I Was Born In A Small Town

I couldn't believe it when I heard it.
President George W. Bush.
In my hometown.
Little Mount Airy, Maryland.
To commemorate World AIDS Day, President and Mrs. Bush visited Calvary United Methodist Church in Mt. Airy, and announced he will ask for more money to combat AIDS in Africa, and vowed to return to the continent early next year to see how money he already committed to the problem is being spent there.
Who knew, right?
I am still a member of Calvary.
I grew up there. I lived two blocks from there, and consider it home, even though I wasn't born there.
But I live here now, and since I've left, the town has changed quite a bit, blossoming from a mere bedroom community for commuters, into a thriving, nearly cosmopolitan suburb in its own right.
Look it up on a map.
Mount Airy is about 35 miles west of Baltimore, and about 40 miles north-northwest of Washington, D.C., an easy stop for the Bushes if they were on the way from the White House to Camp David, in the Catoctin Mountains.
The first family chose Calvary because of its involvement with The Children of Zion community in Namibia, where orphaned children live and learn, without their parents, who died because of the widespread AIDS epidemic that continues to ravage much of Africa.
Calvary sent teams of workers to work on buildings and to teach the children in recent years, and the Bushes paid tribute to those efforts, while asking for more from every American.
It's a demanding problem, and one that won't go away anytime soon.
President Bush's visit put Mount Airy on the map, and put Americans on notice that there is more work to do in parts of the world that seem, for good reason, so far away from the Main Streets and Calvary churches of our blessed nation.

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