Well, this trip as a whole for me was rather exciting! i had never travelled west before and only till a few days before flying did i realise that i was actually going there! i didnt speak a word of spanish and so it was fun trying to learn it off the children that i was teaching it to!! but they were very forgiving!
guatemala is a beautiful country geographically, but then there are the rich, and there are the incredibly poor living side by side, though one is in a big house with a garden, and the other is in a loosely built tin and cardboard hut in a dirty field, and is despised by its neighbours.
the way the women are treated is terrible. they are beaten by their drunk husbands, and that is just their way of life, they cant really do anything about it by themselves, they just stay there and look after the kids and serve. but most of the poor women are illiterate and they depend on the husband for the very little money that he brings home after having drunk most of it away.
its a dangerous country with the gangs that rule, you really dont want to get on their path because if you do you usually end up dead if you dont do what they tell you to do, or give them money. you can hear the gun shots in the night, and in the day there is the morbid funeral music that is heard loudly in the whole town of yet another death. its a very depressive atmosphere.
the children at first were so so shy, it took a few months for us to really have fun and dance around and laugh together, but when we did it was just so beautiful! to come to El Refugio for them is a life saver, they get a glimpse of something else, they hear about Jesus and experience his love, and they see that they have a future that not necessarily is about joining a gang and being filled with hatred, or having to be treated like dirt because there is no other way that they see to live.
to be able to let a little light into this darkened area was such a priveledge for me and it just opened my eyes to more of the needs in this world, and what a world without Jesus looks like, and the need to let his love shine in as many dark places as possible.
No comments:
Post a Comment