Magical Monday/8

Mondays are full of madness! Mondays for most people brings out the colour blue (Monday Blues). But like so many things, is it just a figment of our imagination? So if we change our attitute, is it possible to change Manic Monday into Magic Monday? What if we feed it into our system that Monday will be a grand day? It will be a day when our energy levels will be the higest because we will be refreshed after a break and that we will start a new week with zest and high spirits! What if we tell ourselves at the start of the week that this week we will be unstoppable, be a powerhouse and race ahead,  could it change things? I believe it could :)

And believing is the first step towards changing things for good !! :)

This is my eighth post in the Magical Monday series of inspirational stories aimed at motivating us to bring out our best on the first day of the week! The story today is of a lady with a heart of gold, a pure spirit who by many was considered nothing less then a reincarnation of God in human form. 

Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was a Roman Catholic nun who was born in Macedonia but worked most of her life for the underprivileged and needy in India.

Right in her early years she was fascinated by stories of the lives of missionaries and by age 12 had become convinced that she should commit herself to a religious life. She left her family at the age of 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto and never saw her family again.

She moved to India in 1929 and spent nearly 20 years teaching in a school in Calcutta, India. She was deeply moved by the poverty in the country and began her missionary work with the poor in 1948 where she worked for the destitute and starving. She also received basic medical training in the Holy Family Hospital. Her initial efforts were fraught with difficulties and self doubt as at the time she had no income and had to resort to begging for food and supplies.

Although through her initial years as a missionary she did contemplate giving up these efforts and return to her comfortable life as a teacher in the convent but she kept on working towards her goal putting aside these doubts and founded the Missionaries of Charity. It began as a small congregation with 13 members in 1950 and today it consists of over 4500 sisters active in 133 countries where they run hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children's and family counselling programmes; orphanages; and schools. 

In 1952, Mother Teresa opened the first Home for the Dying in space made available by the city of Calcutta , a hindu temple, where she gave medical attention to people who were brought in and gave them a right to die with dignity. 

By 1996, Mother Teresa was operating 517 missions in more than 100 countries. Over the years, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity grew from twelve to thousands serving the "poorest of the poor" in 450 centres around the world.

Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honours including the 1979 Noble Peace Prize. 

This lady with the purest of purest soul was an angel to many and served people selflessly, tending to them with her love and care.