When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Doctor Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard, but was always very kind.

When Doctor Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life’s goal was to make it a forest. He had some interesting theories about planting trees. He hardly watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why and he told me that watering plants spoiled them because it made them grow weaker. He said you had to make things tough for the trees so that only the strongest could survive. He talked about how watering trees made them develop shallow roots and how, if they were not watered, trees would grow deep roots in search of water. So, instead of watering his trees every morning, he’d beat them with a rolled-up newspaper. I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

Doctor Gibbs died a couple of years after I left home. Every now and then, I walked by his house and looked at the trees that I’d watched him plant some twenty five years ago. They were all tall, big and robust since they have deep roots now.

I planted a couple of trees myself a few years ago. Two years of attending these trees meant they grew up weak. Whenever a cold wind blew, their branches trembled. Adversity(逆境) seemed to benefit Doctor Gibb’s trees in ways comfort and ease never could.

Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I often pray that their lives will be easy. But lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change my prayer. I know my children are going to meet with hardship. There’s always a cold wind blowing somewhere. What we need to do is to pray for deep roots, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be torn apart.

Germans have a word “wanderlust”, which translated into English would be the desire to wander. Nowadays the opportunity to travel is endless. Thanks to cheap air tickets, travelling all over the world is very accessible and sometimes it’s even cheaper to fly out of the country than to travel within your own．

I have always had this feeling of wanderlust. As a young girl it started from me wanting to explore my local woods at the back of my garden and as I have grown, so has my sense of adventure. And I found my local woods being replaced with the Brazil wetland, Pantanal, where I went last summer in search of jaguars, snakes and crocodiles.

The thing with travelling is always different. Even if you went to the same country, to the same town and stayed in the exact same house, it would be a completely different experience. The people you meet will be different, and they will tell you their own travelling stories; stories of holiday romances, holiday horrors and stories that appear so suspect that you can barely believe them until something ridiculous happens to you and you find yourself becoming one of those people telling your tales. Or maybe the difference is yourself.

When you travel you are forced to be in harmony with a new culture. Whether it’s eating guinea pig, or staying with a family, where neither of you speak a common language and you have to communicate through hand movements and smiles, the experience gives me itchy feet to do it all again. And although wanderlust is originally a German word, the English idiom reflects a similar idea. Someone with that needs to leave or travel. This desire to explore is found not only in language but in us．

I had the special right to teach a Sunday school class at my church. We talked about the importance of setting goals. I asked the children to explain what they could do when frustration sets in. We talked about reaching for the stars and pushing through when the going gets tough. Some goals are easy to reach while others remain a challenge.

Twelve-year-old Marcus explained that we should think about how far we have come when a goal is hard to reach. He may be only twelve, but he has gained the knowledge of the ages at a young age. We then entered into a discussion about how we can help one another. Ask proper questions and children will amaze you with the depth of their knowledge and experience.

Dr. Wayne Dyer authored several books for children. I used one of his books as a key point of discussion for the class. We picked out key words that could be introduced to children and to teens. The words were goals, determination, devotion and perseverance. Class activities centered around these words that would produce hope and success in their lives.

Our culture does little to encourage these traits. Children are fascinated by electronics, digital devices, and electronic means of communication which do not encourage the development of delayed gratification. It was heartening to be able to talk about these traits in a Sunday school situation. At age seventy-three, I became the student and they were the teachers. What a joy!

It gives me a lot of pleasure to help young people push through difficulties on their way of gaining knowledge. These are skills that will help them find success and hope. Young people are our future. It pays to invest in them.