My team and I arrived in Valle de Angeles, Honduras a couple days ago. Thank you to everyone who prayed for safe travels! We are excited about working with David and Scarleth Jones and their ministry, Hope at Hand during the month of March. Meanwhile, here are some thoughts from a volcano hike in Guatemala….
Walter is one of those humans who you just want to be around. He has a soft demeanor and a gentle voice. He's the kind of tour guide who speaks his Spanish slowly and clearly and doesn't mind repeating himself or stopping for breaks every 100 meters. As we were hiking down the Volcan I asked Walter a question, "Nunca cansas de estar aca en el Volcan como un guia?" I was just wondering if he ever gets tired of leading people up and down the volcano. It's the same view every day. The same kind of people pay to hike it. The same kind of tourists get halfway up and need a "taxi" which is secret code for a saddleless horse back ride (No judgement to those who choose the taxi life, I highly considered it at more than one turn on our journey straight up the side of the volcano). What Walter replied to my question stopped me in my volcanic ash filled shoes right on the path. "El camino nunca pierde su sabor." If you speak Spanish it makes this response a bit richer. It just doesn't translate as beautifully as I would like. That happens to me often these days, but alas here is my attempt. Walter told me that the path never loses its flavor. Essentially every day is just as colorful, just as breathtaking, just as adventure filled as the day before. Walter doesn't care that he takes similar looking people up the same volcano telling them the same story, teaching them the same words every day. Every day is full of flavor, it's full of life.
"El camino nunca pierde su sabor" functions as a pretty good World Race motto, perhaps even life mantra. But for the sake of the Race, it's easy for things to lose their flavor. Quite literally the rice and beans we eat on the daily, the supposed 10 hour bus rides that arrive at their destination 20 hours later, the introductions followed all too quickly with goodbyes, sadly even hugging the orphan and praying with the widow, that thing that one teammate does, it all becomes bland, dry, flavorless.
Walter reminded me what it means to savor the flavor of each day. Each day has a chocobanano somewhere, but you have to walk down to the Sarita all the way on the other side of the park to enjoy it. A flavorful life is an intentional one. Even the most tasty looking 11 country, 11 month ministry journey can become no more than a bland piece of rice, if you let it.
So today I'm choosing to eat the chocobanano slowly, just like I did yesterday. And I think today it might even taste better, because trophy teammate Carlie walked to the Sarita on the other side of the park, purchased said chocobanano, and brought it all the way back to our hillside home and put in in my hand. What a rich, flavorful day it has been. Thank you, Jesus for tastebuds.
