Poverty

I don't know if you ever get used to seeing poverty or if you ever should for that matter! But every once in a while God opens your eyes again to the needs of people around you and He did that just the other day!

We took a group of about 11 Bible School students from Providence College to a small fishing village probably about 50 miles up the coast called something like Sahuimaro I believe. Let me just back up a little bit more first. Two days before this, we went to another fishing village a little ways up the coast where, together with a local pastor from that village, Pastor Guillermo we spent an evening playing with the kids and showing the Jesus film as an outreach into his community. As we were there, he shared his passion for this neighboring village, Sahuimaro, a very poor village with no church, and very little Christian influence. In a couple of days, he, along with the students of a local Mexican biblical training center, were going to spend a day in this town, going door to door, sharing Christ with the people and inviting them to a service he was planning to having with them later in the week. He was exciting at the possibility of having us join them with a kids program and the Jesus film.

So, we packed up the vans and made the two hour trek, first down nice four lane highway, turned into two lane pavement, then pavement with some potholes, the pavement with LOTS of potholes, to pavement which really should no longer be called pavement, to finally probably about 10 miles of continuous washboard. As we neared the village though, the scenery changed drastically as we neared the coast. From desert wasteland densely populated with cactus, large sand dunes of white sand rose up spotted with a type of pine trees. We drove up over a hill and descended into a narrow valley with a hill covered in cactus on one side and a sand dune on the other side.

The village, not having any power or water, was a collection of wood, tin, and tar paper thrown together with the houses sitting very close together, with the occasional cement block structure. Because of the sand dunes all around, there wasn't much room to build. But not only that, as we got there, the wind was howling off the water and I couldn't imagine you would want to build your house too much in the open anyways. The told us that the village would go from 200 to up to 800 people during the high fishing season, though you could hardly imagine half that many people living there in such a small area.

We settled in an area that has been relatively cleaned by the students for our use, at least with as much of the garbage cleared out as possible, and set out to invite the children to come. A modest crowd of about 20 children braved the wind and the blowing sand and we had a great time with them. You could bet we were the only attraction in town that day or that week or probably even month for that matter!

Two things in particular struck me during out brief stay there. One was the passion that Pastor Guillermo had for this place. God had definitely put a passion in his heart for it. It was a dirty, hard to get to place, and with the conditions, the wind and the sand blowing in your face, not an altogether pleasant place to be. And perhaps others had come and gone to share the gospel or reach out to these people, but no one had come and stayed. His desire was to come back and build into this community and eventually raise up a church. He had plans to come during popular party time Semana Santa and even to spend his vacation time here in this village, spending a number of days working with the children and the adults. Praise God for this pastor and his desire to reach his own people!

The second thing that struck me as we were there was the idea of poverty and wondering how God sees poverty. The physical poverty in this place as more than evident in the tar-paper, wooden structures for houses and the lack of basic services such as power and water. I know that God has a huge heart for those in physical need, many times commanding us to watch out and take care of the poor. But spiritual poverty is not always so evident, yet I know that God's greatest concern is for those who do not know Him. Looking over this village it was easy to see the physical poverty but if I had God's x-ray vision, what would I see? What does He see? How would He see our village or town, or wherever we live? If I think about my "hometown" Winkler, a small city with many beautiful homes, carefully manicured yards, what would He see? What would His x-ray vision find? Would He rather see a ghost-town, a bunch of shacks thrown together with spare pieces of wood, tin and tar-paper?

And yet even in this poor village of Sahuimaro, there were little lights that were shining. Dispersed among the tar-paper homes were a couple sturdy, block homes. As we were winding things down and preparing to show the film, a man came up to me and asked me where we were from and whether we were Christians. He shared how he himself was a Christian as well and was excited to see us here. Even in the darkest of places, God has His light shining, whether it was this man or Pastor Guillermo.

Give us eyes to see the true needs of the people around us and help us to lead them to You, the only One who can truly meet those needs!