“Poverty can be a prison”
“A mile in his shoes”
“Home sweet home…”
“Looking into the future”
“Caught Looking”
“Innocent Curb”
“Difficult Streets”
“Hope found in a smile”
“Courage”
“Not what is wrong, but rather, what is right.”
“Now it’s personal”
“Worship”
You can see the rest of the photos from the trip on Facebook.
It is so quiet this morning.
I can’t hear the birds singing, nor are there any sounds of people stumbling around getting ready for their day. I listen for the sounds of breakfast being prepared, but the only sound that reaches my straining ears is the steady ticking of my watch. I finally hear the sound of water rushing in the shower, but it is only because I have stumbled into it myself. It is warm and there is no pressure to finish quickly. When I decide I am clean enough, the silence drips down around me again like the last few drops of water falling from my body. It is cold and I am alone.
I seek out the people I have spent the past 12960 minutes with, but they are nowhere to be found. I check Facebook for signs of life, seeking the community I have lost. I recognize their faces, but I don’t hear their laughter, and I don’t feel the warmth of their smiles. I do not ask them how they slept, or ask about the plan for the day. We do not pray together before we start our tasks, and our lives are no longer intimately dependent on each other.
In Nicaragua we are blessed with inescapable community for a short time, and it is messy, it is hard, and it is wonderful. Paul is no fool when he writes of the church as though it were a body. In Nicaragua we find that we are disparate parts of one body, united in purpose, but each unique in function.
In North America, I find we are not disparate, but rather, distant. It is as if we have been cut into twelve pieces and dispersed to the twelve tribes of Israel to teach them a lesson. The lesson I draw from this painful hewing of limbs and ears and eyes is that God loves community.
I believe God meant for his people to live in community, each sharing with each as they have need. In Nicaragua it is impossible to avoid this, as Dayspring and Tabernaculo de Agua Viva depend on one another for strength and resources. Sponsored students find provision in the generosity of their sponsors, and return encouragement and love to fill hearts to a new fullness never before imagined. Community lives around us in Nicaragua because it must! There is no other way to cope with the absolute poverty we are swallowed by everyday.
Our Nicaraguan community!
This weekend, I may see many of the team again, but we will all be clean, fresh, with styled hair and clothes that do not smell like sweat and we will find that our faces will be slightly less familiar to each other. We will reminisce about our time in Nicaragua, and say how much we miss the people and the place, but I think that under all of the memories and jokes, will lie a strong longing for the community that is no more.
And this must be, because to live in this past would be to ignore the body that aches to be drawn together more closely around us here in Indiana. The body of Christ here must be willing to be drawn even more closely together by God. Each part finding its own place and purpose in Gods time, and depending on the others for the fulfillment of needs outside of itself. Community is not simply living in proximity with each other, but rather, living in proximity to a mission and being drawn to its completion. If we do not unite around the mission God has placed before us where we are, living in proximity is not enough to keep a community together.
If you meet one of the twenty people who just returned from Nicaragua this week…do not judge them too harshly for their distance or inability to engage with the task at hand. They have been severed from the body they grew to love. Gently draw us back in and grant us time to heal as we rejoin the body Christ has for us here.
When we stand together against the waves of life…can anything separate us?
As always I welcome your thoughts and discussion. Comments will be reviewed and approved as quickly as possible. Add your voice to the conversation!
As we climb aboard the dilapidated yellow school bus after an exhausting day and start the long drive home, rain begins falling, as if to gently remind us of the last 8 hours.
The steady rain must be swelling the puddles and rivulets we jumped over today, as we delivered a small token of food to our friends here in Nicaragua. Like the rain that falls now, the small amount of oil, rice, and beans may dry up again before we leave for home. As the rain drips down the sides of our bus and slips between the rusted metal sheets that are the roofs of too many homes here, it brings needed relief and nourishes the ground, the animals, and the people. We hope that our own small rain of provisions and blessings will do the same for the people we love here, the people we came here to serve.
The unexpected rain is like the arrival of the Holy Spirit, who prayed with us and through us on behalf of and with our Nicaraguan friends. It calms and restores, bringing hope where there once was none, and washing away the dirt of past sins. As each drop mingles into a larger whole, we are reminded of those we met today, and our mingled futures, no longer able to be separated into its original state. Forever, parts of us will be together, changed, made more full by our time in prayer with the Father who loves us all. While our lips spoke many languages, and our ears could not understand each other, our hearts knew the others intent, and petitioned God for the same things.
The cooling rain washes away the memory of the intense heat and humidity that we swam through in the small church we spent our day in. Nicaraguans and North Americans sweat, laughed, and played together as we shared about our fears and our God who is larger than the sum of all our insecurity. Drops of little kids flooded the floor around our feet, photos were taken as though they were flashes of lightning and the fluorescent lamps flickered to life as our team completed repairs to a modified electrical system.
We pray that like the rain, that continues for a while, and then is done, our Nicaraguan friends will soon find the storm of poverty that surrounds them has finished, and they will be able to contentedly share their new found abundance with the less fortunate around them. Though the rain continues for the night, the sun must break through eventually, bringing with it a many colored reminder of God’s promises to us, his people.
The rain falls on the righteous and the evil, the strong and the weak, the deserving and the spoiled. May the rain find us deserving, generous, and firm in doing God’s will.
In Nicaragua last year, a few of our team got the opportunity to meet children that they are sponsoring through NRN, the organization we serve through while we are there. They went to pick up their kids, and with Nicaraguans and Hoosiers jammed into the van, they sped off towards the exotic destination that would provide the backdrop for their meeting and merriment. As they rattled and bumped through the streets, Ginny shared that many of the people they were meeting that day would never travel more than a few miles from home in their entire life. Only the ones who were smart, had good jobs, finished high school, or were lucky and tenacious enough would be able to travel outside of the community they were born in.
With that conversation as the backdrop the van reached it’s destination for the day.
McDonalds.
Not just any McDonalds however…a McDonalds less than 3 miles away from their home.
A McDonalds that these children, who were 5 and 12, had NEVER been to in their entire life.
The sponsored students spent just a short time with my friends from Indiana, eating, playing, and talking, The chased each other through tubes in the playhouse, and drank their ketchup. They engaged in small talk across the table and shared with their sponsors what they wanted to do when they grew up. My friends laughed, cried, took pictures and bought them ice cream.
For those moments they were eating at the table of rich men. They were playing in the home of rich men. They had in that moment, perhaps for the first time, more than they needed. And they were less than 3 miles from the place they live everyday. They were visitors in a world they had never known and were not a part of, and the time came for them to go back home.
My friends watched as their sponsored students walked the distance home that day, rushing to share the last bits of melting ice cream, the last bits of a melting dream, with their family.
They did not return alone however, and as my friends stand beside them financially, we hope that one day, they are no longer strangers to the world of enough. We hope that they get to grow up, have careers, and opportunities. With education, sponsorship and a lot of love, we believe they will no longer have to rent a space in the tenements of want, but own a home in the world of enough.
We want them to feel at home in the world of enough. We seek to close the distance between need and plenty.
As I prepare to travel the roughly 3000 miles to Nicaragua again, the distance and the juxtaposition of our positions is not lost on me. The opportunities and blessings I have been given, freely and without obligation, overwhelm me. Who am I that I am given the privilege to share with them just a small part of my communities excess? Why do I have an education, a safe place to sleep, access to far more McDonalds then I should ever need when they have so little? How am I able to reach over oceans and nations when they can barely reach 3 miles?
I do not take the distance lightly. I just wanted you to know.
There are plenty of reasons for me to want to go back, I chose a few and put them together below for your enjoyment. Continue reading