As I looked out of the finca (the place where we’re staying this month in Los Guido, Costa Rica) towards the darkness that surrounded us (literally and figuratively) I couldn’t help but being reminded of Haiti. My last night in Haiti we were in Port Au Prince and I remember looking out of the children’s home at the lights shining along the side of the mountain and thinking, “This place is so broken, but yet God is so present.” Tonight, the lights appeared similarly to me. I could see the houses – excuse me, shacks – light up. Some were near to us, but you could see them all the way up the mountain side. And again it struck me. “This place is so broken, but yet God is so present.” Seeing the lights in the darkness is a different perspective than seeing the slums in the daytime. The slums seem bigger at night. It’s like you can tell how far they actually spread because the lights from the houses and the darkness of the night sky are so contrasted.
But that makes sense, because light and darkness always contrast each other. And these slums, they are full of darkness. I wish I could show you firsthand how dark these slums actually are, but I can’t take a picture. I was told that if I take my camera outside our gated area I’d get a knife in my ribcage over it. I can’t take my backpack because I’d take a knife in the shoulder as someone comes up behind me and slices the straps off of it in order to take it. I could tell you stories of how I see the people of Los Guido digging through trash looking for anything valuable, or stories of the children who come to the finca in order to get fed lunch and how that will probably be their only meal of the day, I could tell you that Costa Rica sees more money go towards underage prostitutes than it does to drugs, even though the drugs are easily found on the countertops of local stores. I could tell you stories of the incredible violence we know is taking place in the homes of the children we reach out to daily, or how the parents of young girls sell them into prostitution. I could tell you about the little girl who asked our host why Jesus doesn’t come home with her after church. I could tell you these things, but I still don’t think you could grasp how dark the slums of Los Guido really are.
So when I leave our gated area each day, I get to take with me my water bottle and the light of Christ. The good is, light always contrasts the darkness. Just like I knew it in Haiti, I can feel it here also. God is here. God is in our ministry contacts, Mark and Meg, God is in the children who show up to the finca to play with us daily, God is in my team, God was in the strangers who got off the bus with us when we got off at the wrong stop to make sure we got back to where we are staying safely, and I’m praying that God remains in my squad this month. I pray that just as those lights of the houses shine bright against the night sky of the slums, that we can be the light of Christ shining brightly, no matter what kind of darkness Satan throws our way this month.
