Thursday, January 10th, 2008
Note: Rolling blackouts caused an
internet outage yesterday. As I said in the beginning, if you don't see a fresh
post from me every night, there was an internet problem. Here is Thursday's
posting:
Pictures of our day along with captions and explanations can be found at Flickr.
Read this but don't miss the pictures. They give more details about the work we
are doing.
Click here for a complete list of pictures
and captions.
Click here to view them as a slideshow.
(Note: clicking a picture in the slideshow
displays the captions. Clicking again hides them.)
We actually began work on the hospital
filtration system today. We placed three large, 400-liter tanks on a platform
right above the existing pump for the hospital cistern. We’ve dropped a pipe
into the cistern that will pump the water through our chlorination system and
into the tanks. Then a pipe will go from the tanks back into the main hospital
pump, allowing clean water to be pumped throughout the building. In a short
time, even the pipes will be cleaned by the chlorinated water.
There were several little glitches here and
there, nothing that Kurtis couldn’t figure out. We had to drill a hole for new
pipes into the back of the concrete housing for the existing pumping system.
Most of the morning was spent getting the tanks positioned and busting a hole
through 6 inches of concrete into the pump housing. During a slow time, some of
the team folded bandages and helped sort medical hardware in the pharmacy.
At 2 pm, our team split in two. Half of us
continued working on the water system at the hospital. By the end of the day
they had run pipes from all three tanks to a central location where the
purification unit will be housed in a box of its own.
The other half (I and the 5 women from Murray
State University) went to visit an orphanage in a very poor area of town. The
place was spotless on the inside, but very simple and poor. There didn’t seem to
be any area for the children to play outside, as far as I could see. When we
arrived they were lined up waiting for us. A fair number of these children have
disabilities of one kind or another.
The street outside the orphanage
They sang us a couple of prepared songs, which
made me really uncomfortable. I don’t think children like this should be made
into a dog-and-pony show. But this is their world and their country, and I
wasn't the one making those calls. So I listened to their sweet voices and
clapped appropriately.
We brought balloons and candy and crayons and
coloring paper. You’d have thought Santa arrived in person and gave them the
whole world. We sang and played and hugged and made balloon hats and flowers and
swords. I took pictures of the kids with my digital camera, then turned it
around and showed them their pictures. They were delighted by this and crowded
around, wanting me to take more pictures. Courtney got attached to a young child
and held her in her arms most of the time. We connected with this crowd of
children in a whirlwind hour of delightful chaos.
We just visited them and played. No big deal,
right?
Well, it was obviously a big deal to them. And
yet, I couldn’t help thinking, “Yeah, but what are we doing for these kids,
really?” And one answer to that is - not much. They need money and food and
clothing and parents. And we came with our resources and time dedicated toward
our two water projects. This was a quick side-trip that we put together because
we had some spare time and we were asked to go. I mean, what can you do? Not go
because you’re not going to make a full commitment?
So for this day, there was nothing we could do
except love them and play with them. And trust that when you love and play with
a child, it is a goodness that requires no explanation and no justification. You
don’t have to explain yourself to anyone.
Two sisters caught my eye, both in wheelchairs,
both terribly small for their ages. Stephanie is 11, the same age as my youngest
daughter Lillian. But she has the body of a two-year-old. Her older sister Clara
is not much bigger, though she is 15. That’s the age of Shelby, my practically
grown and healthy middle child. In very crude Spanish I tried to tell them that
my own children were the same age.
“Uh...Me Nina es (I tried to think of
the word for 11 but couldn't) eleven... tambien?" I’m really
embarrassed that I live in Texas and don’t know Spanish well enough to get out
such a simple sentence. That’s not correct, but maybe the idea got across.
Stephanie and Clara and Pauline each colored a
picture of Jesus, signed their names on them in crayon, and gave them to me to
keep.
Gave them to me to keep. Gave them to me to
keep. For a moment, it seemed like the whole world narrowed to that instant in
time. Gave them to me to keep.
Okay, just stop for moment. Stop your busy life
and think about this with me. What did it matter that we visited an orphanage
today? And what will it mean, ultimately, in the lives of these children? What
will this hour of fun mean to them? And what am I to do with these cheap,
coloring book pictures of Jesus? What value would you place upon them? Or what
would you give me in return for them? Wouldn’t you agree that in the eyes of
God, these pictures are worth more than the Mona Lisa?
Do I really believe that? Yes, I think so. What
am I to do with the pictures? I don’t know. It’s quite a dilemma, isn’t it? I
can’t treat them like ordinary pieces of paper, right? I can’t throw them away -
God forbid. And if I take them home and tack them to the wall of my office at
our church, what does that mean? Does that mean I’ve committed something to
these little girls? Will I look at these drawings sometimes and tell people,
“Oh, those are from two little girls in an orphanage in the Dominican Republic
that I visited once upon a time." Will people who see these pictures think I'm a
nice guy because I spent an hour in an orphanage one afternoon?
See, there’s no good answer to this. I ask you,
what am I going to do with these pictures?
Hurting children have a way of doing this to
you. Their presence demands some kind of response. I wish I could give them
enough to care for them for the rest of their lives. But I’m pretty used up
these days. Long on ideas and feelings but short on time and strength and money.
And my oldest daughter is talking about a trip to Moldova this December that
will likely end with our family making a commitment to a child or two for the
next decade or so. That’s the problem with the depth of the need in the world.
It is endless.
But listen to me now. You just CANNOT let that
get you down. Or at least you cannot let is stop you from giving yourself to
every small act of goodness that you can. Don’t worry about the big picture.
Just find something good to do for someone, and DO IT.
If enough of us commit ourselves to small acts
of goodness, the world really does begin to be a better place.
And if not, well, then the hell with the world.
Live in your small moments of goodness. Just live there and let that be your
highest reality.
Okay back to those pictures. I truly do not
know what to do with them. I've placed them carefully in my backpack with my
computer, in a place where they cannot be harmed. I'm going to carry them back
to San Antonio. And then, I'm going to figure out what to do with them.
Something about these pictures is bothering me. I can't figure out a decent
response to their obvious value and meaning. Maybe you'll have some suggestions.
Think about it, will you?
Oh, and I finally figured out what this day of
play with these children means.
It means everything.
rlp
