Lessons learned in a foreign land

By: American Decency Staff

By Chris Johnson It's amazing what a little perspective will do. It's hard to feel quite as sorry for the uninsured when you've seen people who've never heard of tylenol. It's hard to listen to complaints about unhealthy eating when you've been with people who live on rice and beans. You hear about people turning down jobs that don't pay enough, but that means something completely different to you when you've met people who are proud to earn three dollars a day. It's hard to accept American poverty when you've seen real poverty. My wife and I returned this week from a mission trip to Guatemala, and it's amazing how seeing that real poverty changes the way you see the world. The average American spends about ten percent of their income on food. The missionary that we were helping out in Guatemala told us that Guatemalans spends 60-70% of their income on food, and that figure is from before food prices skyrocketed in the past few years. After driving past a few yard sales the other day, even that struck me differently. Americans, including some "poor" Americans, need to "clean out the junk" every couple years. The poor from less fortunate countries like Guatemala have to literally scrounge to buy something besides food. The missionary told us that when we first saw the people of the village, they would not be poorly dressed, but by the third day when they were wearing the same clothes we would realize that they were simply wearing their best for us. All that sounds pretty depressing, right? Poor, dirty, tired people. They rarely can afford to eat meat and live mostly on rice and beans. Often parasites steal even the nutrients they get from that. Dogs wander the streets and you can count their bones, because the people can't afford to feed them aside from rare scraps. Yet, I can tell you I've never been more blessed by human hands than by the Guatemalans. We spent three days building five houses in one Guatemalan village. On the third day, the people of that village made us a fried chicken dinner. There were thirty of us gringos, so I figure that's close to ten chickens – by the missionary's estimation, a chicken is worth two days of labor in Guatemala. That means about three weeks' wages went into our lunch that day. That's pretty humbling. And as one member of our team said, "GFC" is way better than KFC. We went to do a medical clinic in a different village where the ministry had donated a cement pad for the kids to play on so they wouldn't have to play in the dirt. Out of gratitude, that village essentially threw us a party. Their kids sang the national anthem, their city officials gave speeches thanking us (though our group actually had nothing to do with it, but the missionary leading us did), and they served us chicken salad sandwiches and even had Pepsi in glass bottles for us. I'm sure that meal wasn't any cheaper than that given to us by the village a few days before. I had an opportunity that night to tell the village that though I had thought God had sent me to serve them, they had ended up serving me. I told them that I had seen God's love through their hospitality. Jesus tells the parable of the widow's mite where He explains that the woman who didn't have much but gave everything she did have gave more than those who had much and actually gave more monetarily than she did. That was how I felt when confronted with the generosity of these people. How often do we Americans give like that? I think too often we can't see past our goods to see how good we've got it. ========================================================== The dear people in Guatemala have a real battle on their hands.  So do we.  May God help us to understand our battleground more completely and to stand in the gap as we are called and led. Register for our summer event featuring Gary Bauer, Friday, July 29, at 7:00 pm https://secure4.afo.net/ada/registration.php?eventno=28 Your support is important to our ability to make a difference. Donate online at: https://secure4.afo.net/ada/donate.php American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. American Decency Association Bill Johnson, President P.O. Box 202 Fremont, MI 49412 ph: 231-924-4050 www.americandecency.org http://www.twitter.com/billwjohnson

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