Being Grateful and serving others

In America so many of us are blessed with abundance. Even much of the poor by comparison are not living at a standard that would compare to the dispair in other countries of the world. I am reading Three Cups of Tea which is the story of how one person can make a difference. Greg Mortenson, after a failed attempt at K2 in Pakistan, ends up in a village where they nurse him back to health. The people in the village lead very simple lives farming the land but they have no school so they and there children cannot read. Greg works to raise funds and ultimately build a school for them in their village, Korphe. These are people who are incredibly grateful for everything they have and everything that they receive. We are often not grateful for anythng we have and it never seems to be enough. I am curious as to why people with so little in material possessions can be so grateful and we who have so much can think that its never enough. How have we allowed ourselves to evolve to this level of dissatisfaction. I want so much to feel the sense of appreciation and gratefulness that these simple people have. I want to serve other people in a way that I have never done in my life. It must be much more fulfilling to serve others than to serve one's self and the insatiable need for more.

Below is a link to a blog from an Iraqi living in New York. The site has links to numerous Iraqi blogs. We really need to figure out how to help these people in additional ways to the armed conflict. They need our help. There is a link to a youtube video about refugees in Jordan. There are over 800,000 Iraqi refugees now in Jordan. The entire country's population is just over 5 Million before the refugee influx. That is a tremendous surge in population for a tiny country such as Jordan. They need our help.

http://healingiraq.blogspot.com