Americans can be very selfish

I feel like I've called half the town this past week to find host families for a group of students coming to visit. 16 college-age students from Oman, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates are coming to stay in our small town for two days to learn about rural Nebraska living, and I volunteered to organize their time here. I knew of enough people interested in hosting that I thought it wouldn't be hard to find eight host families to take two students for only two nights... but it turns out all our usual hosts were busy! And then I got stressed out and started desperately calling everyone I knew of that wasn't a wierdo, and still all I got were refusals, and most of them were for the wrong reasons. I'm sorry to say I got kind of annoyed with that. Why aren't Americans more hospitable? If you are a Christian, it should not be a strange or weirdly inappropriate thing to invite people into your home, to serve them, to make new friends. It is perfectly ok to have your children give up their beds for a night or two so guests can be comfortable. It would be appropriate to cancel your card party or come home early from work to minister to these young Muslims from another country. How many Nebraskans get the chance to meet a man from Oman, or a young lady from the UAE? What a chance to witness this will be, for those who are selfless enough to accept it.

So there's my rant for the week. I still have to find one more host family, really fast, because one of the families got sick. And that IS a good reason not to have guests!