Nicaragua 2

We woke up late and hurried to breakfast. Pancake, bacon, rice and beans. I'm already loving the food here. After breakfast we headed to a poverty stricken community. The houses are smaller than the average bedroom and made of tin roofs, that leak when the rain pours daily. We visit a preschool, the children are joyful, they laugh freely. The women who teach them are patient and full of life. Today they are learning their vowels. A few of the girls have malnutrition streaks in their hair and rotted teeth. I can't imagine living their lives, but to them this is all they know and they are happy and grateful. We walk through the neighborhood, a chicken feasts on bugs at the edge of the muddy road, a boy trudges along with a makeshift wagon holding buckets of water, a dog stumbles about seeking food, two children laugh pushing two old tires down the road, a rose bush blooms. We meet a family and ask if we can pray for them. They say yes, and then explain their situation. They have 7 children, the husband lost his hand and now is unable to find a job. Their poverty is unbelievable. The woman tells us passionately that she trust God and knows His will will be full filled. We pray. Then we leave. We hear shouting, a woman is beckoning us to come. We are the Americans, we have more. She talks fast and tells us she has a need for mattresses and sheets. Clothes dry on her clothes line. She asks us to come inside. Nine live in the home barely bigger than my dining room. We sing "Jesus loves me" to her and her family and she sings a song back in Spanish. We pray for her financial situation, and that her roof may be fixed from the rain that leaks through. Something on the stoves heats the house, when we walk back outside to the heat it seems not as hot. We head across the road to another family. A mother and a darling little girl. She tells us she needs prayer that her fruit would be plenty, and that the road would be fixed so the rain wouldn't flood her house. We pray for her. Then we leave. We pile on our bus and leave the barrios. We leave behind the people, the faces, the poverty. We know we will never live like that. We never have to pray that our fruit may ripen so that we will be able to feed our child. We don't have to pray that the street we live on will be fixed so that our home won't be flooded every time it rains. We take clean water for granted. We take nearly everything for granted. These beautiful people trust God, they have so much more faith than most Americans. They live in despire in our eyes, and we live in despire in theirs. We have too much material possessions and are lacking in faith, they have too little in material possession, but possess such a strong faith that God will see them through. They have joy while we worry about small worthless things. They have hope when we would turn on backs on God. What they do have, we can only long for. We will never live as passionately and humbly until we abandon all we have and live and love the least of these. Until we become small.