After the excitement of Friday and Saturday nights, it was nice to have a quiet Sunday.

Nevertheless, I found something wonderful to do.

The Oz and John X and I filmed Mackenzie, the young barista who is involved in getting prosthetic feet for orphaned African children who were victims of the Sierra Leone civil war.

Of course, the Oz wants a piece of the film for his movie and John X will edit the conversation into one of his possibility X pieces. We also hope we can edit in some of her film of one of her four trips to Africa this past year into a DVD she can use to raise money for her cause. I was just glad to be able to be a part of it. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this lovely young OU grad.

She spoke with passion about following her heart and her God and of her desire to be a part of a cause that is bigger than herself. Full bore, girl. I have so much respect for that. Better to be passionately wrong than sit and bitch and moan and be bored with life and think that nothing matters anyway. And, there’s just that chance that she’s passionately right and doing something that really will make the world be a better place. I’ll passionately back her to the hilt just for that chance. There will always be that someone who will cynically tell you how hopeless your efforts are, but screw them. I believe that if you act with love and hope and give your all, you can never make a mistake. Things may not turn out as you might wish, but it’s still the right thing to do, in my opinion.

Mackenzie works for a local, faith-based non-profit, For Him. If you’ve got a spare buck, give it. The average ANNUAL income in Sierra Leone and Togo is about $120. You’ve picked up bar tabs that size and/or paid a dinner tab that size. Only $80 will give an African family a year’s worth of clean water, one of their greatest needs. They support orphanages and try to provide villages with enterprises that will support the families there with income for the future. Couldn’t you give up that one pair of designer jeans to give an entire village a chance at survival? Children with no feet cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they have no boots and no feet. No, you can’t save the world, but maybe you can save yourself.

Today, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I can’t think of anything that would better honor his memory than to give Mackenzie’s passion a boost with a few dollars. Do it. Just do it.