nitty gritty

A good night’s sleep, great time reading Judges 6-8 as the sun came up over SETECA (the seminary we stay at) with a fresh brewed cup of Guatemalan coffee (Thank You Erin)… What a great way to start a day, refreshed.  Have you ever noticed that when a day starts out right, it has a tendency to stay right even if bad things, or difficult things happen?  You know, you can start with the perfect cup of coffee and then spill it on your shirt and it not that bad. Or if you waker up in the middle of an enormous Latin American Capital, noise, smog, chaos… and you first order of business for the day is to go into paradise. That is how refreshing works right?

So, we got in the van and we were off to La Limonada (which means Lemonade), the poorest area in any Latin American capital. They have saying, “Not even Santa Claus comes to La Limonada.”  It is a place that seems void of hope & peace.  The crazy thing is that when you talk about this slum, Tita can only see beauty… paradise!

Most people (including me and everyone I have gone with) are struck by the difficulty and tragedy in the families and their entire lives.  When you are there you work hard, think hard, and very often cry hard.  So today we helped carry a very ill & elderly man up a hill so that his neighbors could bathe him.  Lew & Devin wrapped their steady arms around his frail and gnarled limbs and carried him… reminded me of the moment when they took Jesus’ body down from the cross to carry Him down the hill called Golgatha.  Lemonade, refreshing.

I watched our team’s hearts melt, refreshing, I watched their thoughts get rearranged by the stories that Shorty (an ex-gang member turned Pastor) told while we were sitting in a room that was once a place used for satanic worship, refreshing.  Finally, we visited an elderly couple whom we had visited in June 09.  They live as low down in the ghetto as you can get without being in the sewage river.  Married for over 50 years… living in the same 12X10 foot 1 room house for 40+ years.  The man is blind and the woman is anemic.  Yet she told us of the comfort and contentedness she feels when we visit… Lemonade, a cool refreshing drink!