went to church this morning, and they asked everybody for prayer requests. i wanted to tell them that i had 144 prayer requests... prayers for one student, who has been kicked out of her house by her family and is living on her own... prayers for another, who has dropped out of school to pursue a full-time job... prayers for another who just lost her baby... prayers for a girl who just had her baby and whose baby is in the hospital.. prayers for several girl-women who have had serious complications with their pregnancies... prayers for one young father of three who takes little to no responsibility... every student has a story, and nearly every story illustrates how quickly our children are growing up in the delta. it's sad and tragic, but they find such joy in the little things that they come in contact with... a kind word, a solid friendship... some of them shine so brightly and have so much going for them that it's hard to imagine them in this place for the rest of their lives. even 600 miles away, my mind slips back to them, but today i need to pull it back to the present. dad and i are about to visit his mother in the nursing home, an hour away. she has alzheimer's, and she is beginning to not recognize her family. i need another connection to her before she cannot recognize us at all. dad is scared to go, scared to get there and have her memory of him vanished. so am i. that's why i've been putting this visit off, and now it might be too late anyway...