Warm, Dry, & Fed

This little sweetheart is Alicia.  She is somewhere between 3 and 4 years old; we don't know for sure because she has no birth certificate, and no one remembers the day she was born.  She lives at nearly 12,000 feet with her mom, dad, and 8 brothers and sisters.  I visited her house yesterday for the first time because her much older brother found me to ask for some medicine to help his twin sister.  The diagnosis was difficult to figure because she has special needs and is mostly non-verbal, and the rest of the family mostly speaks Mam, but I got the idea of what was wrong and hopefully gave them something that will help.  I have visited the homes of many, many people who live in poverty. It always bothers me, but I don't always tear up in the moment. It doesn't always keep me up at night.  The situation Alicia is growing up in will.  It did last night.  I laid in my warm bed wondering if she was warm.  If she was dry. If she had eaten something after I left.  When Jessie was little, I didn't worry too much about those things. We weren't rich.  Sometimes I had to give plasma for grocery money, but I had that option, and there WAS always food on our table.  I could pay the rent. She was warm and dry.  I might have worried about how to pay for day care or how to pay for a doctor if she got sick or how to pay for new shoes every year, but the basics--warm, dry, fed--I could cover that. I can't imagine the agony Alicia's mother, Eulalia, must feel to struggle with even those simple basics.  I've never met Eulalia's husband.  He is usually working in another town to try to make ends meet.  But when you earn $5 a day and have to pay for somewhere to sleep, something to eat, and transportation back home on occasion, that money doesn't go very far.  Let me show you why I worry for them.

Their view? It's simply stunning!  Americans would pay millions for this piece of property.  You can see from Antigua to Mexico from there.  Every sunrise and sunset is breath-taking.  But it is often below freezing up here.  The rain, wind, and hail can be fierce, and their house is made of old roofing laminas with a thatched roof.  

This single room serves as both their bedroom and kitchen.  They share three beds which are just boards slightly raised off the cold, dirt floor.  Each bed has 2 thin blankets. They have also piled all the clothes they own on top in an attempt to keep warm at night.

Eulalia makes a fire on the floor in the middle of the room because keeping a fire going outside with all that wind isn't possible. The thought of her twin 1 year old boys falling into the fire scares me. You have no idea how often it happens around here. Their thatched roof is covered in soot, and it's nearly impossible to breathe in there.  I know.  I tried.  

Their situation is dire.  I'm not worried about their kids' college funds here.  Warm, dry, fed.  That's all I want for this family for right now.  I'm doing everything I can to keep them fed, and I am falling far short.  I spend $1350 a month bringing food to the 40 families who live up here.  I can only do that much because of your generosity, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for that.  Truly.  I might not always want to go trucking clear out there (just being honest here), but every time I see them struggle to carry the heavy bags of food home, I am always glad I did. It is always worth the effort.  Always.  But to my knowledge, most of the other families are going home to sturdy adobe homes with roofs (except one other one).  I do know that they all cook on the dirt floor--not a single family has a vented wood stove. I asked. But at least they have a solid structure to sleep in.  Adobe is a great insulator.  They're a far cry from toasty warm, but they're not nearly as cold as this family who lives inside the equivalent of a tin can. We are making a plan to help this family with a more solid home, more thick blankets, better clothes, and hopefully a vented wood stove.  Would you like to help with this project?  I have known most of you for years and years now, and you have been unfailingly compassionate and generous, so I already know the answer to the question I just asked.  Because of that, I feel pretty confident that I can get started now.  I'm smiling even as I type it.  You guys are so great! I thank you in advance.  And Eulalia, Rufino, Yolanda, Mariano, Dora, Miriam, Maria, Fermin, the twin boys, and little Alicia will also thank you soon.  They have no idea how their world is about to change!  I'm excited!

We Shouldn't Kill People

So I'm in the jungle.  It's approximately 500 degrees outside.  It's rainy season here, which means things are one of two colors:  green or brown.  Lush greenery or thick mud--the kind that sucks the shoes right off your feet. The village I'm working in is teeny tiny, but they do, of course, have a big soccer field.  This is, after all, Guatemala. Half the soccer field is flooded, so I'm walking through mud puddles to try to find the spot where people can occasionally find cell service when I hear my name being screamed from the other side of the field. "Elena!  Elena!"  I wave back, but just then I think I see a flicker of a cell signal, so my attention is on my phone, not the two little boys on the other side of the field. (See two specks in the background of the photo above.)  Desperate to have my full attention, they scream, "No debemos matar!"  ("We shouldn't kill!)  And yes, that got my attention and made me smile.

Earlier that day, I had taught a Bible study for children under the thatched roof gazebo in my yard.  About 35 people showed up, ages 2-45. (Photo taken early on before everyone arrived.) I am fairly new to this village, but according to what I've been told, there are three churches here:  a catholic church that is steeped in tradition but does no actual Bible teaching, a corrupt Christian church whose pastor is only in it for the money because they get some kind of outside help, and another Christian church that is better than the other one but still not great.  My lesson for the children that day was on Moses and the ten commandments.  With 35 people in attendance, most of whom go to one of the three local churches, I assumed that most of them had at least heard of Moses and the ten commandments and could maybe even list a commandment or two.  I was wrong.  No one--not a SINGLE PERSON--had ever heard of Moses or any of the ten commandments.  I gave the most basic explanation of this story and each of the commandments that I could, and then the little kids were given a coloring sheet of Moses receiving the commandments, while the older ones were given paper and asked to write a commandment that they could remember and draw a picture to go with it.  (Yes, I was unprepared for 35 people.  I expected 5-7 so came prepared for 12.)  Every single person who wrote a commandment and drew a picture to go with it chose, "Thou shalt not kill."  I guess it was the simplest thing for them to wrap their heads around. 

So when I was out in the soggy soccer field and the boys screamed, "Thou shalt not kill!" they were letting me know that they'd learned something that day.  I knew I'd have to start with the basics there, but we're going back a little farther than I anticipated.  It's ok though. They learned that life is precious because it is the Lord who gives it, and that the law against murder actually comes from the Almighty, not some local, earthly authority. (Maybe it's not as simple a concept as I think since we can't seem to grasp it in more "advanced" countries either. Anyway, I digress...)  

This little jungle village has grabbed my heart.  I am so anxious to get to be the one to tell them all about Jesus and how wonderful He is! Later on that same day, I had another Bible study that was supposed to be for adults, but some of the same kids showed up.  Mostly 11-14 year old boys.  They were fascinated with my Bible, so rather than sit them down to formally teach, I let them play with my Bible and taught them in such a way that they didn't even realize we were having a Bible study. I showed them how the Bible is divided into books that are divided into chapters and verses.  I showed them the page that has all the books of the Bible with their page numbers on it so they can find stuff easily.  I let them find Philippians 4:13; they ended up in Colossians 4:3, but they got close! We backtracked to Philippians and memorized the verse together. I taught them what it really means.  I asked them if they'd like to earn their own Bibles, and they were SO EXCITED!  I promised to come back with a list of verses for them to memorize to win their very own Bible.  

I tell you all this to ask for your help.  I have the opportunity to buy some AV equipment to show Bible based moves in Kekchi, their native language.  The beauty of this equipment is that it requires no electricity (I can charge it at home), which is good because we don't have any there.  I also need funds to buy Bibles.   And funds to keep my SUV in good shape.  The trip there requires driving through a serious mudslide zone, through three rivers (through as in IN), and down a very rocky road that reeks havoc on the suspension.  With the unbearable heat, the lack of electricity, running water, and cell service, and the bugs (this was the site of the termite apocalypse of 2022), it is a sacrifice to work there, but one I am THRILLED to make. This jungle village does not need Loving InDeed as it usually operates.  They aren't rich, but they aren't starving either.  What they really need and actually WANT is Bible teaching, and I just cannot say no to that.  Help me?

When God Tells You To Buy a Lion

Two weeks ago I found myself going crazy last-minute shopping for little baby boy things.  I was about to become the caretaker of a newborn, and since my "baby" just turned 22 yesterday, I had nothing at home with which to care for a newborn.  I bought clothes, a car seat, a heater for my bedroom that sometimes gets into the upper 40's, a swing, bottles...the works.  I had quite a tab going and thought that I might better slow down, but who doesn't get excited about a newborn?  The sales lady was calculating the grand total, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lion.  He was one of those stuffed animals with freakishly long arms and velcro on his paws so that he can wrap around your neck and hug you, and if you push his belly, he roars.  God spoke to my heart and said, "Buy the lion." I grabbed it but was really thinking it was kind of a silly thing to buy a baby, when it dawned on me that the lion was for his 19 year old special needs mother, Mari. Part of me wondered if it might be too juvenile even though Mari has serious deficits, but I had heard God clearly, so I bought it.

Mari's story is a difficult one. Her mother has serious mental issues and was repeatedly raped by family members.  Mari and her sister Ana were the children that resulted from that abuse, and both have serious mental deficits. As things tend to go around here, those with special needs are considered sub-human and are used, abused, neglected, and discarded. This has happened to Mari and Ana many times. Their lives have been a horror story. These past 2 weeks have been particularly hard on Mari. At 8+ months pregnant after being raped by a cousin, family members were vying for her baby wanting to sell him to the highest bidder while others simply wanted to get rid of the "problem" and kill both her and the baby. Then she and her sister were kidnapped by another man and continuously raped for an entire week. Her only advocates were her tiny 80 year old grandmother and her late 60's physically handicapped uncle. I stepped in.  Getting in between angry family members, some of whom belong to one of the largest drug and human trafficking syndicates in Santa Barbara and others of whom are just plain evil has been one of the scariest things I've ever done here, but this is the job...not just MY job as a missionary, but OUR job as the church.  Want proof?

Psalm 82:3-4 "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute.  Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked." 

Psalm 31:8-9  "Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy." 

Proverbs 24:11-12  "Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling towards the slaughter. If you say, "But I didn't know," does not He who knows the heart perceive it?  Does not He who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will He not repay you according to what you did?"   

I don't think that God means that we are only to do these things so long as they don't inconvenience us or put us in any personal danger.  I think He intends for us to JUST DO IT. This past Sunday, Mari went into labor and I raced to her house to get to her before the narco relatives did.  Praise God, I was successful in that and brought her to a wonderful private hospital where baby boy was born via c-section. I stayed two sleepless nights to keep watch over Mari and take care of baby.  When they were discharged, we left super early to avoid the narcos who had angrily come to the hospital the day before in an attempt to grab the baby and run.  We went to the judge, and long story short, Mari and baby were taken from me and placed in a shelter. Because Mari trusts no one but me, I had to be the one to put her in the police truck that was going to take them away.  She didn't understand what was happening and cried and cried.  The next day when I visited her in the shelter, she pushed me away when I tried to hug her.  Getting her to trust me enough to let me touch her took me awhile, and that was ruined with the police truck.  She'll still smile at me, but from afar.  It kills me.

But back to the lion.  Mari has taken that thing EVERYWHERE.  She walked the hospital halls with it, slept with it, had it around her neck in the judge's chambers, and held him in the police truck.  When she feels especially sad, lonely, or upset, she squeezes his belly to make him roar.  I listened to the roar ALL SUNDAY NIGHT after the baby's birth. Just when I thought she was finally asleep,  ROAR, ROAR, ROAR.  It didn't upset me--I was already up keeping careful watch over baby--it made me smile that God knew this lost little girl would need some source of constant comfort...something she could keep with her when an actual person couldn't be there or when she was in unfamiliar surroundings...something she could hold and love in place of the baby she didn't want, didn't entirely realize was even hers, even though her little body instinctually knew she was supposed to be holding and loving something.  God knew.  And He told me to buy the lion.  God took such tender care of a little one who this world deems a nobody.  Now that she is in the shelter, upset and confused that she is separated from family, unable to talk to anyone because she speaks Mam, she just lugs her little lion all around, and it comforts her. The only thing holding me together right now is knowing she has something for comfort  and Someone Who sees her.  

So the next time God whispers something strange in your ear, just buy the lion.

Yes, I Am Aware That This Is Crazy

*Imagine you have been abandoned with two small boys, and you are forced to move back in with your parents along with your sisters and sisters in law who have also been abandoned by their husbands...19 of you in total in one small household.  Your alcoholic father is the only man in the house, and his example in front of your two small boys is appalling.  The fighting between your sisters and sisters in law is never-ending, and you're stuck because there's no where for you to go.

*Imagine you are an elderly widow with no children, and your husband sold your home before he died.  The new owner graciously has given you one tiny corner of the house he only uses to store junk so you have somewhere to sleep...in the dirt. You also have to squat on 87 year old knees to cook for yourself over an open fire on the ground.

*Imagine you are 19, have special needs, and are about to give birth to a baby because some pervert took advantage of your innocence. The only person in your corner is your 80's+ grandma. You cook on on open fire on the ground and sleep under a pile of old clothes on a dirt floor.

*Imagine you live in steep mountains and live in fear of being buried alive in a mudslide every single rainy season, but there's nowhere to escape to even temporarily when you need to.

Here's the thing:  I don't have to imagine any of these things.  These aren't random scenarios for me; they are people I know and care about and situations I have seen with my own eyes....and there are a WHOLE lot more I could tell you about but I'll spare you that.

The name of my ministry is Loving InDeed (Amando Con Hechos in Spanish).  The house on our property has its own name though:  Casa El Roi-- El Roi meaning "the God who sees me."  I have been feeling for a few months now that it's time to add another ministry to the mix:  Refugio El Roi.  

I know there's a pile  of reasons you think I'm nuts--I'm not even finished building Casa El Roi yet.  I just started the program for the elderly.  I'm trying to get my own home built.  I don't have the money. I haven't even bought land in Cochico yet, and I have a whole plan for what needs to be built up there.  But I know that this is supposed to happen, and it needs to happen soon.  The current property--Casa El Roi--will be full once I finish building the final ministry center for the widows.  There is no more room to build anything else other than a bathroom and maybe another small greenhouse. 

So here is my crazy-ridiculous plan that could only have come from the Lord because it feels too big for me.  (God never gives jobs that are doable apart from Him.)  I want to buy at least 12 more cuerdas of land in Santa Barbara.  A cuerda is 21 square meters.  Three cuerdas will be designated for a future clinic, lab, and pharmacy. Jessie may or may not choose to run that someday.  One cuerda will be set apart and fenced off for an Alcoholic's Anonymous group to meet.  I cannot personally take on that ministry since the vast majority of alcoholics in Santa Barbara are men, but I can make space for it and find a solid Christian man to run it. Alcoholism is one of the biggest reasons that Loving InDeed's widows are in the situations they're in in the first place.  The other eight cuerdas will be divided up into small homesteads, each with a small house and land that the tenant will have to cultivate with corn, beans, squash, and amaranth.  For some, it would be temporary housing until their crisis passes; for others, like the 19 year old special needs girl with a baby on the way, it might be more permanent. There are a whole lot of reasons that might not occur to most Americans why a person here would need a temporary place to stay: earthquake made your house unlivable, for instance. One house would be for a couple or a "house mother" who could keep an eye on things there in our little ready-made community. This is not an impulsive thing; it's been on my mind and in my prayers for months, and I can't shake it. Have you ever been asked what you'd do with a million dollars?  This is what I'd do.  In fact, I'm so sure that God is in it that it wouldn't surprise me in the least if someone read this and funded the whole thing all at once, and I don't even know how much money we're talking yet!  If that doesn't happen, know that from this point forward, some of your donations will be set apart to make this happen as soon as possible.  

So here's what you can do:  

1.  Pray God gives us the perfect piece of property with easy water access for a good price.  Decent neighbors this time would be really spectacular.

2.  Pray God sends me more construction workers and the money to pay them.  Rogelio's job is Casa El Roi. I'll need another Rogelio for Refugio El Roi, but I'm not sure one exists. Finding a man as trustworthy and skilled as Rogelio is a bigger miracle in my opinion than God sending me a million dollar check to cover the whole thing.

4.  Pray that the money comes in.  Ask God if you're supposed to be a part of that.  I have friends who struggle and send me $10 a month, which I appreciate so much because I know it really costs them.   I also have friends who are millionaires who send chunks at a time, and a whole lot of you in between. It is ALL appreciated.   No matter what you send, God multiplies it; no gift is to small to be significant.

5.  Pray God sends me reliable people to help me in this endeavor--I mean the running of it, not the building of it. I'm not terribly worried about this one, honestly.  God has a tendency to see I need help and just plunk the perfect person right in my lap.  He's done it lots of times before, I'm sure He won't abandon me now, but prayers about it certainly won't hurt.

5.  Since Refugio El Roi will not be built in 2 months, pray that I will know what to do with the situation with Mari's baby.  It is a hard, hard thing for which there seems to be no easy answer.  I'm praying about how much of the answer I am supposed to be.    

Is not this the fast that I choose... 
Is it not to share your bread 
with the hungry
    and bring the homeless 
into your house;
when you see the naked, 
to cover him,
    and not to hide yourself from 
your own flesh and blood?
Isaiah 58

A Plea to the Father of the Fatherless

Sometimes there are no easy answers; sometimes there are no answers at all.  This is one of those times.  I got a call from Rogelio this morning:  "The two girls disappeared a week ago; they just found them at the bottom of a ravine."  Of course, I assumed that the three of them were dead.  I say "three" because one of the girls is pregnant.  Rogelio tells me that he's going out there to meet with authorities and see what happened and will call me as soon as he knows something.  I pace by the phone and impatiently call him a million times anyway, "Any news yet?"  While I waited, the thought crossed my mind that if they were dead, at least they were with Jesus and no one could ever hurt them again. I was almost happy for them; their lives here are torturous. 

I have known these 2 girls (who we'll call Rosa and Mari to protect their privacy) for quite a while now.  They live with their well-into-her-80's grandmother who loves them and does the best she can and with their mother who has some serious special needs. Their mother was repeatedly raped as a young woman because that's just what happens to people with special needs here; her 2 girls are a result of that abuse and do not know their father.  Both also have special needs.  Mari, the youngest, is the sweetest girl; you never find her without a shy smile on her face. Her older sister is the same. 

In fact, couple years ago, a man beat Rosa's face with his fists, a rock, and a log because she accidentally wandered onto his property in search of firewood.  Jessie went with me to their house to try to patch her up.  Even in great pain with 2 black eyes and her mouth full of infection, she still tried to smile at us.

A few months ago, 15 year old Mari was raped by a family member and got pregnant.   They came to me for help and asked me to fix it...to fix generations of systemic poverty and abuse.  As much as I wanted to, there is no fix for that.  All I had to offer was pre-natals, extra food, baby supplies, and a hug, but each time I took a step closer to Mari, she smiled at me and took a giant step back.  She knows who I am, but the trust in people is gone.  There really isn't anything else I can do for them.  They refuse to go to the authorities and denounce the rapist for fear of retribution.  How are a grandma and 3 special needs women supposed to defend themselves?  We debated taking Mari to a doctor, but doctors are obligated to turn in reports when they have minors who are pregnant...investigations can be opened by very untrustworthy government entities...Mari, who only speaks Mam, could have been removed from the only home she'd ever known and moved to one of the government-run hellholes that are supposed to be safe houses for girls.  It didn't seem to be the right thing to do.  We were still pondering and praying when the girls disappeared. 

The good news is that the girls are not dead; they just happened to turn up at the bottom of a ravine.  We don't know if they were pushed (an attempt by the father to get rid of the baby?) or if they were kidnapped. Authorities think that an old man took them both to be his "wives," which means he wanted sex with two disabled girls whenever he wanted it without fear of punishment.  Sicko.  The only thing we do know for sure is that they've been gone for a week, and no one knows what happened to them during that time.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was nothing good. The authorities are involved now.  I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but in either case, it does remove me from the equation in that I will no longer have any input as to what happens to Mari. Maybe that's a good thing since I didn't have any answers anyway.  

I wish I could help you to understand how difficult it is to live in a land with zero justice for the poor, for the oppressed, for those with special needs, for women, for children...there just is no justice here AT ALL.  I don't remember the exact figure, but I do know that it's more than 95%....MORE THAN 95% of crimes in this country go unpunished.  People do what they want with impunity.  And it's sickening.  

Thankfully, this is not a permanent situation.  There is One who sees it all; it won't go unpunished forever.  " Oh Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more."  Please, God, have mercy.  Defend them.  Protect them.  Vindicate them.  May the baby be blessed with a different life than her mother, and her grandmother, and her great grandmother, and her great great grandmother have had.  

Ten Tidbits of Wisdom From Ten Years in Guatemala

1.  Never trust a llama. Their sweet little faces are deceiving.

2.  Always be prepared.  This means having these things on hand:  toilet paper, rubber boots, a change of clothes, toilet paper, snacks, a book, nausea medication, a phone charger, a strong pain pill, toilet paper, hidden cash, wasp spray for self-defense, one of those little knives with all the extra gadgets on it (what do you call those things?), and car fix-it stuff that you can sweet talk some random guy into using on your behalf if the need arises. Oh, and toilet paper.

3.  Never cut a couple pounds of hot peppers without gloves on and then go to the bathroom. 

4.  Experience is a wonderful thing.  It allows you to recognize a mistake when you've made it again. Refer back to #3.

5.  You'll miss a lot of great stuff in life if you always err on the side of caution (except when cutting hot peppers or kissing llamas).  

6.  Mentally prepare yourself to be able to hear crazy things, stuff down your natural reaction, and respond with kindness. This means learning to control your face and not shriek "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!" when people tell you that rubbing a bloody rat carcass on a rash will cure it or that you need to suck the air out of a woman's uterus with a big syringe after she gives birth because when the baby comes out, air goes back in, and her abdomen could explode.

7.  Street tacos are absolutely worth the fallout.  Pun definitely intended. 

8. You can live just fine without a lot of the stuff you think you need. 

9. "Emergencies" are rarely that. Unless it is literally going to kill you, it's not worth getting riled up about. 

10.  Sometimes a single letter makes all the difference in the world.  Try going into a tienda to ask for a comb (peine), leave out the "i", and see what happens. 

"Someone once told me that not even for a million dollars would they ever touch a leper.  I responded, 'Neither would I.  If it were a case of money, I would not even do it for two million.  On the other hand, I would do it gladly for the love of God."  --Mother Teresa

Michael Jackson and the Laxative

Before you read this, let me just assure you that I did not make any of it up. When you finish, I think you'll understand why I made that disclaimer. I am not going to share any names either because...well, just because.  

So apparently I am a hero. Why?  Because I saved a little girl from certain death.  Or at least that's what her parents think.  A couple of days ago I got a phone call from someone dear to me, and she was incredibly upset.  "Hermana....my daughter...two days ago....(sniff, sniff)….she....(sharp intake of breath)…"  and I prepared myself for the worst thinking she was about to tell me that her daughter had died in a freak accident.  "My little girl...she stopped pooping."  I was so relieved (no pun intended...ok, maybe a little) that I barely choked back the laughter that all this drama was over a constipated 10 year old girl.  I visited them later with a laxative, and I am happy to report that all is now right with the world.  This morning I visited them again, and the normally shy little girl came flying out to greet me, threw her little arms around me, and thanked me profusely for the magic pill.  Her mom and I chatted for a bit, and she tearfully told me how terrified she was that her daughter was dying and how grateful they all were that I went out to see them that day and gave them a pill.  She called me their hero, and again I refrained from laughing.  The fact is, the girl was fine 45 minutes after my first visit, and laxatives don't work that fast.  I really had nothing to do with it, but sometimes you just can't make people understand and it's just better to let things go.  

A few minutes later the same woman was telling me about her little sister who has vitiligo, the skin disease that causes loss of skin color in blotches. It's pretty noticeable in dark skinned people. She told me how they'd taken her to a place hours from here to see a specialist who gave her very specific instructions and several vials of expensive medicine.  I'm sure the "medicine" is as bogus as the instructions were:  lay in the sun for exactly 1 hour every day between 7 and 8 in the morning.  Then in the evening, take your own blood from your arm and reinject it into your bum.  As delicately as possible, I explained to my friend that there is no cure for vitiligo, and that the "specialist" was scamming them.  And then she looked me dead in the eye and said, "But what about Michael Jackson?"  

"Uh....what?  What about Michael Jackson?"

"Well,  he was born black but changed to be white. Can't we use that same medicine in the reverse to turn the white blotches back to dark skin?"

And try as I might to hold it in, I had to laugh.  Here I was in the middle of nowhere having a conversation with indigenous people about Michael Jackson.  I asked if they even knew who he was, and they admitted that they didn't.  Someone had just used him as an example of a person who changed his skin color.  It was tons of fun explaining that one, by the way.

The moral of this story is how important it is that we are there for each other. Interactions that may seem pretty insignificant to you may mean the world to someone else.  So smile...make that phone call...give that hug...share that laxative.  You just might become someone's hero.  

From Satanist to Pastor

"I was a Satanist.  They tried to lynch me."  That was how Ezequiel began his story.  I have to admit that he caught my attention with that; after all, he had been one of my quietest, sweetest seminary students.  I never would have guessed his background. 

We had arrived in his hometown of San Sebastian Coatan, a gorgeous little community way up in the Cuchumatanes Mountains where the clouds never completely lift.  He and his friend Luis, another one of my students, were giving Linda and me the grand tour of their village.  It didn't take long.  At the end, they took us up to see a Mayan altar at the very top of an enormous gorge.  Ezequiel and I wandered over to the edge and just stared at the expanse of rippled mountains in front of us.  After a while, he started talking. 

"I was a Satanist.  They tried to lynch me."  And he went on to tell me what a rough childhood he'd had.  His father had fought in Guatemala's Civil War, during the course of which he'd killed well over 20 people.  That takes a toll on a man.  He started drinking and taking his rage out on his wife and kids.  Ezequiel was so angry with his father and so desperate to protect his mother that he was willing to do anything.  He'd heard that Satan was powerful and wanted to see that power for himself, so he joined a small group of other young people, and together they set out to worship the devil.  One afternoon they went out to the pinnacle of a jagged, oval shaped boulder embedded in the side of the cliff to perform some rituals.  Ezequiel pointed out the spot to me as he talked. "One of my friends fell to his death right in front of me that day," he said. When the villagers heard what had happened, they blamed Ezequiel just because he had been there.  They grabbed him, tore his clothes, and beat him.  This is the beginning of the lynching process here.  Once the victim (or perpetrator as the case may be) has been beaten to the point that they are unable to fight back, they are doused with gasoline and burned alive.  Fortunately, the crowd did not get that far with Ezequiel.  The police showed up, pulled him from the middle of the mob, and took him to jail.  There is no such thing here as "innocent until proven guilty."  Ezequiel spent quite a bit of time incarcerated. 

"It was there that the devil marked me.  Want to see the scar?"  He lifted his shirt to reveal a series of slashes on his mid back.  "Satan came to me while I was sleeping and attacked me with claws like razors. It was then that I decided I didn't want anything more to do with Satan, and I gave my life to Christ."  When Ezequiel got out of jail, he immediately set out to learn more about God's Word.  He figured the best place to do that was in seminary, so he did some research and found Instituto Biblico Berea.  In order to get in, he needed to be a baptized believer with a letter of reference from a church, so he found a Christian church and asked the pastor to baptize him and give him a letter.  Thank God this pastor was a discerning man and took a chance on him! He was baptized immediately because that's the biblical model: "Get saved, get baptized," the pastor said, and then he wrote Ezequiel a letter of reference so he could apply.  I would love to meet that pastor someday and shake his hand!

This is how Ezequiel ended up in my classroom studying the book of Romans two weeks ago.  It gave me goosebumps when he looked at me and said, "It really made an impact on me when you taught us about the doctrine of imputation...how God not only wipes our slates clean, but He gives us all the righteousness of Christ.  What a gift!"  It still gives me shivers just to write it out. To me, the doctrine of imputation is one of the most amazing things in the whole Bible, and not only did I receive Christ's righteousness myself, but now I get to teach others about it!

After five years of study, Ezequiel will graduate next month.  I am so incredibly proud of how far he's come!  He is already pastoring in the jungle, six hours away from his hometown.  I asked him if he liked the heat of the jungle, especially after having grown up in a cool mountain climate. He answered, "I don't really like the heat, but I told God to use me however He sees fit.  I will go anywhere He sends me." 

Several of these Mayan altars have been erected in the area as a direct result what happened with Ezequiel and his friends that fateful day.  The villagers perform yearly rituals to the gods to ask for their blessing and protection from harm.  How very sad that they are literally asking the devil to protect them from the devil, and they don't even realize it. 

A Way Out

Imagine you are a 9 year old girl living with your paternal grandparents, your big sister, your dad, and your mom who is several months pregnant with your little brother.  Life is good.  You are happy.  One day your dad gets a bad headache and goes to lay down.  The headache never goes away, but your family has no money to take him to the doctor.  Less than 2 weeks later, he dies.  As is customary, you leave your paternal grandparent’s home to move in with your mom’s parents.  This other grandfather is not loving and kind; he is strict and mean, sometimes beating you over trivial things.  You try your best to stay out of his way; that’s easier since you’re in school.  Eventually you finish 6^th grade though and you know no one has the money for you to keep studying.  Then a miracle happens—a lady your mom knows offers to pay for you to finish school!  It’s a FULL scholarship—she’ll even give you money so you don’t have to skip lunch!  You are so happy you can’t contain your huge smile!  But it doesn’t take long for it to all fall apart. Grandpa says no.  “There’s no point in educating a girl,” he says.  “Your only job in life is to marry, have children, and take care of your family.  In the meantime, you can keep my cornfields clean.” You are angry.  It’s so unfair!  You plead with your mom to change his mind, but she’s just as stuck as you are.  Without grandpa’s help and home, you would have nowhere to go.  You cannot defy him, so you are forced to turn the scholarship down.  Life goes on. 

Then it gets worse.  

You leave to work the coffee plantations with your mom, earning next to nothing.  One day you and mom hop out of the bed of the pick-up you were riding in, thinking it was safe to do so, that the truck was in park.  It was not, and it rolls backwards and over your mom.  Fortunately, mom escapes with only some bruises and nightmares.  Everything goes back to normal, except that you now realize how close you came to losing your mother too.  What would become of you if that happened?  You feel trapped.  Held back by your grandfather. Scared of losing your only remaining parent.  You can see the writing on the wall.  You will end up chained to a life of poverty and servitude that you didn’t choose because that’s just what happens to girls where you live.  The anxiety wells up inside you; you have no release.  But anxiety will always find a way out, and it gets you during the night when you least expect it.  You grind your teeth SO hard while you sleep that you wake up swollen and with a pounding headache. You are unaware that you do this during the night, so you don’t understand why you feel so bad every morning.  Maybe you’ll die from this headache just like your father did.  How is it that your life just continues to get worse?  You are in prison, and there is no.   way.   out. 

I wish this was just a poorly written piece of sad fiction, but the fact of the matter is that this is Silvia’s life.  I recently took her to a neurologist thinking she had something horrible; her head was very visibly misshapen.  Bite hard while your hand is on your temple.  Feel that muscle move? Silvia has been biting and grinding her teeth so hard in the night that her muscle had grown just like your biceps would if you worked out every day.  Obviously we are relieved that the situation wasn’t life-threatening, but the only way I can see to fix this—really fix it—is to offer this family some hope by getting them out from underneath grandpa’s rule and into their own place. If that happened,  I could put Silvia in the scholarship program so she’d have some chance at a future.  Mom could work and NOT have to turn over every cent to her father.  They could begin to dig themselves out of this depressing hole they’ve been forced to live in.  

If you’d like to help me bless this family with a simple, one-room home that has actual beds and a vented stove, visit www.cten.org/lynnannmurphy and click on the donate button.  This type of home only takes a couple of weeks to build, and I’d love to be able to get it done before school starts up again in January.  Wanna help me?

Just Be There

Sunday did not turn out like I planned.  Bible in hand, I was just about to walk out the door for church when Olga called crying, panicky, and difficult to understand.  She said she'd fallen the day before and hurt her foot--that it was still bleeding despite her best efforts to stop it.  The last time Olga called me in a panic, her 5 year old son, Donis, was dying because his skull had been crushed by a falling boulder.  Although he's perfectly fine now, that is the kind of incident that tends to stick with you, so when she called me in a panic this time, I flew out the door, convinced that she was bleeding to death and her foot was dangling by a thread.  You can imagine my relief when I arrived and saw the injury.  I cleaned it, put some antibacterial cream on it, and pulled it closed with two band-aids while Donis sat next to me shining the light from my cell phone on it while I worked. I prayed for Olga, promised to come back to check on her another time,  and then visited a few more people since I'd missed church and was out there anyway.

When I got back home, Jessie asked me how it went so I showed her this picture.  "She called you all the way out there for that?"  Then she paused while she thought about it.  " I guess that's kind of nice.  She trusts you.  You're the Boo-Boo Fixer. The one who puts on the band-aids." And it was nice; I loved that Olga called me when she didn't know what to do.

Estela's son, Franklin. Photo added

just because he's so darn cute

I wasn't always that way.  In fact, I remember a time long ago when Estela called me screaming that her grandmother was dying and probably wouldn't even make it until I could get there but would I please come and HURRY because they needed me and, and, and...So I dropped what I was doing and drove out there like a maniac only to pull up to the house and see grandma outside playing with the grandkids. Estela explained that grandma had been in the latrine a long time with severe diarrhea and cramps, but that she was fine now. I ended up giving them a pill for parasites, bringing grandma back from the very brink of death. 🙄 Believe me, I did a LOT of eye rolling over that once I got back home.

Since that time though, God has been teaching me a lot about how to be a better ambassador. God the Father could have thought up any number of ways to save us, but He sent His Son to come right down and sit in our mess with us.  He modeled for us what it looks like to just be there. He is not an aloof God; He is our ever present help. This morning I was reading I Thessalonians 2 a bit and saw where Paul modeled the same thing.  He said, "we were gentle with you, like a nursing mother with her own children...we shared with you not only the gospel of God but our own selves." You can't share yourself if you're not there. This is "How To Be a Good Missionary 101" (or parent, friend, sibling, teacher...).

Share the gospel.

Be there.

I'm preaching to myself as I know I will spend a good bit of today waiting in a doctor's office with one of the widows who tends to annoy me.  I will be tempted to be there physically while I am mentally and emotionally a million miles away.  God, help me to not do that.  Help me to truly give her my focused attention and treat her as You would.  Help us all to learn to be more present for one another.

Behold

A while ago I wrote a blogpost about what it's like to be a missionary in a place where violence, corruption, and extreme poverty converge.  I tried to describe the constant heaviness that missionaries feel in dealing with all of that on a daily basis while trying to decide who to help, how to help, how long to help, how much to help...I'm going to copy part of the last paragraph here as context to the rest of this post. 

"It used to be that when I pondered the bigness of God I thought about creation…how He holds the whole universe in His hand and keeps it running. That's a pretty big Person, but I can almost wrap my head around that.  What I can't fathom these days is Someone SO big that He can hold all the hurts and all the trauma of everyone in the whole world.  Lately I see one pitiful street dog and am completely undone.  It's a rough place to be in since they're everywhere around here.  I saw one the other day while I was driving--the same day I met baby Kevin--and I got mad. The combination of emaciated, dying child and emaciated, dying dog on the same day just pushed me over the edge. I yelled at God in the car, “How am I supposed to carry all of this?  It’s too heavy!”  And He said, “I never asked you to.”   I have been thinking about that for a couple weeks now.  It rings in my head.  “I don’t have to carry this.  He’s not asking me to.”  But I’m not sure how to put it down. 

That post was hard for me to write so afterwards I went for a drive to clear my head.  Would you believe that I saw a dog get hit in front of me TWICE before I even made it out of the city?  Needless to say, the drive was not cathartic.  I was already feeling pretty fragile, and seeing the dog get killed was the straw that broke the camel's back.  I was angry...angry at the way animals are treated in this country...at the stupid driver in front of me who saw the dog and didn't even bother to slow down...at the whole world in general because we're just awful and do such rotten things to each other...at God because...wait, what?  

When I realized that I was angry at God, I decided to talk to Him about it.  "God, I think I'm mad at You.   I know You're perfectly just, and I have no right to be.  I don't want to be...but I am.  This world is just so AWFUL!  How long are You going to let this go on before You come back?  How can You stand it? Mom always says "this too shall pass,"  but I think she was wrong on this one.  This isn't passing; in fact, it's getting worse! The murders, kidnappings, rapes...the corruption, the poverty, the injustice...it just keeps coming and coming and coming.   It's endless, and it's in my face every single day.   It is definitely NOT 'passing.'"  It took me a while to finish my rant. I'm surprised that God did not interrupt me with lightning or fireballs from heaven.  I did eventually run out of steam and just sat there brooding quietly. 

The Bible says that one of the Holy Spirit's jobs is to bring the truth of Scripture to mind when we need to hear it.  That afternoon I really needed to hear it.   This is the scripture He brought to my mind: "The world IS passing away.  Behold, I am making all things new."  I knew the first sentence was I John 2:17 and the second part was from Revelation somewhere, but I was unsure exactly which chapter so I looked it up.  It's Revelation 21.  Here it is in context:  "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain:  for the former things are passed away.  And He who was seated on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new."   It was an eye-opening moment for me.  

Behold... LOOK UP...pay attention!  It is used 1298 times in the Bible.  I'm not sure how many of those times it is used in the imperative form--as a command--but I did read all the verses in the New Testament where Jesus himself used the word as a command.  These are some of the things we are told to behold.  They are comforting to me.  Maybe they will be to you too.  Behold:

We are not alone. 

"Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us." 

We are being cared for.  

"Behold the fowls of the air:  for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much better than they?"

Our enemy is fierce, but our Commander in Chief has our back.  

"And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:  but I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not."  

This is not the end.  

"Behold, I am making all things new."

He's coming for us.  

"Behold, I come quickly." 

The Way You Do The Things You Do

I have had quite a few people question a decision I recently made, and I would like to offer an explanation. I think it will help all of us be a bit more understanding of one another.  What comes to mind when you hear the word culture?  If you're like most, you think of differences in language, dress, food, and maybe holidays or festivals.  While those are certainly obvious differences, culture encompasses SO much more than that.  Culture also includes things like:

• gender roles
• the concepts of personal space, time, cleanliness, or modesty
• what is considered funny
• attitude towards authority, school, or foreigners
• gestures and body language
• ideals of beauty 
• manners and appropriate social behavior
• childbearing and child rearing practices
• assumptions/what goes without saying

...and a whole HOST of other things that would probably never flicker across your brainwaves unless you were plunked inside another culture and found yourself floundering to try to understand what is normal to everyone else. 

It is very easy for us to make judgments about other people without taking into consideration this thing called culture.   Those of us who live and work in a culture outside our own often feel judged by both cultures instead of feeling included by both. Living in Guatemala has changed the way I see the world.  What used to be normal behavior to me--American behavior--is not normal to me anymore.  That's not to say that all Guatemalan behavior is normal to me, because that isn't the case either. I've been here almost 9 years now, and there are still a lot of things I don't know or understand about Guatemalan culture.  So I'm somewhat stuck in the middle of the two different ways of thinking.  Out of that middle ground is where I made the decision to take Olivia to her new home the other day.  

Remember Olivia?  She is the 33 year old widow who was in Loving InDeed and recently left her 6 children with their paternal grandparents in order to marry a 20 year old "man" and move over 3 hours away with him.  Many of you questioned my judgment (some of you pretty forcefully) when I drove the new couple to their home, believing that to be a show of support on my part.  Before I mention how culture played a part in that decision, let me just say that Olivia knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was in total disagreement with her choice to leave her kids and remarry.  We had had many very frank discussions about it prior to the event.  So then why did I do it?  For one, I felt like it was important that someone on her side knew where she was in the case of emergency (one involving her or one involving her kids).  Google maps does not work in the mountains of Huehuetenango.  People who live off dirt roads in the mountains don't even have addresses.  If I hadn't taken them home, I would have had absolutely no idea how to ever find her again if the need arose.  But that's not the only reason.  There are cultural things that make Olivia's decision to leave her children a little more understandable and a little less horrible.  I am NOT saying her decision was the right one; I am only saying that I can understand how she made it.  

• In indigenous culture, it is not uncommon for a young widow to remarry and leave her kids to be raised by their grandparents.  Most men do not want to be burdened with caring for another man's children; most young women see marriage as the only way to protect themselves and get by in life.  Remember that this is a very macho culture.  Women are nothing more than property and have little to no rights in indigenous areas, regardless of what the "law" actually says.  If a woman is going to have any hope at all of having a roof over her head and food on the table, she either needs to be married or live at home with dad.  Dad was not an option for Olivia; she was orphaned at a very young age and has no memory at all of either of her parents.  So from her point of view, she needed to remarry.  (Also, from her point of view, I am her mother; she has told me so many, many times.  There is no circumstance in which I would be willing to turn my back on Jessie.  By the same token, there is no circumstance in which I will turn my back on Olivia.) 
• In indigenous culture, it is not uncommon for parents to be either extremely abusive or extremely permissive with their children. Every single one of the widows in the LI program leans towards permissiveness when it comes to their children. Olivia asked her children to move with her; they said no, so Olivia would never attempt to force them.  It just goes against the grain.  
• In indigenous culture, the men have all the power.  Since Olivia's father and husband are both dead, the next man in line to be her authority is her father in law.  He would not allow the kids to move with their mother even if they wanted to, so even though it is Olivia's legal right to take them, it would not even cross her mind to fight him on it.  

I am positive that there are a lot of other cultural factors at play here that I do not understand, but these three things alone, coupled with the fact that I love Olivia no matter what she does means that I was willing to put my own feelings about her decision aside and take her to her new home.  

This whole situation has made me realize that I need to be quicker to extend grace to people instead of being so quick to judge.  The fact is that none of us really knows how another person thinks, why they do what they do, how they were raised, or what difficulties they have faced that have shaped them into the person that they are.  Yes, there is biblical right and biblical wrong.  Some things are black or white.  But the older I get, the more I realize that a lot of life falls into the gray, and that I will rarely go wrong by extending grace. 

There Is A Name

What do people think of when they think of you?  I've been especially nostalgic these days and am missing my grandfather terribly. We called him Papa, and he was the finest man I have ever known.  

One of my very favorite things about Papa was that when I told him I loved him, he never ever responded with an automatic "I love you too."  Instead, he would stop whatever he was doing, look me right in the eye, and say, "And I love you."  I am not the only grandchild who loves him dearly; we all do.  When he died, I wrote him a letter intending to slip it into the breast pocket of his suitcoat.  I remember approaching his casket, letter in hand, only to find a hundred other letters stuffed in there.  And Twinkies.  My diabetic Papa hid stashes of them everywhere, so I suppose it was only appropriate that he was buried with a few.  My guess is that it was my prankster dad who stuck them in there.  Anyway, the point is that Papa was deeply loved by a lot of people.  He died  nearly 19 years ago, but sometimes it feels like yesterday; heaven is sweeter to me because he is there. 

The name Papa is one of the most precious names there is to me.  It is security.  I never once questioned if Papa loved me or would take care of me.  I never wondered if I was welcome on his lap or if my presence was an intrusion, even though I visited him at work often.  Sometimes when I hear people calling their grandfathers by the name Papa, I secretly wonder if that man is worthy of the name.  (And honestly, I automatically assume that he isn't because I slip back into my 5 year old mind where "My Papa is better than your Papa.")  See, the thing is that there are certain things that should be implicit in a name.  Papa. Grammie.  Nanny. Mom. Daddy. Mama. Grampie. Whatever you call these relatives in your life, their names mean something.  They should instantly conjure up feelings of security and images of people who love us unconditionally, who only have our best interests at heart, and who would never ever intentionally hurt us.  Sadly, this is not always the case. 

I know that child abuse and neglect exist all over the world, America included, but when I lived in the US I wasn't usually slapped in the face with it every day even though I worked with troubled youth. Here in rural Guatemala it's every. single. day.  Usually multiple times a day.  It is heart-breaking and exhausting and depressing; quite frankly sometimes it makes me want to run away to anyplace I can stick my head in the sand and forget about it for a while.  But I can't.  I can't stop.  And here's why:  there's another Name.  

Emanuel.  He's here.  

El Roi.  He sees me.  

Adonai.  He's got it all under control.  

Abba.  He loves me. 

And I get the holy privilege of proclaiming His name to people who desperately need to know it.  It's the whole reason Loving InDeed exists, it's the whole reason I exist, and it's what makes the job of a  missionary so very different from humanitarian aid.  We get to tell the Gilbertos, Silvias, Henrys, Joels, and Yenifers of the world that there is Someone who loves them so, so much.  And because I love Him, it makes getting to share Him so worth it, even on the days when I want to run and hide.  There is a name.  And those who know that name will put their trust in Him because He will never forsake those who seek Him.