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.