kal is 10 years old and is a college sophomore.
With the end of another school year approaching, college sophomore Moshe Kai Cavalin is cramming for final exams in classes such as advanced mathematics, foreign languages and music.
But Cavalin is only 10 years old. And at 4-foot-7, his shoes don’t quite touch the floor as he puts down a schoolbook and swivels around in his chair to greet a visitor.
“I’m studying statistics,” says the alternately precocious and shy Cavalin, his textbook lying open on the living room desk of his parents’ apartment in this quiet suburb east of Los Angeles.
And last, John Tyler Hammon, 19, was just elected mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma!
John Tyler Hammond is a 19-year-old first-year student at the University of Oklahoma who , on Tuesday, was elected mayor of Muskogee, a city of 38,000 in the northeastern part of the state of Oklahoma.
With all precincts reporting, John Tyler Hammons won with 70 percent of the vote over former Mayor Hershel Ray McBride, said Muskogee County Election Board Secretary Bill Bull.
“The public placing their trust in me is the greatest, humbling and most awesome experience I’ve ever had in my life,” said Hammons, who is from Muskogee but attends the university in Norman.
The two candidates squared off in a runoff election for the nonpartisan post after neither secured 50 percent of the vote in a six-person election April 1.
Sounds like we have at least three really neat young people among us. There are multiplied others, and I truly feel for them. It’s a complicated world, a challenging society in which they will live out their lives. They need our support, our help, our good wishes. If you’re around any young people today, it might be a good idea to tell them how much you appreciate them, how supportive you are to them, how you admire them…and that you truly believe in them.
My congratulations to Jennifer, Moshe and John.
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My devotional blog is here.
Shirley Buxton 