Today provided me with an astonishing realization: people from a country to which I had never been, who was more deserving of my prayers than I of theirs, were praying for me and my team’s arrival.
That is faith. That is Christianity. And if neither of those are your thing, you can at least chalk it up to the purity that lies at the heart of our humanity – hoping for the safety of your neighbors from another part of the world, because loss, disappointment, and fear are familiar to us all, no matter where we’re from.
The children who showed up with their families taught me a lot. As a non-Spanish speaker, I tasked a new and dear friend Paul with being my personal translator. Of course, this was not his role, but I was helpless without him. I asked him to have the children talk about what they’re grateful for, hoping to meet the demands of our corporate video capturing – the reason my team and I tagged along on the trip.
I went into the ask expecting beautiful footage of children with dirty fingernails and slight voices. And as quickly as they were posed this question, I realized my expectations were not the reality that I was experiencing.
While I could not speak their language and they could not speak mine, I came to understand that verbal communication was not the only way to converse with other people; that language is merely a general term for how we interact and connect with others.
It didn’t matter that we were from different worlds. That I was holding a $500 camera and wearing brand new shoes. Or that they were wearing half-broken, rubber flip flops and drinking water from a hose in the outhouse. It didn’t matter that they spoke Spanish and I spoke English. In fact, it didn’t matter that any of us didn’t exchange a single word in either language. Once.
The children taught me something in that moment that shifted the perspective I had in even the moments prior. We may not be able to communicate, and we may be from vastly different worlds and backgrounds, but we share the same, beating human heart. And at the very core of that beating heart, is gratitude.
Not only that, they taught me that my gratitude list needed some reshaping and re-evaluating. What I learned is this: shelter and family are the only two that matter. They should exist solely at the top of a notebook or in the midst of a prayer every day. They had no context for being grateful for anything but what’s absolutely necessary to their survival. I decided that I agree with their logic. Cause when you boil it down past the iPads and the nice cars, the clothes and the money, or anything else that lives on your usual list, shelter and family are the only you can’t erase.
A pastor pulled a group of us aside for one last devotion to the community and the generational impact he prayed would come as a result of our presence in their beautiful and humbling space.
“Pon las manos de esta iglesia en Dios.”
Over 120 patients were given medical attention over the course of the day before heading back home; a day we were grateful to play even a small part in; a day we will never have again with people we will never meet again. Our only hope being that we made a difference, even if small.
Gratitude, humility, perspective, and a peak into a world much different than mine left me more certain than ever that we’re right where we needed to be. That being the light is not specific to our company or our mission – it’s a phrase that reflects the substance of our humanity. For sharing our light only gave way to receive it in excessive amounts.
That is faith. That is Christianity. And if neither of those are your thing, you can at least chalk it up to the purity that lies at the heart of our humanity – hoping for the safety of your neighbors from another part of the world, because loss, disappointment, and fear are familiar to us all, no matter where we’re from.
The children who showed up with their families taught me a lot. As a non-Spanish speaker, I tasked a new and dear friend Paul with being my personal translator. Of course, this was not his role, but I was helpless without him. I asked him to have the children talk about what they’re grateful for, hoping to meet the demands of our corporate video capturing – the reason my team and I tagged along on the trip.
I went into the ask expecting beautiful footage of children with dirty fingernails and slight voices. And as quickly as they were posed this question, I realized my expectations were not the reality that I was experiencing.
While I could not speak their language and they could not speak mine, I came to understand that verbal communication was not the only way to converse with other people; that language is merely a general term for how we interact and connect with others.
It didn’t matter that we were from different worlds. That I was holding a $500 camera and wearing brand new shoes. Or that they were wearing half-broken, rubber flip flops and drinking water from a hose in the outhouse. It didn’t matter that they spoke Spanish and I spoke English. In fact, it didn’t matter that any of us didn’t exchange a single word in either language. Once.
The children taught me something in that moment that shifted the perspective I had in even the moments prior. We may not be able to communicate, and we may be from vastly different worlds and backgrounds, but we share the same, beating human heart. And at the very core of that beating heart, is gratitude.
Not only that, they taught me that my gratitude list needed some reshaping and re-evaluating. What I learned is this: shelter and family are the only two that matter. They should exist solely at the top of a notebook or in the midst of a prayer every day. They had no context for being grateful for anything but what’s absolutely necessary to their survival. I decided that I agree with their logic. Cause when you boil it down past the iPads and the nice cars, the clothes and the money, or anything else that lives on your usual list, shelter and family are the only you can’t erase.
A pastor pulled a group of us aside for one last devotion to the community and the generational impact he prayed would come as a result of our presence in their beautiful and humbling space.
“Pon las manos de esta iglesia en Dios.”
Over 120 patients were given medical attention over the course of the day before heading back home; a day we were grateful to play even a small part in; a day we will never have again with people we will never meet again. Our only hope being that we made a difference, even if small.
Gratitude, humility, perspective, and a peak into a world much different than mine left me more certain than ever that we’re right where we needed to be. That being the light is not specific to our company or our mission – it’s a phrase that reflects the substance of our humanity. For sharing our light only gave way to receive it in excessive amounts.