#21 - Hope?

23/02/2011

The day started with devotions out in the beautiful golden sunshine. The area we're in is one of the cooler areas of Panama, certainly not as intensely hot as Panama City, but this morning it was amazing.
Sorry to rub it in, I hear the weather in the UK is currently atrocious.

We also had frosted cornflakes for the first time in a few days - I've steered clear of the normal ones and opted for toast since then, but today a shortage of bread happily coincided with the return of the frosted ones.
Obviously I didn't ruin the cereal with milk - I find it astounding that people add milk to cereal, it makes it so disgustingly soggy and corrupts the flavour.

After a while here in Volcan, my bed sheets are pretty horrible. They have bits of dirt and leaves and smell of the times my sweaty body has tossed and turned in them - then again, I hardly think our beds in the tribes will be much better.

In the afternoon we started a major project.
There's a woman who lives in Volcan in a really poor area and has five children. Her husband abandoned her at some point and so she lives in a shack improvised mainly from tin - the rood is held down by stones and wood. She invited us inside, and it was heartbreaking - I could see dirt, damp, flies and goodness knows what else contained within that small area in which six people sleep every night.
My initial thought that I wrote down was 'how can I be happy again after seeing this?', because when I return home to my comfortable life these people will still be in the same dire situation and will become a memory to me. I will return to worrying about which clothes to wear and getting frustrated at the many expensive and needless gadgets I have not performing to full capacity, and these people will be humbly accepting their unlucky fate as they continue to do.

So anyway Amanda, an American from church who gave us the talk on Personalities, thought we could help them out by mending their roof.
After some surveying by Andy (a qualified structural engineer) and Jonny (who has experience of similar things), we decided first to build a drain in front of the house. Panama has two seasons, warm season and rainy season, and during the rainy season it rains pretty badly and apparently when this happens, the water runs freely through the whole of the house.
So Jarett and I set to work digging a big hole and clearing all the rocks that were in our way, and by the end of the afternoon we had pretty much finished the digging work - all that now remains is to make the hole a proper drain which we will do tomorrow.
While we were doing that, Jonny and Andy produced plans for how we're going to reinforce the interior structure which largely relies on old wooden beams. We'll get started on that tomorrow.
And while us men were doing that, the girls took all the kids to the adjoining field and played games and hung out with the kids. They're all so good with the kids and made them smile and have fun which is so great to see, and they're looking forward to going back to those same kids tomorrow and developing relationships there.

After our work, Amanda picked us up and took us to her house where her husband Tony was busy cooking us homemade burgers.
They were rapturously received and they had the full works available - seeded bun with lettuce, tomato, gherkins, mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and more. We then finished off with ice cream & brownies and a mug of black coffee.

When we got home, Jarett and Christina organised a meeting in which we practised certain songs in Spanish and some of the dramas we had learned earlier in the week.
 Partly due to tiredness and partly due to stress perhaps, certain points of tension were visible and short-tempered quick remarks were occasionally exchanged.
Luckily it was suggested that the guys go into one room to practise and the girls in another, so us men prayed for harmony in the group and to not lose focus on God through pride or tiredness. I have vast experience of girls and guys annoying each other to the point of heated tension due to tiredness, so the separation of sexes quite possibly was a vital act in preserving team harmony for the evening.
When we returned to the room, all was better and though we put in more hard work and were all knackered by the end, we all went to bed on good terms.

Today was a really big day.
Seeing the squalor that those kids live in really affected us all, but luckily we transferred our emotions into love and hard work to help the family as best we can, and we are all eager to get back to helping them tomorrow.
Also, it was the first time in which tempers started to flare up and almost led to a full-scale argument within the team.
However due to us guys making slight concessions to the girls in the name of harmony and also a renewal of focus midway through the evening, all was well and we did some good practising.
Thank God for that.

If you are reading this and feel inclined to, please pray for the family we spent time with today. The mother is slightly ill which I forgot to mention earlier, and how she manages to put food on the table for all the kids is nothing short of a miracle.
They have so little, and yet we have so much and complain that we don't have more.
They need our support in whichever ways we can give it.

Looking forward to tomorrow and seeing some positive and long-lasting results that will help them out.

Enjoy your day.

JG