Parental advisory: This blog contains drug references!!!
So today we went to a village we call 'the rock village' where they chip away at a huge mountain of rock which they then sell to make money to support themselves. So some of us were playing with the kids, painting their nails, playing soccer, singing songs, ect. Some were talking to the adults who live there, but I was in where they prepare lunch talking to the ones preparing it and just living life with them. I had one of the little kids in my lap playing a game. As I casually look around, I look to my right and I see this guy cutting something up with a hatchet on a cutting board. I thought it was just herbs for the soup they were making….wrong!! I then see a packet of homemade cigarettes next to him as well. So I ask our translator what he is doing, she roles her eyes and says that it is marijuana that he is going to smoke. So I minded my own business while he did his thing and played with the little boy. Then this guy pulls out a home made bong!!! Made out of bamboo that he configured into a working bong.
Side note: I have NEVER smoked anything in my life and never will!!! Please don't get the wrong impression, but I have lived a very different life then I do now and have been around drugs and know what is going on.
So this guy starts taking hits from his bong, right in front of me, this little kid, his wife, in the kitchen in front of a few women…. I was speechless. He did offer some to me if I wanted to join him……I politely declined. So after that ordeal was over I had my translator ask him a few questions.
I asked him why he smoked and he said that 'It gave him power, strength and energy to work all day.'
So I told him that God gives me my strength and all the energy I need and he can have that too.
Given he was high and I found out later he was drunk, his answers and conversation wasn't the greatest.
But after talking to a few people and thinking about it, smoking and drinking is a way for them to forget about their lives and the pain they feel. That they are working their butts off all day just to survive!! Not make and save money, but to just put food on the table. I won't go into all that because it tears my heart apart when I do, but I felt so sad to know that this is what he has to do to be the slightest bit happy. Come to find out, he apparently accepted the Lord a while back and had gotten baptized. But we are all humans and make mistakes. We had to go so I couldn't talk more to him about what he is doing and how if he became closer to the Lord he wouldn't have to do this to himself anymore. He can rely on the Lord for his strength through the day and he can be happy and thankful for his life.
So that was my day at the village. I am excited to go back and talk to that man more about what he is doing and see if I can say anything to help him become closer to the Lord so he can improve on his situation, but all I can do right now is pray.
Just a quick funny thing….. I wonder how many hits this is going to get online?!
