Corn, Corn, Corn

Corn being dried for next year's crop.

     When people ask me what they can pray for on my behalf, I almost always give the same answer: wisdom and discernment.  God doesn't seem to be in the habit of asking us to do easy things, and without His help, Loving InDeed would be a mess.   So I thank the many people back home who are praying specifically for wisdom for me.  I thought of you all the other day when God gave me the solution to a sticky situation.  

      After a food delivery last week, Juliana, one of the LI moms, asked me (through my assistant because she speaks very little Spanish) if she could borrow some money.  That is not something I ever do for the widows in the program.  If I opened that door, I could never shut it again.  I asked her what the money was for, and she said she'd run out of corn.  Corn here is of infinite importance; it's their staple food.  Even though tortillas have the nutritional value of a cardboard box, they do fill you up.  When you're hungry all the time, you need all the carbs you can get.  When my rural Guatemalan friends say, "We're out of corn" what they're really saying is, "We expect to be dead soon." This is how seriously they take the situation. This particular woman has 6 kids, all of them underweight except the baby who is still nursing. I did not want them to be without corn, but I knew I absolutely could not set the precedent of giving her money.  I also knew that if I delivered a sack of corn to her house, the following week everyone would be "out of corn." Like any other small community, there is no such thing as private business in Tuipic. So I prayed, and I reminded myself that bunches of you were praying for wisdom for me too. I thought about the story of Solomon in the Bible---you know the one where the two women were each claiming to be the mother of an infant, so Solomon decided to cut the baby in half, knowing that the real mother would step forward and offer to give her baby to the other woman before allowing it to be cut in half.  I was hoping God would give me such a creative solution.  And He did!

Juliana's oldest daughter, Yenifer, wants
desperately to get off this giant pile of dirt but
is losing her skirt with every step.  Such a
little dolly!  I had to go rescue her.

     God gave me the idea to buy two 100 pound sacks of corn and have a drawing.  Each winner would get one sack of corn delivered to their home.  I intended to make sure that Juliana was one of the winners.  I know what you're thinking--rigging a drawing is dishonest!  But you can't tell me that Solomon was actually going to cut that baby in half either, so I don't feel too terrible about it.  As it turns out, I actually DID draw Juliana's name.  I wish I'd had the camera ready to capture the look on her face when I called her name!  See, what I didn't know was that after telling her no the previous week, my sweet assistant told her that she didn't need to look around for someone else to borrow money from--that what she needed to do was talk to God about it and watch Him provide. (That was also pretty convicting for me because I hadn't thought to pray with Juliana about this.)  So Juliana decided not to ask other people for money and just pray instead. God answered her prayer by providing a job for her son.  Normally people in rural areas earn Q50 (about $6.50) for full day of hard physical labor. (Yes, for a FULL DAY...not an hour.) Women and kids are paid less.  Juliana's son worked less than a full day and was paid Q100 on the spot, which is almost enough to buy a sack of corn.  And then Juliana won corn in the drawing!  It couldn't have worked out more beautifully, and Juliana's joy radiated from her face. God says He is the Father of orphans and the Defender of Widows. It's amazing to witness His special care for the most vulnerable among us firsthand. 

**Bonus points for the person who can tell me what movie the title of this blog comes from!