Living with my Aunt and Uncle for 6 months while our house was being built.
Getting my new little golden retriever puppy.
Bryan's "sleepwalking" stories.
Erin running me over on a scooter while I picked flowers for my mom.
House hunting in Little Rock.
My friends throwing me a goodbye party in Minnesota.
Moving.
The first mission trip I went on.
The first time I went to Guatemala.
Graduating high school.
Moving in to my dorm room.
First day of class in college.
The face of a little girl I can't forget from my second trip to Guatemala.
The garbage dump.
Good or bad those images make up some of the movie that plays in my head on a daily basis. It feels like every day I have one of those, "Oh man, remember when?" moments. People keep asking me what I did in Guatemala while I was there with my family. I did a lot of things. Mama Carmen's orphanage, lunch dates with various people, sigh seeing, hanging with my friends, Antigua, going to the dump and serving there... the list goes on. The one major thing I took away though- more like the moment my heart truly hurt for others more than it ever had before, was one night while at the dump in the middle of the city.
The pastor of the church we had helped do food distribution with an hour earlier was taking us around the dump where we got to meet a family who was absolutely precious. Then he took us to the outskirts of the "community" and we saw the trash on one side, and the houses on the other. All that separates the people in that community from the trash is the thin layer of dirt under their feet. He informed us that the government comes in and allots each family something like a 5 x 7 space to live in- if you move you lose it. For the first time I felt in my heart a deep hurt like I'd never felt before. The government allows this? They come in and actually set up land for these people to live on? Why don't they DO anything?! I was outraged that a government would look upon this and just let it happen- help it happen. But ultimately I realized as I looked around that there's places like this in the US and the government doesn't do anything about it. Rather, they turn a blind eye- what they don't see they don't know about. Think of the hundreds, maybe thousands of homeless who live in your city that you never see- you never know their plight. Many go on missions trips to try and "Americanize" a culture that isn't American. Face it. We don't have the solution to their problems if only we build them an "ideal" home, or make things the way they "should" be. Our goal should be to equip them to live a life that suits their culture, and their individual needs. I realized that the answers aren't to make them more like us, but to make them more like God.
I have a new perspective now when I look around me at the wealth and prosperity. I try to see the trash underneath it all- the things we'd rather not look at because they don't fit with our idea of how America is. There's a tent city in Fayetteville that I don't even know where it is. And what's being done about it?! Nothing that I hear. It's time to start worrying about my problems and stop worrying about what "terrible" thing the government is trying to do and start trying to do something about the hurting in my community. This semester I want to go out and see a new side of Fayetteville- outside the walls of this University and manicured lawns of the houses surrounding it. I want to see where the need is. My prayer is that through it all my eyes will be open to the hurting around me- and to strike a flame in my heart to see the hard things and to take action with the people to fix it.
I don't want to be like the government- I want to see it, and do something about it, plain and simple.
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