As I head from one country to another, I want to leave you all with a story from my time in Honduras:
My very first Saturday in Honduras I went to this parking lot with Tony, owner of Zion’s Gate, and my team to hang out with the street kids of La Kennedy for the evening. We played games, made small talk in our broken spanglish, and laughed at each other a lot. They sat next to us sniffing thinner while we looked past the loneliness in their eyes to pour love into their lives. At some point in the night I met a man named.. for the sake of his privacy, we’ll just call him Jack. Right before I met him, I overheard him tell a guy from our group that he lived in the dumps because it was easier than getting a job. For some reason, this really broke my heart. I thought to myself, “you have no dreams? No desire to know your purpose in life? You want to live and die in the garbage that surrounds you?”
A week later, I looked out the window while eating lunch to see Jack walking onto Zion’s Gate with Tony’s wife, Nidia. I jumped up to greet him, excited for the surprise of hugging a friend I thought I’d never see again. As I approached them, Nidia said, “Oh there she is!” I looked at them confused as Jack explained that he had come looking for me. He came the 20 minute drive from La Kennedy to Zion’s Gate to give me a parting gift, a friendship bracelet. He thanked me for my friendship and told me no one has ever told him to dream before. That no one has ever believed in him enough to think that if he did dream he could actually one day live out those dreams.
So what’s Jack’s real dream? Jack hopes to build and open a boys home someday for kids like him. Orphans. Fatherless sons of the fatherless nation.
Maybe it’ll happen and He’ll become a father to the fatherless nation of Honduras. Maybe it won’t. Either way, I don’t think the point is the fulfillment of the dream, I think the beauty in it is his courage to dream at all. A dream never dreamt can’t come true.
