The end of days – God’s counterstrike of Hope. The time is coming.
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“How did you learn your Spanish?” My friends would ask.
Through the streets –
“Por medio de los calles,” I’d say. It was in the streets of Santo Domingo, Costa Rica in the 80s that I learned my Spanish – It was also where I realized that one of the best ways to love my neighbor was to give him an opportunity to help himself. You can give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day and probably build a dependency - as Jesus himself noted – However, if you teach a man to fish you can feed him for a lifetime.
We can teach the world to fish…
In Costa Rica, I became friends with a future missionary to Guatemala – Paul Ernest. Paul was a big guy with an even bigger heart. He loved everyone and especially the children. He wanted to help the young to find Christ and to help them gain a hopeful future via – getting an education, having basic medicines, safe housing as well as having enough food and clean water. Paul loved people and he was not a stand-around and watch other people suffer kind of guy. He saw something that needed doing and he did it. In Costa Rica, it came to Paul’s attention that Guatemala was suffering the effects of several devastating earthquakes and a long civil war – He went, he saw, he moved. The most prominent victims were the children. He was off to do battle – Paul moved himself and his wife and two kids to Guatemala City in the late 80s.
Fast forward - early 90s. I kept in touch with Paul and his work with the mission he founded in Guatemala –
Christian Challenge Missions. I kept up on how his work was going. One day I hear from Paul and he tells me the mission was endeavoring to help a very desperate population in a remote village deep in the mountains and hills about 100 miles from the capital –
El Triumfo. He asked if I would want to see what they were doing. I did.
In visiting El Triumfo, my world got a little bigger - I discovered some very desperate folks – my new neighbors.
El Triumfo was a gathering of homes and one acre plots of about 2,000 people. The area had no power, no running water, no buildings or roads except for the dusty rock strewn path that brought us into the area – We weren’t quite sure how our four wheel truck got us into the place. The area was more impoverished than any place I had ever seen. The average life expectancy was 35 years. People died of maladies such as dysentery, infections, malaria and influenza. Child bearing was often followed by funerals. The area was too remote for doctors, teachers, midwives, engineers, and other "helping" professionals to reach. As we toured the area and met the families it became clear something had to be done – But what? The mission had a very talented Canadian Engineer who worked in Guatemala City – Chuck St. Louis. Chuck and the mission’s local leader, Hugo Gomez, had an idea – La Casa Grande…The Big House.
Chuck said for $15,000 we could build a large building that could be a place for a school, for worship, a medical clinic and a place to store food and pharmaceuticals. He said it could be built so that doctors or midwives could stay on a temporary or semi-permanent basis. The place could also be a center for adult vocational and agricultural training. The vision was also to sink a well so there would be a central location for clean water for the village. The building was to serve as a versatile community center – A place of hope. Chuck said he and his staff would provide the labor if someone could find the cash for the materials. I told Chuck if some of the local Guatemalan churches could come up with 10% of the monies I could come up with the balance in the United States.
I got my good-willed friends together in Overland Park, Kansas and told them what was going on in El Triumfo, Guatemala and about the opportunity to do something for our Central American neighbors. I told these friends that I was in for $5,000 and that I’d like each one to seriously consider a $1,000 commitment. We raised the money and The Big House was built and the well was sunk over two years at a price of $20,000.
Five years after the building had been built the community changed dramatically – The people’s medical care and education went from almost nothing to something approaching adequate. La Casa Grande became a center of spiritual and physical revival. The average life expectancy shot from 35 years to 45 years in five short years.
$20,000 dollars gave 2,000 people ten more years of life…$20,000 = 20,000 years…A dollar per human life year. Another way of looking at it my $5,000 contribution or one month’s salary bought 5000 years or 5000 years/70 year life = more than 70 lives.
The best news of all - We’ve earned the right to proceed with the gospel message in El Triumfo. Aside from 20,000 years of hope on this planet - we’re seeing hundreds of eternities gained for His kingdom. Leverage for life…
A great work of God – A miracle.
The church and people of goodwill have the capacity to extrapolate this model a thousand times a thousand. That time has come. The church has the ability to make a counter-strike against the world’s evil, the scourge of poverty and the tsunami of hopelessness that has enveloped the planet.
The end of days – God’s counterstrike. The time is coming.
::c:v::
