Water from El Porvenir

Today's guest post is courtesy of Chris Berg. Enjoy this beautiful description of life in a Nicaraguan community.

A long but thin stretch of road winds along cornfields and cane.  Somewhere along its stretch one can find a small concrete bridge some 10 miles or so outside of Leon, Nicaragua.  The place is not marked, but with a closer look one can see that to either side of the bridge dirt ramps drop at a steep grade and connect to a one lane dirt road below.  Full-size busses slowly emerge from the ramps as though disgorged from the earth itself followed by plumes of black diesel exhaust.  This is not the edge of the world, but where it begins.

The road is soft and at times cuts through the earth with 20 feet up on either side.  Trees lounge along the road side and in places grow in a straight line where some farmer had used green wood for fencing.  Green wood sprouts roots in the black volcanic earth.  Nicaraguan’s have a “dicho” or saying that if you spit in the soil something will grow.

Forty-five minutes in, the road disappears down a three foot bank into a dry river bed.  In the distance young boys are leading cattle in the middle of the day.  No shirt, shorts and flip-flops.  Each carries a thin stick for poking and prodding.  They smile broadly and wave as the dust cloud forming behind the 4x4 engulfs them and the herd.

At some point, the flatness of the land stops in front of a volcano sitting like a lumbering giant.  The road passes through a gate welcoming visitors to El Porvenir.  Somewhere along the way several people were picked up and stand in the back of the truck--children, mothers, workers, bags of cement and coke bottles filled with gasoline.  The vehicles slow and lurch as they engage low four-wheel-drive and start whining their way up an impossible grade.

Near the top of the mountain vistas unfold.  The temperature drops.  Large trees shade the road and beds of shiny coffee plants.  In other places the crops turn to beans, corn and plàtano.  Almost fifty families live on this mountain together.  After the Sandinista revolution, ex-fighters from all sides brought their families here and mixed with locals to form a coffee farming cooperative.  It’s not perfect and at times disturbing; however, they live together eating from the land and sharing work.

In the middle of the main compound is a big house.  Terracotta tiles neatly form a gentle slope down to a network of canals that lead to a cistern.  When the rains come, there is water for all—plants, people, and livestock.  In the dry season, each family rations to 5 gallons a day.  Plastic containers make the pilgrimage easier, but everyone carries what they can handle.  Usually it’s the women and children making the water run.  Gathering at the cistern is a central part of the community.  Some of them say it’s what binds them together—telling stories, seeing faces and getting recent news.

Outsiders that stay more than a day, also make their way to the cistern for bathing.  A bucket is filled with deep cold water and scrubbing commences.  It may be brief, but most emerge refreshed, clean and changed.  It is said that bathing in the water from El Porvenir  binds you to the community in untold ways.   Once done, you will never forget them.

The Girl with the Drip and the Flu

Today we have a guest post from Graham Baird, lead pastor of Highlands Church in Paso Robles, California. Take the time to read it all the way through and pray with Graham for this little girl and the many others just like her throughout our world.

Very few images from my life will remain with me until the day I die.  The image of my wife standing in a field in Princeton, New Jersey, hearing my proposal of marriage, and with a tear in her eye saying, "Oh my God, yes," and then, "Holy Shit, I'm engaged," will stay with me.  The image of my daughter just being born, her brand new bluish colored body, being thrust into my arms will stick in my mind.  And this image will also remain; a three year old African girl, on school yard playground, in remote Mozambique, who had a bucket full of holes and a snot green bubble on the end of her nose.

It was about the fourth day of my Lifewater mission trip to Mozambique, Africa.  Already a kind of immunity and inuredness to all things poor and broken had begun to set in for me. There is only so much true pain a heart can take in before it raises the drawbridge on the proverbial doors of the castle and says, "No more visitors."  It was the last stop of the day, to visit a well that Lifewater had installed three years before in the playground of a remote village.

And then there was the girl.  I did not notice her at first, since there were literally hundreds of other kids who were cowering and clambering around her to get water.  And then, alone, with her single bucket in hand, I remember seeing this little girl, dressed only in a dirty white tee-shirt reach her bucket forward to have it filled.  There was only one problem.  Her bucket had about as many holes in it as a kitchen colander.  Every time she would fill her bucket, the bucket would leak.  Her bucket held no water.  But she kept trying, like it was some kind of childhood game.  Only it wasn't a game.  She needed water to survive.

I leaned down to put my arm around her, and to find another more suitable water bucket lying around the ground somewhere.     When I got to her level, I noticed that a lack of water was not her only problem.  She also had a massive green snot bubble on the end of her nose.  Without hesitating I took out hanky from my back pocket (mostly used over the past day to keep the dust out of my lungs) and I grabbed the snot bubble and squeezed it off.  Her face remained expressionless, even if a little bit happier.

But then this little girl's true problem presented itself.  It wasn't the water can, it wasn't her snot bubble flu; it was her aloneness.  This little girl seemed completely alone.  I cannot begin to describe the loneliness and the desperateness of this little human being.  She reminded me of the little girl from the movie, "Schindler's List" who was highlighted in light pink, amidst the terror's of Auschwitz concentration camp.  Only instead of having a pink hue, this little girl's dripping white jerry can and dirty white tee shirt stood in stark contrast to the brown African landscape.  "Where is this girl's parents?" I yelled.  "Who is taking care of this little girl?"  "Who has responsibility for her?"  There was no reply.  I tried it again, only this time louder, "Who does this girl belong to, she needs help?"

Then came the voice of one of our tour guides: "She belongs to no one.  She has no parents.  Her parents are both dead.  They have both died of AIDS.  Just leave her.  The village will try to care for her."  "But the village isn't taking care of her," I said.  "She is sick.  She has holes in her water bucket," I pointed out.  "It's just the way it is here, we must go, the sun is going down," said the guide.  A thousand thoughts about international adoption possibilities rushed through my head, until I remembered what my wife who is an international adoptions expert had told me before the trip - Mozambique is a closed country, there are no adoptions from there.  There were hundreds of little girls just like her with just as many holes and snot bubbles throughout the entire country.

"Come, we must go, it is not safe here," said the guide.  And with that I found myself stooping my head to get back into the van that had brought me to this place.  As I sat down, I felt a squishy, slimy feeling in my back pocket.  It was the green snot bubble still on my hanky.  And that snot green bubble will become a part of the colliapy of images that remain with me until I die.  A little, lost girl, in a remote place, with a drip in her bucket and a case of the flu, parentless, but also loved by God.

And so I pray for her.

All for Now,

Graham Baird

Lead Pastor - Highlands Church

Paso Robles, CA  

www.highlandsadventure.org

It's happening!

Already a core group of churches and individuals have taken the Waiting for Water pledge. They have access to the professionally-developed small group resources and sermon aids which will guide them through their Easter journeys and into changed lives for the rest of the year. However, we would like more people to join us for this incredible experience. That's why we are launching ... a sign-up contest! Here are the details:

Every few days between now and Ash Wednesday, February 21, we will do a random drawing for prizes from the pool of people who have signed up for Waiting for Water. The sooner you sign up, the more chances you have to win!

What are the fabulous prizes, you ask? Winners will receive a $50 donation to their choice of one of the NGO partners featured on the Waiting for Water website. But that's not all, folks! Each winner will also receive a copy of the book Zealous Love, donated by its authors, Mike and Danae Yankoski. Zealous Love is a social justice handbook packed with information and guidance on a whole range of social justice issues, including unsafe water, human trafficking, and creation degradation. It also features gorgeous, full-color photos taken by Jeremy Cowart. It is an incredible resource and a must-have for your bookshelf!

What do you have to do? If you have already taken the Waiting for Water pledge, please share about Waiting for Water with people in your network. Encourage them to sign up, and tell them about our sign-up contest.

If you haven't signed up for Waiting for Water yet, do it now! The next drawing will be Thursday, February 9th, so don't delay. We can't wait for you to join us.

Lent is coming ...

Yep, I know it's just the beginning of January, but in only a few weeks Lent will be upon us. I'm curious to know if any of you have ever observed Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter, before.

I wasn't raised in this tradition, and the first time I caught a whiff of this rich observance, I was wandering through a Catholic church in a small Lithuanian town a few weeks before Easter. It was the middle of a weekday morning, so the church was empty, but its wooden doors were open to visitors. Inside, the figure of Christ on a crucifix was shrouded in purple fabric. Sadness swept over me as I stood there, trying to make out his face.

Since then each Easter has been enriched by my own Lenten journeys. Each February I pull my copy of Bread and Wine from the bookshelf and my husband and I decide what indulgence or activity to set aside. Some years it's chocolate. Other years it's coffee. I guess that tells you something about our daily habits. While making these small sacrifices always pinches a bit, the joy it also unleashes astounds me every year.

The Waiting for Water journey leads us through the wintry reflection of Lent to the bright warmth of Easter and beyond into the rest of the year. As you ponder taking this journey in 2012, what would you consider giving up so that you can draw closer to Christ and others might live better and more whole lives?

It's a new year: Let's get out there!

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I could tell you that's because I don't believe in them, but really, I just don't like to associate the month of January with a feeling of impending failure. Between you and me, even if I could recall all of the resolutions I have made in previous years, I'm pretty sure I've never achieved one. (Unless it was "eat leftover Christmas fudge.") That's not to say I don't change, or that I don't believe in it. Still, though, you won't find me signing gym membership papers or shopping for a master cleanse this week.

Change, for me anyway, takes a long time and rarely occurs in sync with the annual calendar. And most of the time, any efforts I make at crystallizing my growth trajectory into SMART goals end up being a waste of time. Resolutions tend to be predicated on a straight line from action to causality, while most of our life paths resemble a bunch of squiggles and loops.

So while it's not a resolution, there is something I've been contemplating this week, and I invite you to contemplate it with me: It's time to stop asking for permission to change the world.

Now, before I tell you what I mean by that, let me tell you what I don't mean. A few years back I worked with a dynamic, intelligent woman on several projects. She was highly skilled but lived by the maxim, "It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." This made it difficult to work with her, as she frequently circumvented normal processes and plunged ahead in doing things the way it made sense to her. That's not what I have in mind here.

But how many times have you heard about a problem in the world and thought, "Someone should really do something about that"? How many times have you thought, "I'm not qualified to fix that problem, but I sure hope someone else is"? Maybe you've said to yourself, "If I knew some people doing something about that, I would help them out."

I stood back as a spectator for many years, thinking all of those thoughts and more. I thought I needed permission from some authority figure to make the world a better place. To be honest, sometimes I still look over my shoulder for someone more qualified to step forward.

A couple of years ago I began inching my way from the bleachers onto the field. It wasn't a resolution, but that year I practiced saying "yes" to opportunities or needs I came across. What a crazy year! I traveled around the world for the first time by myself, enrolled in a graduate program, went whitewater rafting, and wrote and facilitated a course about poverty for a local church.

Two years later, the yeses are snowballing, and I'm grateful. That is, when I'm not wondering what the heck I'm doing or why someone else doesn't step in and take things from here.

Why don't you join me this year? Step out of the bleachers, join the Waiting for Water movement, and get ready to change the world.

Do you still need a nudge? All right, I give you permission. Now let's do this together.

Who is Jesus?

Here's another excerpt from a great sermon written by Eugenia Gamble. The text is Luke 9:18-27, which begins, "Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say I am?'”  

A number of years ago I took my study leave for a month alone to write on a tiny island off of Nova Scotia ... When I was in Nova Scotia I thought a lot about that question. I was serving a congregation that was growing and growing more diverse in a city that seemed more and more unconcerned about the gospel. So whenever I had a natural opportunity, I asked the question of people that I met what they had to say about Jesus.

.... I met a couple from Ontario who lived on their sailboat and went all over the world. We chatted while our clothes washed and somehow, probably after they asked what I did for a living, I asked them.

The man said, “He was a wonderful man who founded a horrible religion. No,” he went on, “It’s not a bad religion. It is just practiced by horrible people, hypocrites. I’d like to be a Christian if it wasn’t for the hypocrites.”

The young girl who rented me a movie at the general store nearly every evening said in answer, “He was part of God wasn’t he, a long time ago?”

The defrocked Roman Catholic priest who was the owner of one of the little restaurants in town said, “He was my way to God before the church blocked my path.”

And, my personal favorite, the young man at the pizza parlor said, “Jesus, I don’t know the dude.  Does he live around here?”

In each of those conversations, I could hear Jesus’ pensive question to his friends, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”

That is a huge question for us today, sisters and brothers. Who do the crowds say that he is? Is he a political code word for a particular ideology? Has he become a justification for our points of view—right, left, right, wrong? Is he just the name of an ancient man with long blond hair who was fond of holding lambs and lifting gentle hands to gentle children?

Who do the people in your company say Jesus is? In your school? In your family? In your neighborhood?

What does it mean to be blessed?

We just had to share this excerpt from a Waiting for Water sermon we received written by Dr. Stuart Bond. He is writing about Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Luke 6:17-26. We'll pick up where Dr. Bond describes the press and chaos that must have surrounded Jesus that day as he prepared to teach the crowds and his own disciples.

Finally, he sits everyone down. He looks over this crowd of scared people, some of them healed, most of them struggling, all of them wondering what their future would be. And he says, “These are the blessed people: those of you who are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated.” 

Joan Baez gave us modern images about these same folks in the early seventies:

Blessed are the one way ticket holders
on a one way street.
Blessed are the midnight riders
for in the shadow of God they sleep.
Blessed are the huddled hikers
staring out at falling rain,
wondering at the retribution
in their personal acquaintance with pain.
Blessed are the blood relations
of the young ones who have died,
who had not the time or patience
to carry on this earthly ride.   

Joan Baez, Blessed Are, 1970, 1971, Chandos Music

Meanwhile, Jesus continues, woe to you who live comfortably because you have all the comfort you are going to get. Enjoy that pizza now, because the time will come when you can’t find a bite. And yuk it up while you can because it is closing time at the comedy club, and tragedy is the next event on the marquee. And if everyone thinks you are the greatest, that is just the way they talked about the prophet-haters back in the day. 

The problem for us is that we feel the divide. We already know that Jesus is not talking about us when he says they are blessed. He is talking about “them.” He is talking about people who live in rough circumstances and have nothing to show for a lifetime of hard labor. And maybe we could go for that—we can see the beauty in the picture of an old woman sitting outside her hut chopping wood or the African woman balancing water on her head and a child on her hip. We like the poetry of considering them blessed.

But how about them woes! Are you kidding me, Jesus? Sure I have had some privilege and some opportunities, but I also worked hard to be where I am. Are you telling me that after all this, plus serving on several church committees—are you telling me that I am out of your kingdom just because I am not poor? 

Maybe. Or, maybe it is more like this: Unless you are part of the solution, unless you care about the plight of those with nothing, unless you align yourself with the kingdom’s goals, you have had your day. My getting poorer isn’t going to make any poor people rich. But my being satisfied with the world as it is, my being glad to keep things arranged with me on top—that isn’t going to help anything either. 

And isn’t it interesting how we hear this statement of hope for the poor and instantly want Jesus to talk more to us? Sometimes we who have so much need to step back and let this word simply be for those who have nothing. Maybe part of what we need to do is be silent and listen, and realize this: “Jesus is their voice. He is speaking for those who cannot speak, who are never heard. Jesus is their voice.” 

(Children from Cienfuegos, Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy of Healing Waters International.)

You might come back and tell me the futility of trying to help the poor. After all, you might say, Jesus himself said, “The poor shall be with you always.” It is never going to change. 

I would say to you that Jesus was quoting that saying from Deuteronomy 15: 11, which says, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

Jesus envisions a day when the poor are lifted up and—let’s be honest—the rich come down a few pegs. And if his prayer is that his will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” then we want to become a blessing to the poor. We want the water they drink to hydrate their bodies rather than infect them. We want the work they do to be micro-enterprises that create sustainable businesses. We want the horizons for them to be brighter than a one in three chance of death by AIDS. What can we do?