Chuk Muk

As the days pass by, it is getting harder and harder to take all of this. You know...the good kind of hard. Yesterday, we said good-bye to our VBS kids after having spent four days playing and loving on them. Yesterday was our last day of construction on the two houses we came down to build. And today...today we tied it all together. Of course, if you want to see all the pictures...go here.

There is a community between Santiago and Cerro de Oro that is entirely made up of people relocated from Panabaj. Their homes were washed out in the mudslides and they were moved to government housing in four different sectors. The entire "new city" is called Chuk Muk (pronounced chook-mook) and is the only government housing in all of Guatemala. The houses are much bigger than most of the people have probably ever had and are actually very luxurious in comparison to the homes we see in the surrounding communities. Unfortunately, in the move, these people didn't get to take anything with them and are literally without.

In 2 Corinthians 9:11 it reads: You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

I feel like this verse is so vital to keep in the forefront of our minds. God has so richly blessed us, not just each person on this trip but our country in general. We are so richly blessed that we buy bigger and bigger houses to store more and more stuff. We have money just lying around, in jars or pigs or bank accounts, that we may or may not touch for months or years at a time. We can justify the things we buy yet find it hard to hand over the same amount of money from something we can't physically hold. I am not saying we need to never save or that big houses are bad...but what are we doing with the over abundance that God has given to us. What are we doing with the overflow of blessings? Are we overflowing on to someone else? Isn't that what God is calling us to do?

I am not telling you this to brag on how amazing we are. I am telling you the stories of giving because I feel very honored that we are able to give. I feel so humbled that we are able to overflow on the people in this community, in such a seemingly simple way, yet it makes such a huge difference to them. In Chuk Muk, we were able to provide cots for 40 families. Cots. Metal framed beds that fold up in half, thin mattresses that would be an awful night sleep for us and uncovered springs that immediately made me think of little kids getting their hands pinched in them. Cots. Something to sleep on besides the concrete floor.

And those 40 families? Their children go to the school where we held VBS. Not only are their little precious minds being taken care of during the day while they learn to read and write and pray, but now their little bodies will be able to sleep better at night. Their parents will be able to sleep better at night. Their grandparents can rest their achey bones on a soft mattress instead of a solid surface. They can all rest...a little easier tonight.

We partner with a church in Santiago called El Buen Pastor (meaning the Good Sheppard). Pastor Diego has become a good friend of our church and helps facilitate all this giving so we can help convey the message that the church is helping to provide all these things instead of those "rich white people" that come in to town twice a year. We have learned that the second you hand even ONE piece of gum out to a child in the town, you are expected to give to EVERYONE. And they get feisty about it too. We learned that just handing stuff out was counterproductive to our work here. It was creating hostility towards us if the people didn't get something or between each other if one person received more/better than the other. We want to share Jesus with these people...not greed! Pastor Diego is amazing at sharing the message with the people that God provided this stuff and he uses people like us or those from their church to make these things happen.

What an amazing feeling. We stood in a circle with the community of people, with our friend Pastor Diego and with our translators as we all prayed over these beds and the people receiving them. Do you have any idea how moving it is to hear these people pray? They pray out loud, with full voice and in their own words, right along with Pastor Diego. They cover their faces and all look like they are about to cry. Most of us on the team DID cry...big ol alligator tears mixed between joy and sorrow, heart break and happiness. And as they carried their beds off to their homes with HUGE smiles on their faces, we couldn't help but smile right along with them. Some of them held our hands and thanked us. Some of them kissed our cheeks as they whispered sweet sentiments of which we couldn't understand.

As the moisture from their lips started to dissipate from my face, more tears came. Thank you Jesus for these moments, these life changing , heart shaking moments. I pray those kisses will never dry.