time
the flight back provides time to reflect…
time to reflect on the rain. some reports (along with steve/stu/carlos) say 330 cm in a few hours that one night! i hear it was actually 330 mm with is still over a foot in 4 hours! i think i am in the latter camp. but when all that water ends up in the river it rises out of control. and the mud on the hillsides just can’t hold anymore and gives way…
time to reflect on the power of nature. we saw where homes had been swept off their foundations like they were made of paper.
time to reflect on the families we built new homes for. just hours after they escaped the flood and came back to find their homes in ruins a team of men rolled in with materials and energy to build them new homes. the irony is the impact they made on our lives. their grateful hearts, warm smiles & ability to weather this storm astounded us and touched our lives. john even had a marriage proposal!
time to reflect on the pastor and his family in san vicente. they’ve been going non stop since last sunday morning. driving & praying & cooking & preaching & caring & digging & delivering & caring & always always always thanking God for strength and ability. i think we have lots to learn from our friends in el salvador. maybe its time for our churches to learn from the meek & humble & poor. maybe they are the blessed. maybe the rich & famous don’t have as much to offer as we thought. maybe i’m to blame. maybe i’m one of those people have good ideas, but don’t know how to live them out… all the planning and strategizing we do and in the end we forget to simply love our neighbors…
time to reflect that “the hours go shorter as the days go by”. (bruce cockburn) that we only have so much time to do what we were meant to do. to be who we were meant to be. entire families had no idea that as they crawled into bed last saturday night, that they would not be waking up in the morning. rather, they were swept away in rubble before they even knew what hit them. switchfoot sings – ‘it’ll be a day like this, when the world caves in”. how true for them and how true for me.
justice
last week a young man was quite upset that we were not going to build his house. his house had been planned for our week, but with the many who had lost their homes in the flooding and mudslides we decided to help in the most needed locations. therefore, he was frustrated and angry and disappointed and understandably so… during the week he was one of the guys who helped demolish and work along side us to rebuild homes that had been destroyed. i think his frustration was softened a bit by witnessing what had gone on around him – his ‘world’ got a bit bigger as it did for all of us on the trip. well today he got paid for his work last week & we built his house. (the team finished 2 in today) i spoke with him a bit. his smile was confirmation enough that all was good between us. i was no longer ‘malo’ (bad in spanish), but we are amigos. justice came to his house. he gave me mercy and forgave me in return. i thought of micah 6:8 today -
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
–
this was a good day for me. to physically help all day long. to reconcile with my hermano. to get this team on their feet for the remainder of the week. i am thankful for a wife who supports me in so many ways. i could not ask for anyone better. i’m hoping she’ll go on a date with me when i get home 
One more thing. thanks to carlos for dealing with the young man last week. His calm presence, confidence and direct, but loving approach made today possible for me… muchos gracious mi hermano.
trent
mud
we spent today digging mud out of 2 homes.
15 people. 15 shovels. 5 pics. 5 wheelbarrows. 3 steel bars.
we estimated the mud we dumped into the street from one house was approximately 50 square meters and he has a long way to go yet. his backyard is still full of mud with 3 vehicles stuck up to the tires/door handles. it felt good to help – to do on behalf of our team what we would have done with one more day – to get dirty – to see a change by the end of the day. i just can’t believe how much time this will all take to get rid of the mud in these homes. the streets look more like mud soup than anything else. i’m tired tonight. the one astounding thing to me what the density and weight of the mud. we had to use a pic ax to break it apart, then shovel into the wheelbarrows. how anyone survived is beyond me. the family fled out their backdoor in the middle of the night with a 17 day old baby. when they opened the door, the water was up to their armpits. somehow, they fled to higher ground and lived. 
Newspaper articles
well, its been a while since i wrote anything, but i need somewhere to document my thoughts so here it goes. i am sitting in a hotel room in san vicente contemplating the chaos around me and frustrated by the misrepresentation in the newspaper article last week. thus, i sent a letter to the editor and will post it here to vent my frustrations… here is article i wrote.
–
i am the guy who was interviewed for the article regarding our team in san vicente, el salvador. i was disappointed at the way it made myself and us as a team sound – a bit full of ourselves, which is the opposite of what i intended to get across… the point of saying our ‘wallets were fat’ was to make the point that we hoard and leave others with little. Not that we are better than anyone else b/c we have money. in fact, we are worse in many ways because we live in such a way (with great waste & consumption) that forces others to live with little. there is enough for everyone’s need, not everyone’s greed. we are not all that great in calgary and i do not for a second want to be viewed as such. richness is in family & well being & life & health, not in fat wallets…
–
all but john and i have left for home, so i will likely write a bit over the next few days to collect my thoughts from this past week.
martyn
we returned home on wednesday, and went straight into prepping the martyn joseph show on thursday night that we organized. 50 friends got together in the basement of our local community center for a fantastic evening. martyn, as always, put on a great show. it was our honor to have him in our home for dinner before the show as well. after dinner, we left martyn to prep at our house while we went to get the place ready for the show. i went back to get him 10 minutes to show time, he hopped in his car to follow me and i sped off like the wind wanting to get back quickly, forgetting i had martyn following behind with no idea where on earth he was going. about a block down the road i remembered that i was supposed to be leading someone and that no one was behind me! oops. i went back to the house and he was gone. i ripped down to the community center to see if he had found his own way… not there. i drove back to the house checking out every car the passed us by. when i pulled onto our street again, he was there waiting. i rolled down my window and he said, ‘got a bit excited there did we?’ well, embarrassing moment #1 was surpassed by embarrassing moment #2 as he told the whole story during the show and topped it off with a ‘made up on the fly’ ballad about the whole thing with the chorus going something like ‘trent, won’t you please come back for me – i don’t know where i am’ now my kids ask to hear the song about me coming back for martyn on the ipod! i tell them he made it up that night… it’s their favorite song! annah laughed herself silly while martyn sang. all in all it was a great night of food, drink, music, poetry, friends & hope. thanks to everyone that came and to martyn for making yourself at home with our family and sharing your heart and life with us. check out martyn joseph online at www.martynjoseph.com and itunes to get his music.
deserted islands
Ed’s future son in law, Carlos, took us a boat ride to the far end of the island. we cruised past fishing villages with ‘boat only access’. much to our surprise, we ended up on an island you could fit inside a football field – mostly sand (really more like flour), a few palm trees, and lots of treasures washed up on shore. we spend a few hours there. playing with the kids, swimming, snorkeling, sand castling, treasure hunting, and exploring. what a day! one of those days that will go down in the record books as a family. everyone loved it. one day, when another world comes over this one, the beauty and wonder of this day on the island, will be like all the others…
a huge thank you is in order for ed & jami. not only for this great day on the water, but for every day. for putting up with a family with 6 little kids. for welcoming them into their home. for disrupting their lives. for showing us around. for sharing their hearts with us. our family has been taught what hospitality and grace mean in new ways. thank you ed & jami.
strays
seems fitting to do some stray thoughts & pictures in a land where annah, our animal lover, quit counting dogs after 400. (it didn’t take long) here is a shot of the kids helping some teenagers from punta gorda try to jump start their van. it didn’t work. they had to borrow a battery from some guy driving by.
pic taken from the beach in front of the house we have been renting for the past 2 weeks. just 5 minutes from ed & jami’s place. the owners have used it 3-4 weeks in the last 2 years since they bought it. that means we’ve used it half as much as they have. we are so grateful for this blessing to stay in.
moonlight shot taken from our deck. magical.
our friend gerry – the spear fisherman from punta gorda who caught our fish with his homemade spear. also snagged some lobster for us… he dives around 40 feet on the average – just holding his breath by the way. attacked by a shark one time. made it to the boat after hiding behind a rock under water for a couple minutes! went home and couldn’t talk for an hour til he calmed down & stopped crying. couldn’t even get out what was wrong to his family…
isaiah with Doctora Gomez. Her and her husband are both honduran doctors on the island. took great care of isaiah. gave us her cell number and asked us to call back the next day to let her know how he was doing. also told us she would pray for him.
kl’s favorite veggie market
police station – 11am
so Danilo is driving his tourist mini bus (toyota hiace) down the hill, sees me slowing down to turn left, thinks i’m pulling over so decides to pass. i turn left, he is passing, the rest is history. we wait about 1.5 hrs for the policia to show up. they hear both sides and tell us to meet at the police station the next day at 11am. kl had an appointment, so there i was with 4 kids (coloring books in hand), 2 avis representatives (one who came to the accident and another to translate), Danilo & the traffic police chief in a room no bigger than 8×8. he ruled in my favor as their code says you cannot pass in an intersection. then he looks at us says, ‘so who’s gonna pay for what?’ i guess the police decision only really decides whose fault it was, not who is liable to pay. they leave it up to the 2 parties to come to an agreement and you cannot leave the office until you do so and they have it in writing. i kind of like the system in a way. it forces reconciliation and cooperation. anyways, if i push it and make him pay we would have to work out a deal where he pays whatever he can afford each week until it is paid off. about $10/wk seems to be the going rate for situations like this with low income folks.
Danilo has 4 kids, lives in the colonia we visited the week before where clean water has just been brought in, makes very little as a driver, it would take him 10 years to pay this off. i told him that my family was miraculously uninjured in the accident. i told him his families well being is more important than a truck door & that i couldn’t make his family suffer for years to pay for this. i told him i would pay for it. Danilo’s eyes filled with tears. he shook my hand saying ‘mi amigo’ over and over. i like this backward third world system. you leave as friends rather than never seeing one another again and letting insurance agents take care of it all. …and like everywhere else – friendship costs a bit.
backpacks
isaiah & annah asked their classmates to collect school supplies for us give out to those in need. we took along 50 loaded packs. more & more i’m realizing the challenges of giving things out. i believe in the redistribution of goods, but that is a tricky thing to accomplish. Ghandi said something like this – “we have enough for eveyone’s need, not everyone’s greed”. so here we are trying to give away some backpacks with simple school supplies and how do we get the stuff in the hands of the people who could us it the most? go door to door and ask to see their current backpack or lack there of? give one to each of the poorest looking houses? buy 600 more and give one to each house? and just giving stuff away seems to erode the dignity of the receiver and creates dependance & begging. so we tried a couple ideas. first, we gave some of the packs to a friend we have made who runs a small store out her basement to sell at a very low price. (like 10% of cost) a bit of the money would go back to her for her time, the rest would be donated to the school to buy more school supplies. we hoped this would create a sense of dignity (as they were suppying their own kids with their needs), and prevent dependancy as future teams and ed & jami’s 40’ container arrives with tons of stuff to help. it was a bit of an experiment for sure. within about 2 hours the backpacks were all sold and we had families trying to find the white family with 4 kids and a seemingly endless supply of backpacks to give out. a family showed up at our door after 4 hours of hunting for us since 7am! our friend who did the selling called ed & jami the same night we had dropped off the packs asking for 70 more. she only had 30 to begin with and it took 4 hockey bags full to get them here! (that’s another story with 4 kids & luggage & hockey bags & airports…)
we gave the rest of the packs to the principal of the school along with some cup stacks that friends donated. it’s an understatement to say she was overjoyed! she told us many kids carry their books in grocery bags. the supplies inside the packs were perfect as well. she kept saying ‘excelente’ over & over again. she has been at the school for years and you can see that she has given her life and her heart to the kids in punta gorda. we felt really good giving her backpacks to get into the hands of those in need. we just hope she doesn’t have a lineup of people outside her door once word spreads that she has some as well.
all in all, the needs are obvious. we need to help. how, is the question. thank you to everyone who participated in this much needed cause. i am sure the backpacks will be the first of many necessities we help our friends out with.
(in front of the punta gorda school -the principal is on the right, behind isaiah and ben…)
crash
(the red truck is ours)
sorry for the lack of posts lately. i hope to do a couple more in the next 2 days. we have been pretty busy delivering back packs, swimming with friends from punta gorda (fun to be the only white folks on the beach) and selling hand painted (by our kids) seashells as a fundraiser for the schools new bathroom.
while treking around the island kl and i have been chatting a lot about injustice. the brutal conditions on the shipping boats which brings us all our cheap goods in canada has got me thinking and got me frustrated. i would fight for my rights if i didn’t get paid. in fact, i have a contractor that owes me money back home who isn’t returning my calls. i have already planned out the process to get the money. but these guys don’t have a plan. they don’t have a voice to cry injustice. no one will listen. no one cares but their families back home they’re stuck. if i’m supposed to ‘do unto others…’ and ‘love my neighbor as myself’ – then i’ve gotta put in some work here. i’ve gotta be a voice for them if i can. i’ve gotta get a plan together of how to help as i have already done for myself back home. it’s hard to really love my neighbor as myself…
then today we had a bit of a car accident. (don’t worry mom, we’re all fine) a guy named Jobbi pulled over who could translate into spanish for me – and spent the better part of 2 hours pleading my case to the cops! it’s good for self sufficient guys like me to need help. it’s good for my soul to need someone to come along and plead my case. it’s good for me to need someone to speak on my behalf when i cannot do it for myself. the crash today taught me more than the fact that one needs to shoulder check on a one lane/solid lined highway before you make a left turn in case someone is passing you at high speeds in honduras. maybe we need each other… maybe i learn the hard way.
finally, if you have time, please read the journal entry called ‘five sisters’ found at the following link. it’s by a friend who is a singer songwriter from the UK. my heart goes out to the family. http://www.martynjoseph.com/diary.php
below are a few ‘happier’ pictures than the one above…
