Happy Friday! Here are five good news stories from this week to start your weekend off right.
Terry Crews Spoke Out Against Porn
This week, Terry Crews—the former NFL player, Brooklyn Nine-Nine star and muscle man in basically every mid-2000s movie—posted several videos opening up about his struggle with porn addiction. Crews’ porn addiction forced him into rehab and nearly led to the end of his marriage, and now he’s speaking out against porn use.
My problem with pornography is that it changes the way you think about people,” he says in one video. “People become objects. People become body parts. And things to be used, rather than people to be loved. You start to change the way you see people. You start to use people.” In another video, he calls porn “an intimacy killer and urges people not to accept “any pornography in your life.”
By posting the videos, Crews said he hopes to help people who find themselves in the midst of struggling with porn addiction. He’s made it his mission to speak out and combat the idea that porn is harmless. He encourages his followers to not suffer through porn addiction alone: “By not telling people, it becomes more powerful. But, when you tell and when you put it out there in the open … it loses its power.” In addition to being amazingly straightforward on a subject that could be easily considered a scandal, Crews has cracked open a subject that seems often to go under the radar, especially in an highly sexualized place like Hollywood.
A Christian Satellite TV Channel Has Become an Outlet for Education and Hope for Refugee Kids
Refugee families living in camps in Middle Eastern countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey often don’t have access to education for their kids. However, despite the often meager surroundings, most families have a TV and satellite dish, and one satellite TV channel has decided to use its platform to help bridge the education gap. The Arabic language Christian satellite television channel SAT-7 has been teaching core curriculum subjects, such as Arabic, English and Math, to 450,000 refugee children younger than 12. But SAT-7 is doing a lot more than just teaching kids school subjects. Rita El Mounayer, the chief channels and communications officer at SAT-7, says they are providing children and families with hope for the future amid the humanitarian crisis. El Mounayer, who grew up during Lebanon’s civil war, told the Christian Post:
It’s a catastrophe, and I don’t think there’s a solution coming in the next few years. There are millions of refugees who have lost hope with their governments, lost hope with their countries, with their neighbor, and even lost hope with God. The majority of the people in this conflict are innocent. These people are the poorest of the poor in their home countries. They come to Lebanon or Jordan or Turkey, and they cannot afford to rent an apartment, so they end up in camps.
A Pastor Saved a Family Whose House Caught Fire
Early Wednesday morning, Joey Hufstedler, a pastor at a church in western Tennessee, was on his way to work when he spotted a fire in a neighbor’s house. The Smith family was still asleep, unaware of the flames creeping up the side of their house. Hufstedler banged on the door, prepared to knock it down if he had to, and alerted the family just in time for them to safely get out of the house before the fire swept through. They’re crediting Hufstedler with saving their lives.
“If he had driven by a little later, we would have never made it out,” Kevin Smith told a local news station. “He’s the true hero.”
Simon Cowell Offered to Help Pay for a Kid’s Cancer Treatment
X-Factor judge and former American Idol meany Simon Cowell was so moved by the story of Kian Musgrove that he decided to chip in to help the 3-year-old battle cancer. Kian is fighting neuroblastoma for the second time in his young life, and he needs treatment from a specialist in New York City. Kian and his mother, Kat, live in England, and have been fundraising to get the money for flights to the U.S. and treatment. When Cowell saw the fundraising page, he called Kat and offered to donate £25,000 toward Kian’s treatment. “I’m still trying to get my head around it all,” Kat told Chronicle Live. “He was so nice and kind and just said he wanted to do something to help.”
This 5-Year-Old Afghan Boy Got a Signed Soccer Jersey from His Hero, Lionel Messi
Murtaza Ahmadi loves soccer star Lionel Messi. The 5-year-old soccer fan lives with his poor farming family in Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province, and he loves Messi so much that his older brother recently made him a makeshift Messi jersey out of plastic bags. A heartwarming photo of Ahmadi in the jersey went viral, capturing the attention of the world, and apparently, of his hero. According to BBC, Ahmadi received the real thing in the mail from none other than Messi himself. In a Facebook post on Thursday, UNICEF Afghanistan wrote that Ahmadi “realized one of his biggest dreams” when he received the jersey and an autographed soccer ball from Messi, who is a five-time winner of the FIFA Ballon d’Or and a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. “I love Messi, and my shirt says Messi loves me,” the 5-year-old said. Aww.
