It´s weird. We are living in our tents on the concrete floor of a church here in the village of El Tabacal. People are telling us we are roughing it. We feel like we´re roughing it. We sometimes cook our food over a fire, we shower under a tap filled with cold mountain water with people watching us, we go to the bathroom in a squattie outhouse with 3 makeshift walls (one open for all to see), etc.
We get knocks on the door almost every evening with the locals asking us for food so they can eat dinner, sugar for the children´s coffee (it´s very typical for infants & children to only have tortilla´s & coffee for meals). I get confused as I see the cell phones everyone carries and I feel like I´m being used. I feel like they are asking for food because we are foreigners. I see crops of corn, I see chickens, pigs, etc. & cell phones and I figure they are doing okay. What I find out is, less than 10 years ago, all of the people here lived in the woods or jungle and most lost homes due to mud slides. The people would go for a month at a time without eating anything! Babies would die, people were sick. The government gave them this land where they have been given lots, and will eventually need to pay the government back. The organization, Food For The Poor, gave them a Tilapia farm so that they can have food and a business that will last. The only school is an old chicken coop with desks in it. There is one teacher (aged 21) for 40 students of all different ages (25 that attend regularly).
It´s hard. It´s sad. And even though I´m here to help…the best help I can offer them is to pray. Pray for the Lord´s healing & provision in their lives. They are amazing people…if you ever get a chance to live in a Guatemalan village….do it!
