When I’m going somewhere with my taxi driver, I always try to have conversations with him in Spanish. It helps me improve my Spanish because he doesn’t speak any English. Here is a picture of him and Lucas. I wish I had a pic of his car. It’s quite a sight. I’ll gave to get one before I leave.
The other day when we were going somewhere we got into an interesting conversation. I don’t remember how it came up, but he started telling me (all in Spanish): In this country it is very important to be bilingual. (This is certainly true. The wealthiest kids go to schools where they speak English all day. By the time they are seniors in high school, they speak it very well. Some of these schools are accredited in the U.S. The goal of most of these kids is to get accepted into an American university when they graduate.) The other day my daughter told me “Papi, I want to be bilingual. I want so bad to be bilingual.” But I am a poor man (definitely true as well) and I can’t afford to send her to one of these bilingual schools. I want to but they are very, very expensive. (They are about $200 - $400 a month which is out of sight for most Hondurans). So I told her, “I wish I could send you but I just can’t.”
I can’t tell you the sadness that this awakened in me. It so happens that we know his daughter pretty well. She’s one of Ashlyn’s friends from the church. She is a very sweet girl, beautiful and with a beautiful attitude. (pic below - the girl on the left) She came over to the apartment the other day for a few hours. They played Jenga and some other games that didn’t require a lot of communication. It was heartbreaking to know that she realized how important this was but that she couldn’t do it. And truthfully, it’ll probably never happen for her. I wish that wasn’t true, but barring some miracle that’s just the facts.
It’s really sad to know that you can’t help everyone in the way that you want to. You could make a true financial different in maybe one person’s life, but that’s about it. My language coach told me a story the other day about some group who came down here one time and spent a ton of money on rice and beans for the people. They were moved by their hunger and this was how they wanted to help. The reason she told the story was because in about 3 days and obscene amount of rice and beans had been distributed, but the basic condition of the people – and certainly the basic condition of the country – remained unchanged. It struck her as somewhat futile.
You feel sorry for everyone, but when you really get to know someone your heart goes out to them even more. I know it shouldn’t be this way, but I would love to help the daughter of my taxi driver more than anyone, because I know her. Hearing her dad tell me this and knowing that it was a dream that would probably never come true for them made me sad beyond belief. I relayed the story to my family. They all almost cried.
Then again, those emotions cause you to really examine yourself as well. Why is it that our chief hope as Americans is to make other people as wealthy as we are? We feel “sorry” for other people who we know will probably never get there. But that’s our driving force and our purpose – to help them financially. Then you realize you really can’t. Not in the way you want to. You just don’t have enough resources. So what then? I came to realize after this whole episode that there are better ways to help people. The gospel is the best help that you can give. And truly if they are God’s children that’s the best help and security that they can have, and God forgive us for focusing on money all the time and thinking that’s what matters the most. It’s almost like if we could raise their standard of living and get them into an American college with a nice income stream, we’d feel better than if we could present them with the gospel. Remember the story in Acts about the lame man at the gate called Beautiful. They had no money, but they gave him what they had. (If you’re not familiar with the story you should read it in Acts 3). Maybe if we’d all build up our spiritual tanks and give the kind of help that they gave this man, we’d worry a lot less about what we couldn’t do financially.
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