For the wrong reasons

I've always turned in vacation day requests via email or calendar invites to my boss.  He's approved all three that I've taken this year, but it seemed to be a fairly informal process. Well, my boss is "no longer with the organization", and I've now found out that we have an office absence database used to submit vacation and personal day requests.

As it turns out, I didn't even have a profile in the database, and all three of the vacation days I've taken this year have been undocumented.  Today, I called the administrator of the database and asked to have a profile created, as I have a new boss and just found out about this system.  To my surprise (well, not really), none of the vacation days I've taken were listed in the system.  So, I looked through my calendar, found the days I had taken, and entered them in the past.

I know what you're thinking, "Wow, how honest; what integrity he has!"  And I wish I could say that you're right, but the truth is you're not.

Internally, I thought, "I could probably have these three extra vacation days, and nobody would know the difference."  Instead of thinking, "I need to do the right thing here," I thought, "Is there any way that people could find out?"  The more I thought about it, I realized that the dates were on my calendar, my peers' calendars, and my former boss's calendar.  And I knew that it was possible for someone to find out, and I could get in trouble if I went through with it.

So I emailed my new boss, told her I would be submitting the past dates, and I entered them into the system.  I did the right thing, but I did it for the wrong reasons; in fact, I probably tooted my own righteousness horn to my new boss, even though I considered the alternative option.  My desire is to be a person of integrity, but instead of doing the right thing because it's the right thing, I did it out of fear of punishment.   As it stands, my integrity goes as far as the potential risk outweighs the potential benefit.

It is my prayer to leave my selfishness beside and always do the right thing regardless of the circumstances.  This time:  Major fail.

Reflections on Honduras (From the Sublime to the Ridiculous)

The Sublime
As I sat in the dining room of "The Farm", Mercy International's mission base in Yamaranguila, Honduras, on the first morning after setting foot in the country, I was told by Corbett, one of Mercy's leaders, something along the lines of "These people view you as representatives of God."  Though I didn't say it aloud, my response to this was, "I'm hoping to see these people as representatives of God."

To start off with a bit of history, in 1998, Hurricane Mitch flooded large portions of Honduras, forcing several families out of their homes.  One group resettled in an area on the outskirts of La Esperanza and have been living in temporary shacks there ever since.  Honduras is a very poor nation with over 50% of the population living below the poverty line. (Source) This specific area is an example of "the poorest of the poor" in the country.  

Our mission was to go into this neighborhood and build a house for a mother and her daughters who were living in one of these "temporary" shacks.  Additionally, and really more importantly, we were to build relationships with the people in this area.

Now, I'm pretty skeptical of the impact one can have with short-term missions, but there are several staff members with this group that are there year-round, and we, being short-term missionaries, were supporting their long-term mission.

I tried to go into the trip with as few expectations as I could, but in retrospect, I had several expectations that remained unrealized until broken.  While I, generally speaking, disagree with feeling sympathy (or pity), in the back of my mind, I thought I would be fighting those feelings as a result of meeting these people.

To my surprise, I didn't really react with sympathy.  Perhaps I have eradicated that response from my emotional pallet; maybe I didn't get a full grasp of their personal impact from poverty; or it could be my American perspective got in the way.  While the poorest in Honduras are much poorer than the poorest in the US, the gap between our richest and poorest appears much larger than the gap between the richest (at least that I observed) and poorest Hondurans.  I believe this helped keep my feeling of pity in check.

All the same, I did see poverty.  I saw houses made of whatever scraps could be found, that were so dark during the day one could not see inside, emaciated feral dogs running in and out, wood burning stoves running all day with no ventilation, while a mother and her daughters breathe in the smoke and wonder why they have breathing problems.  I saw hungry children, wearing the same clothes each day, their bare feet covered in gunk from the roadside sewage trench, waiting for extras as I finish a second peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I saw a group of adults who have completely given up on their own future; they have no desires, no dreams, only that their children end up in a better situation than them.

 Which brings me to the real reason for my lack of pity.  I saw God at work in Honduras and He is preparing a better future for these children.  Had I been there before Mercy started the work they've been doing, maybe I would have seen the despair more clearly, but as is, I see children who are getting reasonable homes, being given educations (some), getting more opportunity, and most importantly being surrounded by the love of God and the love of others.  I see hope for restoration to this generation of young people, their children, their grandchildren and so forth.  The focus is not solely on providing adequate houses for these people, it's helping them to get in right relationship with God, themselves, their neighbors, and creation.

This photo, taken on our first day, represents the whole trip to me.  There is hope for the future in this area.  Ironically the name of the city is La Esperanza, which is Spanish for "hope".

The Ridiculous
Since we were strongly encouraged to wear legit shoes during this trip, I was unable to get by in my bare feet or my Birkenstocks, so I wore my Vibram Five Fingers.  Apparently nobody in the entire nation of Honduras has seen shoes with slots built in for the toes. When people pointed at my shoes and laughed or looked confused, I said, "zapatos locos," which is Spanish for "crazy shoes".  Almost suddenly, my name became Zapatos Locos.  I would walk down the street and hear, "Hola, Zapatos Locos!"  "Zapatos Locos! Como estas?"  It became my Honduran identity.

My time was split pretty evenly between playing with the kids and physical labor.  I learned from hanging out with the kids that my Spanish is a lot better than I think; I learned from the adults that my Spanish is not nearly as good as I think.  While waiting in line to get dinner at the mission base, Brad, one of my team members pointed to a big bag of dog food in the kitchen.  I wanted to practice my Spanish, so I said, "Comida de los perros," meaning "dog food".  As I was saying this, I saw the smiles on the cooks' faces slowly drop and change to grimaces.  They thought I was talking about the food they worked all afternoon cooking. I quickly used my best broken Spanish to point their attention to the real dog food; this led to a lot of laughter.

While "handy" is one of the last words I would use to define myself, "hard worker" is one of the first I would use.  Even though I tried to be a hard worker, the Hondurans put me to shame.  As the local masons worked to mix concrete, I tried my best to help but I really ended up being more in the way, and I definitely heard the words not directly spoken to me, "Zapatos Locos," "gringo," and "estúpido."

I did get a chance to display my strength, as I broke two tools throughout the course of the week, one, a shovel where the handle snapped in two, and the other, a sledge hammer, where the head flew off, nearly missed a kid, and landed in the sewage ditch.  I was using the sledge hammer to crush rocks for the foundation of a family's house.  It would take several swings before breaking off even a little piece.  Asisclo, a frail 60+ year old man asked to use the hammer, and he crushed them in one hit, completely putting me to shame.

I took this photo on my 4th or 5th break of Asisclo taking his first break.

 To Sum Up
Though I, Zapatos Locos, am somewhat of a Gringo Estúpido, I was able to observe God's kingdom spreading in Honduras.  A displaced, broken people are starting to get glimpses of hope  right outside La Esepranza.  Their hope is in not only their homes and the opportunities that are coming their way, but in the one who is working to set things the way they were created to be.

Nine homes remain to be built for the families in this area, and then Mercy will be able to begin working with them to continue their restoration in other ways, be it training in job skills, setting up reasonable sewage, or any other development; the possibilities are endless.  Thank you to those who supported me and my team financially, those who prayed for us, and those who sacrificed our time away from home.  Please see the links below if you would like to get involved.

Links
Flickr More photos from the trip

Mercy International This is the group that works in Honduras year-round.  In addition to working in the area they call "The Invasion", they work in the mountains with a tribe called the Lencas (the woman in the picture near the top is a Lenca woman.) and they have a school to prepare Honduran children to go on to college called "Hope and a Future".

Imago Dei Church Imago is the church that I attend, whom our team was sent from. If you would like to support people from this body of believers, you can do so through the "Give Online" link; select "Hope & A Future" or call the church to designate the funds for a future trip.  You may also be able to go on future trips with Imago if space permits.

Vibram Five Fingers Get your own pair of crazy shoes or zapatos locos.  (Disclaimer: Bare feet are better than wearing Vibrams.)