I’ve finally started using my Flickr account recently, and I’ve put up some photos from Guatemala, a trip to the Ft. Worth Zoo, and some sermon series art I’ve made. Here are some samples:
Archive - Guatemala
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I Will Recieve Nothing In Return
Yesterday, I committed to more time in Guatemala. How much more time? Well, until I am done, whenever that is… The reason I have to phrase it like this is I am only mostly sure of one thing: I will not be in Guatemala forever. Once that was said, it was a lot easier to make an open ended commitment.
I’m in Guatemala because the health of the church needs to be tended to. It was something that I absolutely understood on my second trip ever to Guatemala. All it took was one Sunday of walking around the streets of San Raymundo. To see all the churches on every corner with their services going on. To know the dark secrets of how the appearance of righteousness is desired over the messiness of mending people’s broken lives. When the church would rather ignore problems, at best, and get rid of people, at worst, it’s evident that the faith I hold so dear is very sick. Continue Reading…
This World Is So Very Broken
Sometimes my heart just aches.
I subscribe to @cnnbrk on Twitter.com. Everyday I get greeted with some breaking news headline. And everyday, for the past two weeks, it seems like those headlines have been the most horrendous of events born from the darkest depths of humanity. Just to give you some highlights from the past 10 days:
“Austrian man imprisoned daughter for 24 years, pleads guilty to her rape and murder.”
“Former student kills 10 people at a school in Germany.”
“At least 25 people killed in suicide car bombing at reconciliation conference in Baghdad, Iraq.”
“A police officer was shot and killed in N. Ireland Monday, two days after murder of two British troops.”
“The pastor of a Maryville, Illinois, church was shot to death in front of parishioners during a service.”
And these are just the reported highlights I get to read. For every one of these headlines, I know there must be 100 or 1,000 times that many that I don’t know about. I read these things and my heart simply aches. Continue Reading…
I Give Money To Drunks
In Guatemala, there aren’t a lot of white people. In fact, in the community that I live in, I’m the only white boy in town. This makes me a target for a lot of things. One of those things is the english language.
Anyone who knows any english at all wants to say it to me, regardless of the situation. I hear “Hello” and “Bye bye” from random people every day. Random bits of english will be yelled at me as cars pass by. Some store clerks won’t even let me talk to them in spanish. It’s an extremely peculiar experience. Though, usually it’s only a word or phrase at most, because people aren’t confident enough to try and have a conversation (which I get, since I am always struggling to have one with them in spanish).
The exceptions to this are my friends the drunks. They see me, and they come a-stumblin’. And while alcohol might make someone more loquacious, it doesn’t make them any more articulate. To this day, there has only been one conversation I’ve remotely understood what the person was saying, and he was trying to buy a girl that was here with a group (I didn’t sell). This exchange is only made more frequent by the fact that I live across the street from a cantina (I call them my neighbors, when I see them laying passed out on the sidewalk). Continue Reading…
