Withered Petals, With Them, Eyes Like the Sun

This blog was written during my time in Guatemala– I am now in Eswatini, Africa!  I will be posting a blog about my experiences here at a later date, but for now…

The first things I saw through the break in the rising clouds as our plane anticipated the final descent to the runway were mountains.  There were trees too, like a great many blades of grass rising up through anthills. At first sight, there still lay a fog, a mist, thick.  The new and unknown world that I was soon to discover lay shrouded in mystery like a great titan from ancient tales left sleeping and undisturbed.  Here was a place that had seemed to pass its own development phase, and soon, I would discover, had become a land polluted by the modern world. The first few days were not so desolate.  We were in a land that, honestly, seemed familiar. Save for the few plantain trees and the sight of volcanic rock, it reminded me of Texas, of home, in a strange way. It shared a faint geographical resemblance, or, the familiarity may have been due to how dry it was. We spent our first few days in Guatemala debriefing our time in Costa Rica, staying in a hostel beside an isolated, inactive volcano and lava field. Soon, we were on a bus and on our way to the Adventures in Missions base about twenty minutes outside of Antigua.  We arrived in the daylight to our new home and slept.  In the evening, we were given instructions… but the following evening, as it turned out, we were quarantined! If it’s all the same to you, reader, I will skip past that period of time and move on to telling you the story that must now be told- the blog- the recap. First, in the style of Shakespeare, I will provide the setting and list of characters:

San Lorenzo- a remote village, where dogs roam the streets, the smell of raw sewage fills the air, and where money is made in either working in the fields or taking sand from the poisonous black river and selling it elsewhere. There is a flourishing group of Christian Guatemalans here called “One Way” who are working to bring schooling, nourishment, and joy to this once darkened world.  One Way’s members are the trees that bring life to withered things.

One Way- a group of Guatemalan Christians that serve the village of San Lorenzo as well as Comalapa, a Mayan village, high on the pine-needled floor of the mountains beyond.  One Way seeks to establish a growing and ever burning wildfire, a church of believers, dedicated to servant leadership and lives that pour God into the masses.

Team Zion and Team Boaz- (the men, the gringos) -we are the racers serving the One Way community. We are their helpers- we seek not only to pour into San Lorenzo and its many children, but also into One Way itself.

Gap I- the World Race gap year group that includes not only teams Zion and Boaz, but also five women’s teams: Eden, Lydia, Olive Branch, Rooted, and Anav.  All are led by their fearless, kind, compassionate, and ever so caring squad leader, Isabel.

*This memoir of ministry in Guatemala will be told in three parts. Before beginning, though, I want to let you know that partnered with One Way, we gave water filters to the community, built homes, beds, spent time loving the kids and being a reflection of God’s love.  We taught them, danced with them, laughed with them, and cherished them. I am sure the children of San Lorenzo will miss us.  For the community of San Lorenzo, we are just one of the many groups that will visit and reach out to them through One Way. It is plain to see that the light I saw and the light my teammates saw in the eyes of the children was the love of God shining brightly straight through them. Their hope in God.  Their trust. The hopes and prayers of this community are being fulfilled, restored, and redeemed.

 Part One: The Dogs of San Lorenzo

Just as I painted with words my jungle surroundings in the last blog, here I will also try to sketch somewhat of an image, though, this image is dark.  The streets are that of old lain brick, rough and octagonal in shape.  Dust and dirt blow across the winding road. Dogs lay on every corner, beside the curbs, among strewn trash bags and old cardboard boxes. Gnats fly all around them.  Some barely breathe, some are dead and gone. Most are riddled with hard, cracked skin. Like crows they remain day to day figures, they cower and flee the stones thrown by children they fear. They are not thieves, they only look on and hope- they know better than to take.  The homes on either side of the winding road are made of old 2 X 4’s and rusted tin sheets. The doors are made of the latter, wire wrapped around a nail, their only lock system. There are things unsaid, but everyone knows of the drunks and prowlers that waltz like dark sloths in the moonlight. The homes have dirt floors, old pans, and fire-kindled stoves glazed with smoke and grease. They are almost stacked on top of each other, tin sheets, old Pepsi Cola bottles, grocery bags, misc. wrappers, old toys and rusted blades… For a family of eight, a room the size of the average American’s master bathroom means “my house.”  A children’s playdate is the kid from down the row and the youngest in the household standing in the dirt space between their homes, tangled in the clothesline, watching white paint drip from a spoon into the dust. Soon, the boy holding the spoon will be old enough to go over the hill with his father and stretch his fingers into the dry dirt and pull from it rocks, filling a bag and carrying it back over and down the hill, then to return and do the same thing over and over.  Maybe this boy hopes he’ll be wealthy enough to someday buy a lot of his own, find a woman to love, children to feed, and maybe someday, see the sea.  His father hasn’t. He is 53 and a drunk.  Each young girl here knows that in their way of life, in their culture, it is greedy to pursue a future- to gain knowledge- to be brave and beautiful and dance and fall in love – all is surrender in San Lorenzo. She will grow up to marry a husband who is only home late in the night, with bleeding hands. Life becomes a routine. Love becomes a job.  As I write this, there is a darling little girl sweeping a dirt floor, and a boy watching paint drip from a spoon. There are dreams like candlewax dripping from a sinking wick, that echo lost reverberations in a land of reality. There is a dog in the doorway, asleep in the dirt, a doll in its mouth and a diaper beneath its paw. 

Part Two: A Family Man

Jubentino had bought a flight to Canada, an expensive flight. Now, staring at the plains with empty pockets, and the Canadian wind, cold and rushing, blowing in his eyes enough to make them water, he thanked God. Back home, tucked away in their shanty house, the walls slowly falling apart, from the radio he had first heard that workers were wanted in Canada for nine dollars an hour! That was convincing enough to leave his wife and young son behind to go work for eleven months.  He loved his wife with all his heart, as well as his son. He loved God. Jubentino wasn’t a drinking man, he was tolerant, and made the most of life. More than anything, Jubentino wanted his wife and son to be happy. His wife would wait for him. It would be hard, but she was a strong woman… a woman of virtue and love.  On the farm in Canada, Jubentino lifted 100 pound sacks filled with dirt just to show that he was fit enough for harvest. The days went by, rotating suns, no moons, those were spent fast asleep. He awoke to pain, became an embodied example of it. Walking, his legs burned. Bending down to harvest, his hands became raw, sore, and rough. He felt as if his back had become pine- that if he moved, the pine just might splinter, and splinter it did. He missed his wife’s warmth and his son’s laughter. He missed everything about home, even the alpine Mayan fields he used to work in for a third of what he made per hour now. When he was finally done, and cash filled his pockets, he returned to his wife, his son, and the laughter. The money, he spent on supplies to build a better home, a house about the size of a nice American kitchen, the walls made of cinder blocks, bought and paid for.  He went back to working in the Comalapan fields harvesting corn and coffee.  Soon, he and his wife had two more sons and two daughters.  And there I sat, watching a man tell the story of his greatest fortune.  He had just come back from the fields and sweat still shone sleek upon his brow in the sunlight. Jubentino had smiled all the while, his two daughters hugging him on each shoulder. The two boys, his first son not among them, stood beside the girls, one held a cup of water, offering it to his father.  Jubentino took it, drank, and continued to tell myself and the others with me, most of them One Way volunteers, that the oldest son was now in Virginia.  He had gone there to work, but had fallen into a serious drinking problem. We prayed for the family and then continued on.  As we left, I saw a man I respected, even though I truly knew him not.  In the dirt courtyard, he and his family laughed and played. He looked to his wife and, in his eyes, I saw a gratitude and love like that I have never seen. She smiled to him – he smiled back – then we were gone.

Part Three: The Flowers 

Every day in San Lorenzo we would “receive the kids” from 1 to 4. We fed them, played with them, and taught them colors in English. These are children of God. As I’ve previously written in part one a description of the average child’s day to day life, these are the children of thus, yet amidst the turmoil and pain and darkness, they find joy. What One Way is doing for the community of San Lorenzo is a selfless sacrifice of years – essentially, a sacrifice of the time of one’s life to better another’s. I could have written down a million of the experiences we had in San Lorenzo, the miracles, the tragedies, more about the things we helped with…  There is a piece of me that knows not why I write about Jubentino and his family, or the dogs in the streets, or the children who drift in dirt doorways, barefoot among tetanus, and ladle paint from spoons for fun. I may never know why- maybe for perspective? The mere action of writing these things brings me pain, a pain that I can’t describe. I could write about the things God has taught me in this season, but to me, it would almost seem vanity. All of this has been a lesson one cannot put words to – maybe “lesson” isn’t even the right word…     What I know is this, that even amongst the death and raw sewage and sickness and pain, I see in a six year old girl’s darkened, diffident, and abased eyes, there wells deep, a glimmer – a distant sun shining from the depths – an unblemished light, a bouquet of flowers. On my last day in Antigua, on a chicken bus, I saw this hope once more.  A love – hope. She sat, no more than nine, crammed between an old man and the wall of the bus.  Even from her uncomfortable and displeasing place, her eyes smiled.