Hi Julie,

When I'm feeling down, I find it often helps to count my blessings... Everyone on this forum is incredibly blessed. The fact you are accessing the internet in itself shows that to a degree....

Recently I read an article about a small business in Eritrea (in Africa) which was trying to make shoes and export them to surrounding African countries. This business had a very difficult time.

Firstly, they had difficulty competing because there is a large second-hand shoe market in parts of Africa. So they had to compete with the flood of very inexpensive second-hand shoes. (I have a friend, actually, who was once exporting second-hand shoes from Australia to Malawi, so I know this is in general true.)

Secondly, the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia fired up again, and something like 20 of their staff were drafted. They had to keep going with a large portion of their staff gone.

In addition to that, they had many problems just in transporting their products in basic ways. We take the use of good shipping for granted. In their case, often there were poor roads. Sometimes, they had to use bribes to get through (because of widespread corruption), which greatly increased the costs of transport.

The only way this company managed to survive through the difficult times was to rent out their office space to a United Nations agency, as an alternative source of income. All their company staff had to move to the factory floor to work.

When I read this article, I realized how good we have things in reality.

We are all blessed, but often we don't see how tremendous those blessings are. Counting (and being thankful) for your blessings can be very healing.... I remember, Julie, you talking about the importance of gratitude, so my apologies if I am regurgitating some wonderful lessons which I learned from you.... :) The reason why I am doing so is because they are so very true!

- Dien Rice