OnFire Encouragement Letter
Onfire #226 Lessons From a Lawnmower
Hi Folks:
The boys have finished school. Mark won an academic award. Ian is now at Camp Wildwood, working there for the summer. And Zen, our Japanese student, attended the prom and safe-grad last night.
Starting on Monday, we’ll be on vacation on PEI for three weeks. We’re looking forward to the break and plan to build a new raft.
Blessings.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I once took apart an old lawnmower. After pulling off the covers to expose the inside, I was fascinated to watch all the parts work together as I turned the drive shaft. Every piece had a job to do in order to convert energy into work. The carburetor mixed air and gasoline. The piston propelled the drive shaft, but only when the spark plug ignited the fuel at the perfect moment. The valves controlled the intake and exhaust from the cylinder. An oiler lubricated the engine, while the seals kept oil in and dirt out.
Each part has an obvious purpose. This is something we find hard as people. We struggle with knowing our purpose, and we all want to know we have one. I contrast this with our cats, who are content to sleep approximately 16 hours a day. I don’t think they spend much time between naps pondering their place in the universe. We, one the other hand, want to know there is purpose and meaning in life. Surely our toil and effort is worth something? There has to be more than simply living and working, eating and breathing.
As we continue reading the very first verse of Titus, we find that Paul understands his place and importance in God’s work. He is a servant and apostle “for the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness...”* He knows that his purpose is to lead people to faith in Jesus Christ and teach them to grow in godliness.
Paul’s purpose begins with his identity. We often tie who we are to what we do, so that we are ministers or teachers, mechanics, electricians, accountants, or some other vocation. The problem is, we become confused if we can no longer do what we did. If something affects our job - like layoff, poor working conditions, a change in health , or retirement - we lose our sense of purpose. But Paul begins with who he is and this leads him to his purpose. He is a “servant and apostle for the faith. of God’s elect...” If we put identity first, then we can change what we do without needing to change who we are.
Paul’s sense of purpose is not self-focussed. He is a not a servant and apostle for his own benefit. His mission is to strengthen the “faith of the elect” and increase their knowledge of the truth. Again, we often turn this around, looking for ways to make ourselves feel better instead of serving others but God did not fashion us for our own good. We will only ever discover our purpose as we serve others.
Paul knew the importance of what he did. He called people to faith and taught them how to be godly. This is important stuff. We often feel that what we do is not important, or, we look at someone else and conclude that our contribution is weak by comparison.
We cannot do this however. For starters, it is not realistic to compare ourselves to someone else because no matter how gifted or talented we are, it seems we will always be able to find someone who appears to be more gifted or with abilities we feel are more important. I know people who run themselves down because they are not like the Apostle Paul. We all have a role in God’s kingdom if we are willing to do our part. Just because one role puts a person in the public eye does not mean other, less public roles, are not important.
It is good to be able to complete this sentence: “What I do is important in God’s kingdom because...”
I hope this helps. Be on fire.
Troy
OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church, Moncton NB Canada. This letter published June 23, 2010. *Scripture taken from the New International Version. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at www.onfireletter.blogspot.com
OnFire is an occasional letter on Christian faith and character
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
OnFire #225 Temporary Amnesia
OnFire Encouragement Letter
OnFire #225 Temporary Amnesia
While at a children’s program when we were young, my brother and I were playing a game with the other boys when he was hit on the head. Even though he was stunned at first, all seemed well and we continued with our game.
But then after a few minutes he started asking weird questions like, “Where are we?” We thought he was joking, but he persisted. “Stop messing around,” we told him. His confusion continued and caught the attention of the leaders when he asked, “Who am I?” Again, we thought he was joking and told him to stop, but the leaders recognized signs of a concussion and called our mother, who took him to the hospital and had him checked out.
“Who am I?” Whether for a child with a mild head injury, or an adult trying to make way in life, identity is a huge issue. Lately we had someone travel through our area who visited our church. Her quest was to find her birth parents in order to answer that same question.
As we start Paul’s letter to Titus, we see Paul’s sense of identity and meaning in the first three verses. Often we skip over these introductory words to get into the “meat” of a book, but we’ll miss something important if we do. Only Romans contains a longer personal address, and in it we see valuable insight into what Paul believes about himself.
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ...” Servant and apostle are Paul’s two favourite descriptions of himself. In almost every letter he uses one or the other of these words to describe himself, but only here and in Romans does he use both together.
We tend to think of “servant” as a demeaning title, but this is not so in the Bible. Jesus is God’s holy servant (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30), doing the will of the Father as the suffering servant (Isaiah 42, 53; Matthew 12:18-20).
Paul was once “Saul,” violent persecutor of Christians, but this changed when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and appointed him “servant” and “witness.” (Acts 26:16) From this moment Paul considered it an honour to be God’s servant and a privilege to do what the Lord assigned (1 Corinthians 3:5). For Paul, servanthood is a gift of grace (Ephesians 3:7).
The idea of apostle and witness are closely tied. The main prerequisite of an apostle was to have witnessed the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 1:21-22). In this way apostles would be Jesus’ witnesses (Acts 1:8). Paul knew that he experienced the resurrection in a different way from the rest, but he was a witness nonetheless, and a grateful one indeed since he knew he did not deserve to be called apostle (1Corinthians 15:8-9).
Paul knows that he is “servant” and “apostle,” but there is more. He is a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. His identity is tied to Jesus Christ. Without this connection, the rest is meaningless. There are lots of people who serve, and lots of people with a message, but only one Jesus Christ and Paul holds unswervingly to Him. It defines him more than anything else and gives him purpose and focus, as we shall see next week.
When my brother was hit in the head, he developed temporary amnesia and it was very confusing for him. Sometimes when we are feeling confused about life, it is because we have developed amnesia. We have forgotten that we are Christ-ian, that we are “in Christ,” and we need to recover this identity.
I’ve included some verses below which illustrate this sense of “in Christ.” You can find more by using your computer and doing a search on “in Christ.” You will be surprised and enlightened to discover all we are as people “in Christ.”
I hope this helps. Be on fire.
Troy
Rom 8:1; 8: 37-39; 12:4-5; 15:17; 1 Cor 1:2, 4; 1:30; 4:17; 15:22; 16:24; 2 Cor 1:21-22; 2:14; 5:17-21; Gal 3:26-29; Eph 1:1-3ff; 1:13-14; 2:6-10; 2:13; Phil 1:1; 3:8-9; 3:1; 4:7; 4:19; Col 1:28; 2:9-10; 1 Thes 5:16-18; 2 Tim 3:12; Philemon 1:6; 1 Peter 5:10-11;
OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church in Moncton NB Canada. This letter published June 15, 2010. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at www.onfireletter.blogspot.com
OnFire #225 Temporary Amnesia
While at a children’s program when we were young, my brother and I were playing a game with the other boys when he was hit on the head. Even though he was stunned at first, all seemed well and we continued with our game.
But then after a few minutes he started asking weird questions like, “Where are we?” We thought he was joking, but he persisted. “Stop messing around,” we told him. His confusion continued and caught the attention of the leaders when he asked, “Who am I?” Again, we thought he was joking and told him to stop, but the leaders recognized signs of a concussion and called our mother, who took him to the hospital and had him checked out.
“Who am I?” Whether for a child with a mild head injury, or an adult trying to make way in life, identity is a huge issue. Lately we had someone travel through our area who visited our church. Her quest was to find her birth parents in order to answer that same question.
As we start Paul’s letter to Titus, we see Paul’s sense of identity and meaning in the first three verses. Often we skip over these introductory words to get into the “meat” of a book, but we’ll miss something important if we do. Only Romans contains a longer personal address, and in it we see valuable insight into what Paul believes about himself.
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ...” Servant and apostle are Paul’s two favourite descriptions of himself. In almost every letter he uses one or the other of these words to describe himself, but only here and in Romans does he use both together.
We tend to think of “servant” as a demeaning title, but this is not so in the Bible. Jesus is God’s holy servant (Acts 3:13, 26; 4:27, 30), doing the will of the Father as the suffering servant (Isaiah 42, 53; Matthew 12:18-20).
Paul was once “Saul,” violent persecutor of Christians, but this changed when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and appointed him “servant” and “witness.” (Acts 26:16) From this moment Paul considered it an honour to be God’s servant and a privilege to do what the Lord assigned (1 Corinthians 3:5). For Paul, servanthood is a gift of grace (Ephesians 3:7).
The idea of apostle and witness are closely tied. The main prerequisite of an apostle was to have witnessed the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus (Acts 1:21-22). In this way apostles would be Jesus’ witnesses (Acts 1:8). Paul knew that he experienced the resurrection in a different way from the rest, but he was a witness nonetheless, and a grateful one indeed since he knew he did not deserve to be called apostle (1Corinthians 15:8-9).
Paul knows that he is “servant” and “apostle,” but there is more. He is a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. His identity is tied to Jesus Christ. Without this connection, the rest is meaningless. There are lots of people who serve, and lots of people with a message, but only one Jesus Christ and Paul holds unswervingly to Him. It defines him more than anything else and gives him purpose and focus, as we shall see next week.
When my brother was hit in the head, he developed temporary amnesia and it was very confusing for him. Sometimes when we are feeling confused about life, it is because we have developed amnesia. We have forgotten that we are Christ-ian, that we are “in Christ,” and we need to recover this identity.
I’ve included some verses below which illustrate this sense of “in Christ.” You can find more by using your computer and doing a search on “in Christ.” You will be surprised and enlightened to discover all we are as people “in Christ.”
I hope this helps. Be on fire.
Troy
Rom 8:1; 8: 37-39; 12:4-5; 15:17; 1 Cor 1:2, 4; 1:30; 4:17; 15:22; 16:24; 2 Cor 1:21-22; 2:14; 5:17-21; Gal 3:26-29; Eph 1:1-3ff; 1:13-14; 2:6-10; 2:13; Phil 1:1; 3:8-9; 3:1; 4:7; 4:19; Col 1:28; 2:9-10; 1 Thes 5:16-18; 2 Tim 3:12; Philemon 1:6; 1 Peter 5:10-11;
OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church in Moncton NB Canada. This letter published June 15, 2010. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at www.onfireletter.blogspot.com
Thursday, June 3, 2010
OnFire #224 Honduras Reflections
OnFire Encouragement Letter
OnFire #224 Honduras Reflections
Hi Folks:
I’m back from our short-term mission trip to Honduras. We took a team of seven to encourage the church and prepare a children’s playing field and were away 11 days. I could write a lot about the whole experience, and in fact kept a fairly detailed journal. It was quite a learning a growing experience.
Here are a few highlights. We moved 25 tonnes of rock, more than 20 tonnes of fill, several tonnes of sand, mixed 14 bags of concrete, and sanded pews. We worshipped in Spanish and jumped off a cliff into a local swimming hole. Two of us got sick (yes, that includes me) and I came back with a nasty infection on my ankle from a scratch at the beach. I almost left my finger on the back of a rock truck. We stayed with families and enjoyed wonderful hospitality and friendliness. We had some wonderful times of study, worship and prayer together. And those are just the highlights.
This OnFire is an extended one because I wanted to explore with you a question which has deeply troubled me since my time there. Some of you may have had similar experiences on mission trips and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. There is so much I could have written about, but from this I think you will get some sense of our experience there, along with the spiritual issues I experienced.
By later tonight I will have a powerpoint on my website www.onfireletter.com so that you can see some pictures. Thanks to those who sent kind and encouraging words after I accidentally sent you some of the pics.
Finally, thanks to so many who wrote and told me they were pledging to pray for me daily. In total I had more than 20 people respond, and I am grateful. I certainly felt the power of God’s strength and protection while I was away. While you were praying for me, I was also praying for you from Honduras. Many, many thanks.
_______________________________________
My first glimpse of life in Honduras was as the plane levelled off on final approach into San Pedro Sula, the largest city in Honduras. Looking out my window, I could see hundreds of low block houses with steel roofs, surrounded by wire fences. To me it looked like a scene from one of those TV shows for sponsoring children. The rust and concrete added to my sense of pity, and I wondered how people could live there, so close to the screaming jets of the airport, and in such houses.
Over the next 11 days, the biggest lesson I would learn was to see past appearances and differences in living conditions to see the people and spiritual need. While life was difficult, it was not unbearable and my pity was not helpful. I would learn this lesson by staying with a family from the church we went down to help. In the past mission teams had stayed at a nearby mission compound, but we wanted as much as possible to live and eat as Hondurans in order to establish relationships with people from the church.
As we arrived in our village just outside the city of Siguatepeque, I was curious to see the house where I would stay. Surrounded by a fence to keep chickens in and dogs and people out, it was made from concrete block with a steel roof and concrete floor and looked a lot like the houses I saw outside the airport.
Concrete, brick and steel are typical in Honduras because they are durable and resist termites. In addition, the materials are relatively cheap, strong and quick to assemble, essential elements in a place where workers earn $7-10 US per day. Last year Honduras experienced a stronger earthquake than the one in Haiti but there were few casualties, partly because of the strength of these construction materials.
There are three bedrooms with a common sitting area and a kitchen / dining area. There is electricity; in fact most people in our village have electricity. Water comes from the city and is turned on several times a week on a schedule which the locals know, but I failed to discern. It is stored in a pila, a large open concrete holding tank. Our home has one outside for washing and flushing the toilet, and a smaller one inside for the kitchen. More prosperous homes have a plastic tank mounted on the roof to provide gravity flow into the house.
My room has a double bed with a sheet and a light blanket. I’ve been given the room belonging to Alfredo, an eleven-year-old boy. A treadle-powered sewing machine sits in one corner and night stand in another. It is bare, but comfortable; the bed has a box spring and mattress.
I can only speak a few words of Spanish, but Alfredo attends an English school and so he shows me around the house. “You like?” he asks as Spanish language Disney Channel appears on a TV I hadn’t noticed before. Leading me outside, he opens the door to what appears to be an outhouse. A low toilet sits on the floor and he demonstrates how to wrap my hand in toilet paper and then fold it so that I can deposit it into a waste paper can after use. Later I learn that the sewer pipes are small and will not handle the paper. A small basin sits on the edge of the pila for scooping water in the toilet when I’m done. I feel like a child because someone has to explain these things to me, but I’m grateful for this boy to show me the basics of living here.
Standing beside the pila, Alfredo mimes pouring water over himself with the basin. “You chower here,” he says. Our “sh” sound is difficult in Spanish and so I get the idea that this is where I will clean up. I wonder about undressing in the open since there is another house not far away. Almost reading my thoughts, he points to the toilet and indicates I could “chower” there.
On top of the pila there is a scrub board with some clothes waiting to be washed. Over time I will notice that everyone here seems clean, even the men who work with us to build a rock wall. Despite the fact that the rainy season has begun, washing clothes is a daily ritual. I’m not sure how clothing dries since it takes several days for my sweaty t-shirts to dry in my room. One day I watch Alfredo wash his white school t-shirt and put it on a half-hour later, still wet.
Pastor Mario explained that we would be eating at the church and that the menu would be typical Honduran foods. Beans, rice and bananas became our staple items and we ate them in many different ways. At least one meal per day had beans - whole, mashed, crushed, or as a paste - sometimes served on a soft tortilla flatbread. Very green bananas were boiled or deep fried like potatoes. Several nights I arrived home to see the same foods we had eaten at the church being prepared by my family. This was reassuring and helped me understand that we really were eating as regular Hondurans.
We had two goals as we left Canada - mutual encouragement (Romans 1:11-12), and to make ourselves available for service to the people of Mario’s church. As we arrived we learned we would expand a children’s outdoor play area on the side of the hill beneath the church. Over the years teams had terraced the land and built a retaining wall. Our job was to extend the concrete wall and stabilize the lower sections by placing rocks and fill. This would make it suitable for soccer and other games, particularly for their vacation Bible school in August when 500 children would attend.
In total we mixed fourteen 40kg bags of concrete and moved about 25 tonnes of rock, along with the same amount of fill. It was hard work in the heat and humidity. We had a wheelbarrow to move the fill, but we moved the rocks mainly by hand. The truck delivering these materials had no dump, and so we also helped unload everything. On a side note, I almost lost a finger on the first day of work when I jumped down from the truck after unloading rock. My wedding ring caught, but thankfully I hit the ground before much damage could be done. In twenty years this has never happened before. I walked away bleeding but intact.
We found the Hondurans to be hard-working people. We worked alongside several men over the course of the week and admired their strength and stamina. We thought we were doing OK mixing cement until they mixed a bag in about half the time it took us. That was humbling but we took the lessons from it to make our work easier.
The other job we did was to sand the pews in the church. These were really wooden benches which the church had purchased second-hand from a school. Just as in Canada, students had marked on them and put their gum underneath. We sanded them by hand for two afternoons, but could not get all the marks out. Eventually the local cabinetmaker was called in to apply his power tools. This was an exercise to watch. When the heavy sander drew too much power from the inside plugs, the men tapped into the main electrical line running into the building. This appeared to be common since the wires were already stripped at that section of cable.
The first days were a shock for all of us. The living conditions were not what we were used to and we did not want to do anything to make it harder for our hosts. What was unusual for us was normal for them, and our simple mistakes (like flushing toilet paper or leaving lights on) had the potential to cause great inconvenience or expense. They had their routines and we must have seemed out of place. I wonder how many times they shook their heads at us “Gringos” and wondered if we would survive.
Plus, there were so many contradictions in the country. We travelled to our village on a modern, well-engineered concrete highway. Along the way we passed American tractor-trailers and signs for cell phones and Coca Cola, but off the highway it was like stepping back fifty years, only with electricity and customized ring tones. Children walked cattle down the road to the pasture below the church. Roosters crowed all night and chickens clucked in back yards. And yet, on a trip into the city we passed a fancy new French restaurant and saw mansions surrounded by walls with more blocks than would be in our entire village.
After four or five days of living there, we began to settle into things. The newness of the situation wore off, and I began to see that while life was difficult and people were definitely poor, they lived with a certain amount of daily comfort. The food was simple but adequate even in hard work. Our home was dry and the beds comfortable. Reliable electricity made food storage possible for those with a refrigerator.
Don’t misunderstand me - any comfort they had was held in tension by a lot of uncertainty about the future. Food prices keep rising and the cost of living was very high in relation to their wages of only $7-10 US per day. Furthermore, unemployment and under-employment were chronic problems. One man from the church, a brick layer, had not worked in several months. I’m not sure how he managed to feed and clothe his family, but he seemed to have a peace about his situation and faith in God for the future. Another man from the church took unpaid vacation from his job to help with our construction. Work was slow and there may not have been enough work for him anyway. We take cash flow for granted (even if we feel its not enough), but life in Honduras is hand-to-mouth.
I came to see that life was difficult and uncertain, but it was bearable (at least for many in our village - we certainly saw areas of extreme poverty), and so my sense of pity upon first seeing Honduras was not needed, nor was it helpful. In fact, my pity prevented me from seeing some of the spiritual needs of the people. As I talked with Mario later in the week, I began to hear of the difficulties in leading his church. Many of his elders did not read well, making it hard to share teaching responsibility. Marriage was rare, and so it was hard to convince born-again couples to marry. Most churches could not afford a full-time pastor, and even lay-pastor training was expensive. Pastoring is hard work at the best of times; being a pastor in Honduras is all the more difficult.
As Mario explained all of these things, I also saw some other needs. American culture was all over Spanish TV and I think it contributed to a feeling of poverty among the people. Sociologists observe that we no longer try to “keep up with the Jones” next door, but the “Jones” we see on the television, and I think it also happened there. In addition, many families had relatives living in the US and so the “American” way of life was seen as the end goal. It is hard to heed Paul’s call to be content (Philippians 4:12) under such conditions.
In addition to seeing need in Honduras, I reflected a lot about life at home and began to see personal need. “Contentedness” was not only their spiritual issue, but mine. How much is “enough?” For eleven days we lived very simply and had all we needed, without a lot of the things we take for granted in Canada. It is possible to have full bellies - even full houses - but still have empty hearts. It is possible to hide spiritual poverty behind a collection of things. And in contrast, it is possible to have nothing, but be rich in the fullness of Christ. We met people who demonstrated this for us everyday.
And so I reflected on life in Honduras and at home. I’m still trying to work out what this means for me, my family, even my ministry. I can’t answer it all yet, but the question troubles me: how much is enough? Regardless of what I have, will I be content with Jesus Christ?
This is a troubling question for me, and I’m not sure it won’t be for you also. But even still, I hope it helps. Be on fire.
Troy
OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church, Moncton NB Canada. This letter published June 3, 2010. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at http://www.onfireletter.blogspot.com/
OnFire #224 Honduras Reflections
Hi Folks:
I’m back from our short-term mission trip to Honduras. We took a team of seven to encourage the church and prepare a children’s playing field and were away 11 days. I could write a lot about the whole experience, and in fact kept a fairly detailed journal. It was quite a learning a growing experience.
Here are a few highlights. We moved 25 tonnes of rock, more than 20 tonnes of fill, several tonnes of sand, mixed 14 bags of concrete, and sanded pews. We worshipped in Spanish and jumped off a cliff into a local swimming hole. Two of us got sick (yes, that includes me) and I came back with a nasty infection on my ankle from a scratch at the beach. I almost left my finger on the back of a rock truck. We stayed with families and enjoyed wonderful hospitality and friendliness. We had some wonderful times of study, worship and prayer together. And those are just the highlights.
This OnFire is an extended one because I wanted to explore with you a question which has deeply troubled me since my time there. Some of you may have had similar experiences on mission trips and I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. There is so much I could have written about, but from this I think you will get some sense of our experience there, along with the spiritual issues I experienced.
By later tonight I will have a powerpoint on my website www.onfireletter.com so that you can see some pictures. Thanks to those who sent kind and encouraging words after I accidentally sent you some of the pics.
Finally, thanks to so many who wrote and told me they were pledging to pray for me daily. In total I had more than 20 people respond, and I am grateful. I certainly felt the power of God’s strength and protection while I was away. While you were praying for me, I was also praying for you from Honduras. Many, many thanks.
_______________________________________
My first glimpse of life in Honduras was as the plane levelled off on final approach into San Pedro Sula, the largest city in Honduras. Looking out my window, I could see hundreds of low block houses with steel roofs, surrounded by wire fences. To me it looked like a scene from one of those TV shows for sponsoring children. The rust and concrete added to my sense of pity, and I wondered how people could live there, so close to the screaming jets of the airport, and in such houses.
Over the next 11 days, the biggest lesson I would learn was to see past appearances and differences in living conditions to see the people and spiritual need. While life was difficult, it was not unbearable and my pity was not helpful. I would learn this lesson by staying with a family from the church we went down to help. In the past mission teams had stayed at a nearby mission compound, but we wanted as much as possible to live and eat as Hondurans in order to establish relationships with people from the church.
As we arrived in our village just outside the city of Siguatepeque, I was curious to see the house where I would stay. Surrounded by a fence to keep chickens in and dogs and people out, it was made from concrete block with a steel roof and concrete floor and looked a lot like the houses I saw outside the airport.
Concrete, brick and steel are typical in Honduras because they are durable and resist termites. In addition, the materials are relatively cheap, strong and quick to assemble, essential elements in a place where workers earn $7-10 US per day. Last year Honduras experienced a stronger earthquake than the one in Haiti but there were few casualties, partly because of the strength of these construction materials.
There are three bedrooms with a common sitting area and a kitchen / dining area. There is electricity; in fact most people in our village have electricity. Water comes from the city and is turned on several times a week on a schedule which the locals know, but I failed to discern. It is stored in a pila, a large open concrete holding tank. Our home has one outside for washing and flushing the toilet, and a smaller one inside for the kitchen. More prosperous homes have a plastic tank mounted on the roof to provide gravity flow into the house.
My room has a double bed with a sheet and a light blanket. I’ve been given the room belonging to Alfredo, an eleven-year-old boy. A treadle-powered sewing machine sits in one corner and night stand in another. It is bare, but comfortable; the bed has a box spring and mattress.
I can only speak a few words of Spanish, but Alfredo attends an English school and so he shows me around the house. “You like?” he asks as Spanish language Disney Channel appears on a TV I hadn’t noticed before. Leading me outside, he opens the door to what appears to be an outhouse. A low toilet sits on the floor and he demonstrates how to wrap my hand in toilet paper and then fold it so that I can deposit it into a waste paper can after use. Later I learn that the sewer pipes are small and will not handle the paper. A small basin sits on the edge of the pila for scooping water in the toilet when I’m done. I feel like a child because someone has to explain these things to me, but I’m grateful for this boy to show me the basics of living here.
Standing beside the pila, Alfredo mimes pouring water over himself with the basin. “You chower here,” he says. Our “sh” sound is difficult in Spanish and so I get the idea that this is where I will clean up. I wonder about undressing in the open since there is another house not far away. Almost reading my thoughts, he points to the toilet and indicates I could “chower” there.
On top of the pila there is a scrub board with some clothes waiting to be washed. Over time I will notice that everyone here seems clean, even the men who work with us to build a rock wall. Despite the fact that the rainy season has begun, washing clothes is a daily ritual. I’m not sure how clothing dries since it takes several days for my sweaty t-shirts to dry in my room. One day I watch Alfredo wash his white school t-shirt and put it on a half-hour later, still wet.
Pastor Mario explained that we would be eating at the church and that the menu would be typical Honduran foods. Beans, rice and bananas became our staple items and we ate them in many different ways. At least one meal per day had beans - whole, mashed, crushed, or as a paste - sometimes served on a soft tortilla flatbread. Very green bananas were boiled or deep fried like potatoes. Several nights I arrived home to see the same foods we had eaten at the church being prepared by my family. This was reassuring and helped me understand that we really were eating as regular Hondurans.
We had two goals as we left Canada - mutual encouragement (Romans 1:11-12), and to make ourselves available for service to the people of Mario’s church. As we arrived we learned we would expand a children’s outdoor play area on the side of the hill beneath the church. Over the years teams had terraced the land and built a retaining wall. Our job was to extend the concrete wall and stabilize the lower sections by placing rocks and fill. This would make it suitable for soccer and other games, particularly for their vacation Bible school in August when 500 children would attend.
In total we mixed fourteen 40kg bags of concrete and moved about 25 tonnes of rock, along with the same amount of fill. It was hard work in the heat and humidity. We had a wheelbarrow to move the fill, but we moved the rocks mainly by hand. The truck delivering these materials had no dump, and so we also helped unload everything. On a side note, I almost lost a finger on the first day of work when I jumped down from the truck after unloading rock. My wedding ring caught, but thankfully I hit the ground before much damage could be done. In twenty years this has never happened before. I walked away bleeding but intact.
We found the Hondurans to be hard-working people. We worked alongside several men over the course of the week and admired their strength and stamina. We thought we were doing OK mixing cement until they mixed a bag in about half the time it took us. That was humbling but we took the lessons from it to make our work easier.
The other job we did was to sand the pews in the church. These were really wooden benches which the church had purchased second-hand from a school. Just as in Canada, students had marked on them and put their gum underneath. We sanded them by hand for two afternoons, but could not get all the marks out. Eventually the local cabinetmaker was called in to apply his power tools. This was an exercise to watch. When the heavy sander drew too much power from the inside plugs, the men tapped into the main electrical line running into the building. This appeared to be common since the wires were already stripped at that section of cable.
The first days were a shock for all of us. The living conditions were not what we were used to and we did not want to do anything to make it harder for our hosts. What was unusual for us was normal for them, and our simple mistakes (like flushing toilet paper or leaving lights on) had the potential to cause great inconvenience or expense. They had their routines and we must have seemed out of place. I wonder how many times they shook their heads at us “Gringos” and wondered if we would survive.
Plus, there were so many contradictions in the country. We travelled to our village on a modern, well-engineered concrete highway. Along the way we passed American tractor-trailers and signs for cell phones and Coca Cola, but off the highway it was like stepping back fifty years, only with electricity and customized ring tones. Children walked cattle down the road to the pasture below the church. Roosters crowed all night and chickens clucked in back yards. And yet, on a trip into the city we passed a fancy new French restaurant and saw mansions surrounded by walls with more blocks than would be in our entire village.
After four or five days of living there, we began to settle into things. The newness of the situation wore off, and I began to see that while life was difficult and people were definitely poor, they lived with a certain amount of daily comfort. The food was simple but adequate even in hard work. Our home was dry and the beds comfortable. Reliable electricity made food storage possible for those with a refrigerator.
Don’t misunderstand me - any comfort they had was held in tension by a lot of uncertainty about the future. Food prices keep rising and the cost of living was very high in relation to their wages of only $7-10 US per day. Furthermore, unemployment and under-employment were chronic problems. One man from the church, a brick layer, had not worked in several months. I’m not sure how he managed to feed and clothe his family, but he seemed to have a peace about his situation and faith in God for the future. Another man from the church took unpaid vacation from his job to help with our construction. Work was slow and there may not have been enough work for him anyway. We take cash flow for granted (even if we feel its not enough), but life in Honduras is hand-to-mouth.
I came to see that life was difficult and uncertain, but it was bearable (at least for many in our village - we certainly saw areas of extreme poverty), and so my sense of pity upon first seeing Honduras was not needed, nor was it helpful. In fact, my pity prevented me from seeing some of the spiritual needs of the people. As I talked with Mario later in the week, I began to hear of the difficulties in leading his church. Many of his elders did not read well, making it hard to share teaching responsibility. Marriage was rare, and so it was hard to convince born-again couples to marry. Most churches could not afford a full-time pastor, and even lay-pastor training was expensive. Pastoring is hard work at the best of times; being a pastor in Honduras is all the more difficult.
As Mario explained all of these things, I also saw some other needs. American culture was all over Spanish TV and I think it contributed to a feeling of poverty among the people. Sociologists observe that we no longer try to “keep up with the Jones” next door, but the “Jones” we see on the television, and I think it also happened there. In addition, many families had relatives living in the US and so the “American” way of life was seen as the end goal. It is hard to heed Paul’s call to be content (Philippians 4:12) under such conditions.
In addition to seeing need in Honduras, I reflected a lot about life at home and began to see personal need. “Contentedness” was not only their spiritual issue, but mine. How much is “enough?” For eleven days we lived very simply and had all we needed, without a lot of the things we take for granted in Canada. It is possible to have full bellies - even full houses - but still have empty hearts. It is possible to hide spiritual poverty behind a collection of things. And in contrast, it is possible to have nothing, but be rich in the fullness of Christ. We met people who demonstrated this for us everyday.
And so I reflected on life in Honduras and at home. I’m still trying to work out what this means for me, my family, even my ministry. I can’t answer it all yet, but the question troubles me: how much is enough? Regardless of what I have, will I be content with Jesus Christ?
This is a troubling question for me, and I’m not sure it won’t be for you also. But even still, I hope it helps. Be on fire.
Troy
OnFire is a weekly letter on faith and character written by Troy Dennis. Troy is the Pastor of Family Ministries at Highfield Baptist Church, Moncton NB Canada. This letter published June 3, 2010. To subscribe or reply, email onfireletter@gmail.com. Archives are located at www.onfireletter@gmail.com. Blog located at http://www.onfireletter.blogspot.com/
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