If you could choose between having a cell phone, and having a toilet in or near your home, which would you choose? I think I could live without the cell phone.

From Yahoo News/Associated Press: India: Land of many cell phones, fewer toilets.

MUMBAI, India – The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally.

And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.

The article describes the extreme poverty in the slums of Mumbai. Many don’t have the basics of life: adequate food, clean water, sanitation, health care.

But they have cell phones. They are dependent on an undependable government for the basics of life, so live in destitution. But cell phones are cheap and available.

Pray. Be thankful for what you have. Give generously.

Grace and Peace