Yesterday was one of those days where I said what I said at the beginning of my journey: “Man… how did I end up here?”
After driving for more than two hours, we ended up among a small village of concrete shacks. There were no separating walls, and their roofs were composed of carefully constructed garbage sacks. There was a family of five (a worried mother, a breastfeeding daughter, and three toddlers) greeting us at the place where the door should go.
I asked myself, “I wonder where their beds are…”
Packing foam arranged in the shape of mattresses stared at me in response.
Mark (my great bearded team leader) and I arrived with our two guides: One man in his fifties who had been in this village as a missionary all his life. The other was his son, who had also had a similar calling. When Mark and I approached, the mother in the house approached us and offered us something to drink.
I felt conflicted: I didn’t want to take the only “drink” that she had in the house, but at the same time, I didn’t want to rob her of doing something good for somebody. The punch tasted like a happy meal: just tasty enough to make you forget for a second that you’re in a place you know isn’t good for you.
Like the many times in I’ve worked with the poor, when you come to destitution, all you can think is: “Dang…”
We sat down and our guides quickly introduced us. Then, they begin to talk to a teenager in the back. I had not seen him, for he was changing babies. After handing one to back to a woman, the missionaries begin to converse in speedy Spanish as we take our seats on the cracked cement. They talk about being missionaries, about giving all they have, about living for Christ. Part of me looked around and said: “Wait… He is…”
Here is a guy that is being a servant to his family. Later, I found out he want to school for business, trying to start up a company in El Salvador. He was trying to bring life to his family while pursuing education and working.
As the missionaries talked, I could see the hope in their eyes. They were looks of conviction, looks of desperation, looks of love. I remember them telling their stories. How God had saved their families from sickness, brought them up as spearheads for the church in El Salvador… they had given up everything because of their convictions.
As I stood between the two, I saw three men, giving all they had, and a God who was raising us up, in love.
The only thought that came out of my mind was, “This is so much bigger than my own perspective…”
