David and I hastily squeezed in a date night yesterday and went to see “Slumdog Millionaire”. I know we are terribly late to this

party since it has already one every award available, but hey, we’ve got kids. We loved the movie but the poverty is what left the biggest impression. The absolutely horrendous, mind-boggling, over-whelming poverty that is shown left me devastated. Although the film is a “happy” movie with a sweet ending I left the theatre feeling more like crying than smiling. The first words out of my mouth to David were; “let’s adopt”. If I could rescue each Indian child from living in garbage I would. It was harder to watch that than the children starving in Africa – at least in Africa many are with their families. In Africa they may be victimized by weather, embargos by countries, or being suppressed by government but you don’t sense they are viewed as being less than human. In India it is the absolute disregard for the humanity of these people. The acceptance that it is okay that they live and are treated like packs of wild dogs that I found so disturbing. I’m not sure I’ll ever shake those images lose from my mind and I’m not sure I want to.

For my Mormon friends I want you all to know that it did not include any sex scenes or swearing (except in sub-titles and I’m not sure if that counts). This movie was a story about the eternal bonds of love, as well as a tale of two brothers, morality versus wealth, and the abhorrent poverty that we, as humanity, seem to accept every day.