Here's an excerpt from an email I sent to my coworkers today - my first day back to my "full time" job. I thought it was appropriate to share with the rest of the G2GH family to give a small peek into what has been going through my head for the last week....
Ken
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I just wanted to share with you - briefly (is that possible?) - about my trip to Honduras that I just returned from. Each time I go, I anticipate that I've "seen it all before" and am often surprised that there are still things for me to discover - not only about the community, the people, and the places... but about myself too. This trip was no exception.
When I started Give2GiveHope two years ago in 2009, we had information on 90 children. The next year when I returned in 2010, I anticipated that we'd have maybe 50 more children come to our registration day. I was overwhelmed when 200 new children showed up to enroll in our program. This year, I vowed to be more prepared and took enough supplies for 150 additional children - thinking that maybe our total number of children in the program would top out at maybe 450ish (I mean how many more children could there possibly be in this community??). Needless to say, I was overwhelmed once again. We now have information on approximately 580 children... 280 new children came to our registration day!
During this years' registration day, I was overcome with grief and heartache several times as I came face-to-face with the enormous needs of the children and the sheer number of the needs represented. I saw a father, who could not walk well, struggling to climb up the stairs in the church we do our registration in. In his arms, he carried his little daughter who was smiling because she had just received a toothbrush and a new pair of flip flops. This man had walked miles and miles to our location - and would have miles to walk back to where he came from - up rugged mountainous roads, carrying his daughter, limping on one leg. It would have been a difficult task for me to do even with two good working legs. And he did all of this just for the hope that his daughter might be sponsored... for the sheer possibility that maybe someone would choose his baby girl and she would be able to have food, medicines, and hope. The desperation of the situation overwhelmed me and brought me to tears and I sat there in the church with the chaos of children and parents swirling around me and I had a heart-to-heart with God about how the needs are so great and I felt powerless to even begin to meet them.
After I had regained my composure (mostly), I went to check the station where one of our translators was going over the ‘rules' of the program with the parents of the children. She turned to me and said, "Ken, these two children here have been abandoned by their parents and this lady is a neighbor who is trying to care for them (along with her own 3 children). Can she sign the forms so they can be part of the program even if she's not their legal guardian?" ... another wave of grief swept over me. How can both parents just discard these two helpless children - leaving them to figure out how to feed themselves, how to protect themselves? What must those children be feeling? Fear? Despair? Worthlessness? It was just unimaginable for me to even think about! Of course, my immediate answer was "YES!" (said with a cracking voice).
I'm still working through the things I saw and heard there and trying to get my mind around things like this. I'm also learning that I will probably never become "immune" to my Honduras experiences and that no matter how much I think I'm prepared, I'm probably not completely ready to be faced with situations that are so dramatically different from my life here in the US (where we have soup kitchens and homeless shelters and unemployment and Medicaid/Medicare and places like St. Mary's where people can turn for help and government assistance programs) ... There, when you are abandoned, there is no Dept. of Human Services to step in to put you into foster care. When you are hungry there are no food stamps to take to the store so your belly doesn't ache. When bad people come to hurt you, there are no local police to come and protect you.
It's just such a different world than we live in ... for all of the problems in America today, we are truly a very blessed people!
