A Robbery and What Happened After

Today i had perhaps the strangest experience of all my time here in Nueva Suyapa. I went to a pulperia (a little family store where you order things through a window facing the street) with another volunteer. While we were talking with the owner, a skinny, barefoot man in dirty clothes who i've seen many times in the community came up and stood behind us. I felt nervous, then felt bad for feeling nervous. Then the man grabbed about three dollars out of the volunteer's hand and started running away. I yelled after him, then felt like letting it go. The man, perhaps because of the attention i'd drawn to him, dropped the money in the street, and the volunteer was able to go pick it up, and we continued our transaction at the pulperia.

On the way back to the office, a woman asked us, “Did the man drop all your money, or was there more?” “We got it all back,” we told her. “Oh ok, because the soldiers have him over there.” The woman pointed down the street where, in fact, a group of soldiers had detained the man. We stood there for about fifteen seconds watching like everyone else. The woman told us, “He's always doing stuff like this.” “Does he have problems?” i asked her. “Yes. He's crazy,” she said. Then the volunteer asked, “Should we go tell them that he gave all the money back?” I said, “Yes, i would like to go talk to them. Do you want to go talk to them, or do you just want to be done with the situation?” She agreed to go talk to them, so we went.

As we walked up, one of the soldiers asked us, “Are you the ones he assaulted?” “He didn't assault us,” i said. “He took a little bit of money from her hand and then ran away. He dropped the money and she got it all back.” “Did you get all the money back?” the soldier asked her. “Yes,” she said. “What do you want us to do with him?” the soldier asked. I directed his question to the other volunteer. “Oh, i don't know, it's your decision,” she said to the soldiers. They tied his hands behind his back with rope and started walking him back to the main road.

I asked the other volunteer, “Do you want them to take him away? They were asking us if they wanted us to let him go or not, but now they're arresting him.” She was a little bit flustered. “My own inclination is to try to get them to let him go,” i told her. “But since he robbed you, i think you should decide.” “I think we should talk to them,” she said.

The soldiers had already started moving away, but one was sort of lagging behind. I told him, “We don't want you to arrest that man.” “You want us to free him?” he asked. “Yes,” i told him. “Come with me,” he said.

In front of our building, where the soldiers park their vehicles and gather throughout the day, they were already putting the man in a military vehicle. I was introduced to the officer in charge. He said, “Did he attack you two?” “He didn't attack us,” i said. “He took a little money from her and then dropped it.” “Did he hit you?” he asked. “No,” we said. “This man has mental problems,” the officer told me. “We are going to take him to the police station where they'll register him. Do you two work here with the school? What's your telephone number? For whatever problem, we'll call you, if we need you to sign something, for example.” “I know that this is up to you and not us,” i said, “but i would like to know what will happen to him now.” “We'll take him to the police station, and they'll register him. Then they'll decide if they'll let him go or take him to an institution, or what. For whatever purpose, i'll call you.” I thanked him and shook his hand and we left.

Inside the building, a bunch of the loan officers from our micro-loan program were hanging out. I said to one of them, “Franklin, could you help us with something. A mentally ill man took some money from the other volunteer and the soldiers have him now.” “And you want us to help you get them to let him go?” one of them asked. “Yes, will you help us talk to them?” i said. Well, not just Franklin, but four of them came with us to talk to the soldiers. All of them recognized the man, who was now in the back of a police truck. All of them clearly pitied the man. The officer was on the phone, but when he got off, i said to him, “Excuse me, but i was just wondering if you could explain the situation again with my friends, since they speak the language better and are Honduran.” The officer said, “I can see that this man has mental problems. But he has robbed people before and has given us trouble, so we're going to take him to the police.” One of the loan officers, Yonatan, who, in an earlier blog told me how he thought the military presence here in Nueva Suyapa was “amazing,” said to him, “we know that you all are here to do good, and i appreciate what you're doing here. But these two don't want to be the cause of this man going to prison. They want you to let him go. They're different, and they have different ideas. I know you're doing a good job. But they want him to be let go. We can talk to him and walk him back to his house.” The officer immediately said, “We will let him go, but if he keeps robbing people, we'll arrest him.” He immediately ordered the man to be taken down from the truck. I thanked the officer. “At your order,” he said.

The man started running, and Yonatan yelled for him to wait. The man complied. Yonatan sat the man down in front of a house, and i followed and sat down next to him. Yonatan said, “You have to be careful. You can't keep taking money from people. If you do, they're going to take you away.” The man, his head lowered, his eyes staring at the ground, nodded gently. Then he went towards his house. I touched his shoulder as he left.

We walked back towards the school and i thanked the officer again. “At your order,” he said.

Back in the office i told the other volunteer, “I realize that i sort of took charge of that situation. If you feel like i overstepped or did something without consulting you, please tell me.” “No, you did ask me, and i wasn't sure what i wanted to do,” she said. “Yes, but ultimately i did what i thought was right, and i perhaps didn't give you a chance to really weigh the decision.” “I think you did the right thing,” she said.

Today i had the opportunity to put into practice certain convictions and ideas that i have been wrestling with lately. Ideas about the military, and policing, and violence, and leadership, and forgiveness, and the Gospel. For the first time, i took my beliefs out of an analytical context where i tell my neighbors or friends how their views are probably wrong and then feel bad about being arrogant and judgmental. Instead, my friend and i found ourselves in a situation where we could forgive or not forgive, and in forgiving, we could advocate for the person who had wronged us. That's a wonderful privilege. Too often in my time here i have felt opposed ideologically to things with which i had no real experience. I can talk and talk to people about forgiving thieves and drug users, but all that talk is meaningless compared to actually forgiving a thief or a drug user. And now that i have, in practice, forgiven a thief, i am even more convinced that it is the right way.

I am glad that i have the example of Jesus to follow, because in this situation, the way that i believe to be Jesus' way and the way of truth proved much more reasonable than the way that was initially being taken. I couldn't do anything less than what i did (and i hope i would have been willing to do even more) to make sure that the army didn't take a mentally ill man to prison for God knows how long because he took three dollars from my friend and then dropped it in the street. I want to live my life, i want to conduct my actions, in the name of Jesus. And if i live my life in the name of a man who claimed to have come to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, then i will not sit by while a mentally ill man is sent to prison in my name.

Relocation and Incarnation

Relocation and incarnation are two big words in the world of Christian community development. They're also, i'm beginning to realize, complicated.

Relocation is one of the three R's that John M. Perkins, civil rights veteran and founder of the Christian Community Development Association, teaches. Basically, as i understand it, relocation is the idea that in order to come alongside the poor in the development of their communities and the realization of their aspirations, you actually have to come alongside them. You have to move into their neighborhood. You have to make their grocery shopping options your grocery shopping options. You have to make their kids' schools your kids' schools. You have to make their transportation options your transportation options. You have to make their (lack of) healthcare your (lack of) healthcare. That way you don't have a vague idea about what their problems are, as you commute to their poor neighborhood from your middle-class neighborhood to help them solve their problems. Your problems are their problems, and you overcome your problems together.

Relocation, in Christian community development circles, often gets couched in the language of incarnation. Basically (again, according to my understanding and simply put), since Jesus "became flesh and made his dwelling among us," (John 1: 14), that is, became a human being in order to liberate human beings, we also, as people of wealth and privilege, ought to become poor in order to participate in the liberation of the poor. Jesus, though being in very nature God, "made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness" (Philippians 2: 6). Likewise, we do not liberate the poor from positions of privilege and power, but instead, live among the poor as servants. When Jesus sent out his 12 disciples to tell people about the kingdom of God, he said, "Take nothing for the journey - no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt" (Luke 9: 3). Likewise, Christians working among the poor bring no staff, no bread (although i did bring two suitcases, a few extra shirts, and a credit card). In other words, they go simply, depending on God's providence and the generosity of their hosts.

My commitment to living and working among the urban poor in Latin America was born out of my involvement in InterVarsity's Global Urban Trek, where we study the passages relating to incarnation, read about "new friars organizations" - new monastic movements of people of privilege who have decided to live among the poor whether in the U.S. or internationally, organizations like The Simple Way, Servant Partners, InnerChange, Servants to Asia's Poor, etc -, and work for five weeks or so with "incarnational ministries" in Mexico City, Lima, Cairo, and others. Learning about God's heart for humanity (and God's option for the poor) that led God to incarnate among us and experiencing the worshipful service among God's poor had an absolutely profound effect on me. That relocation is an important element in people of privilege participating in community development seems fairly obvious to me now. And utilizing the language and concepts related to incarnation provides Christians with a useful metaphor for relocation. So what's so complicated about that?

Well, first of all, to say that i would be willing or able to fully become one of the poor of Nueva Suyapa is pretentious and betrays a lack of understanding of the depth of poverty.

Here is where i quote extensively from Henri Nouwen, namely pages 115-16 of Gracias!, where he writes from a marginalized community in Lima. Feel free to read, skim, or skip (i would suggest the first):

Can we truly live with the poor? Although i live with them and share their life to some extent, I am far from poor. During the noon hour, I walk to the rectory in Ciudad de Dios and eat a good meal prepared by a good cook, and one day a week I go to the Maryknoll center house in Miraflores to take a shower, sleep in, and have a day of relaxation.


So my living with the poor hardly makes me poor. Should it be different? Some say yes, some say no. Some feel that to be a priest for the poor, you should be no different from them, others say that such is not realistic or even authentic. 


I have been here only one week, and thus am unable to have an opinion, but I know one thing: right now I would be physically, mentally, and spiritually unable to survive without the opportunity to break away from it all once in awhile... I love living here, but I am also glad that I can escape it for two hours a day and for one day a week. Living here not only makes me aware that I have never been poor, but also that my whole way of being, thinking, feeling, and acting is molded by a culture radically different from the one I live in now. I am surrounded by so many safety systems that I would not be allowed to become truly poor. If I were to become seriously ill, I would be sent back to the United States and given the best treatment. As soon as my life or health were really threatened, I would have many people around me willing to protect me. 


At this moment, I feel that a certain realism is necessary. I am not poor as my neighbors are. I will never be and will not ever be allowed to be by those who sent me here. I have to accept my own history and live out my vocation, without denying that history. On the other hand, I realize that the way of Christ is a self-emptying way. What that precisely means in my own concrete life will probably remain a lifelong question...


Like the majority of Suyapans, i have family in the U.S. whom i love. For the majority of Suyapans, seeing their family means either them making a financially costly, life threatening, and illegal journey to the U.S., as my host cousin has done, or their family member giving up the economic stability afforded them and their family members here in Honduras in order to come home permanently, as my host father, after 8 years in the U.S., is getting ready to do. For me, seeing my loved ones means that i or they buy an affordable plane ticket and fly to the U.S. or Honduras, in either of which we are welcomed almost without question. Does relocation - should relocation - mean giving up that privilege?

The majority of Suyapans live on less than one U.S. dollar per day. I need not even ask if i will live on one U.S. dollar per day. I'm not going to.

For Suyapans and for me, going to even a free cultural event means paying 2-3 dollars to get there and about five dollars for a taxi home. Thus, a "free" cultural event would cost the majority of my neighbors about a week's budget. Does that mean i shouldn't go to the cultural events that i find so wonderful, where i feel a connection with Hondurans with interests and backgrounds more like mine?

I've never gone, and most likely never will go hungry in Nueva Suyapa. Have i "relocated"?

Some of my privileges i could not give up. I cannot give back my college education. I cannot undo growing up in a loving home. I can't undo having known my father's love.

Also, even if i were to become fully a poor person of Nueva Suyapa, even if that were possible, it could only be through my own personal choice. No poor person of Nueva Suyapa chose to be poor. In other words, my decision to become poor and to what extent will always be made freely, which is important to realize.

I recently heard a podcast with Murphy Davis, cofounder of the Open Door Community in downtown Atlanta. (Listening to podcasts, by the way, is something that most of my neighbors will never be able to do.) Davis shared the story of how she gave up her health insurance to live in community with her homeless brothers and sisters. It was not until she got cancer and went through years of treatment at the public hospital for the uninsured that her friends stopped suspecting that she had some "out" - that she wasn't really committed to living among them. To me, this story illustrates that relocation - that downward mobility - is neither impossible nor unimportant, much less easy. For the time being, i will not give up my "outs." I'll keep my bank account, my U.S. citizenship, my family, my friends, my computer, and my books.

In thinking about these things it's worth pointing out the importance of a community. Instead of "going it alone" i am working with a Honduran NGO. Yes, i will probably leave here after two or three years, but MCM has been here for about twenty years and has no plans to leave. Yes, i'm an outsider to this community, but most of my coworkers live here and have family here, and many of them grew up here in Nueva Suyapa. So whatever barriers i have between me and truly becoming one of the poor, i at least know that the organization i am working with is truly a part of the community i live in.

Why else is the incarnational model complicated? Well, a common problem among both Christians and other people of privilege seeking to do some good among the poor is the oh-so-dangerous savior complex. While the incarnational metaphor has many benefits, i would say, it also has the pitfall of encouraging people to think of their lives as being like those of the savior. "Just as Jesus became a human [to save the world], i [a rich white person] am becoming poor [to save poor brown people]" would basically be the danger that i see. It also intentionally casts those who are, through privilege and injustice, able to relocate (mostly rich white people from The United States, Canada, and Europe) as the Jesus to those who, through lack of privilege and oppression, are forced to stay where they're at (poor people of color in the Global South). The incarnational model is seriously susceptible to conflation with the colonialist thinking that has infected the Christian community in industrialized countries for centuries, even as Christians in the Global South are continuing to raise their voices to point out both that the church needs to be decolonialized and that, additionally, Christians of the Global South just might get Jesus a lot better than Christians in the West do, and consequently, if anyone should be "incarnating" it just might be Christians of the Global South incarnating among people of developed countries, not the other way around. In a lot of ways, it's a valid criticism.

I've also realized that the longer the period of time for which i try to relocate, that harder it is. For six weeks i can pretty easily only eat what's given to me by my hosts, wear only two pairs of pants and five shirts, stay within the community in which i'm working, and feel more-or-less fine with not having a clue how the Phillies are doing (especially if it's around the all-star break). For two years i have to keep Nature Valley almond bars on hand as comfort food; i quickly realize i need a fourth pair of pants, and ten shirts quickly starts to feel like too few; i need to leave Nueva Suyapa at least a couple times a week to go to a coffee shop or (gasp) the mall; and i have to surf my family's tv to look for the Phillies (although maybe not after this season). So what kinds of privileges would i be tempted to justify if i were to commit living a lifetime of relocation?

Anyway, i think i've said enough about relocation and incarnation for now. As Nouwen says: "...I realize that the way of Christ is a self-emptying way. What that precisely means in my own concrete life will probably remain a lifelong question..." In other words, it's complicated.

Operation Lightning Bolt

On Tuesday i stepped out of my front door at 8 a.m. to go to work, and before i'd walked a block i saw four soldiers in full camouflage with M-16 rifles turn the corner in front of me. I wish i could say i was shocked, but i was more just curious. As the day went on i realized that the neighborhood was full of soldiers, and i found out that the government had begun what they're calling "Operation Lightning Bolt," which has sent the army into high crime areas around the country, including all over Tegucigalpa. As the days have gone on, the military presence has increased. There are regularly truckloads of soldiers outside our building, which is right by the main bus terminal in Nueva Suyapa, and soldiers with M-16s standing in the center of the road spaced about every ten yards.

On Wednesday there were about 5 soldiers lined up in front of the building i work in, where our elementary school, microloan program, dental clinic, and a few other offices are located. I said casually to the woman who cleans our offices, "Look at all these soldiers in front of our building." It's the first time i'd mentioned their presence to anyone. To my surprise, she said, "Yes, how good that they're here." As the days went on, i realized that this is by far the majority opinion among Suyapans; in fact, i have yet to encounter one Honduran who's critical of the military's presence in their neighborhood.

My family explained it to me more or less in these terms: "We're very happy that they're here. They're only here to find the people in gangs or who are involved in drugs. The police never come up here, and it's not safe. It's about time they did something about all the robberies and shootings. Since everyone in the United States is rich, if people want drugs they just buy them. But since we're a poor country, if people want to buy drugs, they have to steal. So the army's here to do something." My host mom said she's glad because the army's presence will push the gangs somewhere else.

Even people whom i've talked to in the ministry praise the operation. One of the loan officers asked me what i thought about the operation. I told him i felt like it was basically trading one form of violence for another for a short time, and asked him what he thought. Very emphatically he told me, "It's amazing. It's amazing. I think in your country the army doesn't do things like this. They only use them for war. I think it's great."

The only somewhat nuanced analysis i've heard was during a conversation i had with the elementary school principal. As i was coming back from lunch Friday, i saw her outside our building. "Look at all these soldiers we have in our street, Mark," she said. "I know," i said. "What do you think about it?" "I told my husband, 'It's good to be able to sleep at night without hearing gunshots outside my house,'" she said. I told her i know that i'm new to Nueva Suyapa and that i don't share most people's opinion and that i can't say it's wrong to want to sleep peacefully, but we have to be honest and say that what's going on is not the solution and that the gang and drug violence might be reduced for the couple weeks or however long the soldiers are here, but it will come back when they leave and that i, as a Christian, don't put my hope in military violence but in God. She agreed that what's going on is not a solution. "Violence is like a termite eating away at the foundations of our society. This is only addressing the problems on the surface," she said. "And anyway," she said. "Jesus is coming soon and this doesn't really matter." She also pointed out that the only reason the operation started was that the son of the director of one of the universities was killed, and that even though the poor have been suffering violence in Nueva Suyapa for years, the government doesn't pay attention until someone important gets killed. But when people forget about the university director's son's killing, they'll forget about Nueva Suyapa too, and things will be like before.

Friday night my 14-year-old host brother came home in the evening and said, "The army was up at the soccer field checking our papers and looking for drugs." My face must have betrayed my disgust. "It's good," he said. "Sometimes the kids smoke after we play, so it's good they're there." "To stop you from smoking?" i asked. "It's fine," he said. "They just check our fingers for drugs and check our papers. And they didn't even search us younger ones. They just made us lift up our shirts."

When i was 14 years old my host brother's experience would have been traumatizing for me, more so than i can imagine. But not only is he fine with it, he supports it. My coworker, who is from the U.S., had a very perceptive comment to make. "I think the people here don't realize just how traumatic their day-to-day lives are. We come here, having grown up the way we did, and it's shocking to see things like this. But they take these traumatic things as being completely normal."

Like i told the elementary school principal, i cannot, from my position, fault my coworkers for feeling relieved to get a few nights' sleep without hearing gunshots. To feel relieved to know that for the time being you can walk your neighborhood without having to fear being robbed is an honest response. What is difficult for me is to hear the violence that the military brings being celebrated. The celebration of violence i've heard over the last few days from my family, neighbors, and coworkers has been troubling. To me, a Christian response to such an overwhelming display of violence in my neighborhood is to mourn. And so i have been, in my own private way, trying to mourn the violence in Nueva Suyapa.

Instead of celebrating the military coming to my community to protect me by beating, shooting, arresting, or imprisoning the "other" - the gang member, the drug addict, the delinquent - i mourn the brokenness of my community, my own sinfulness, and my complicity in violent and unjust structures. I mourn the ways that we as individuals and as a church community have fallen short in collaborating with the inbreaking of God's peaceable kingdom, but instead have collaborated with empire.

"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading [Luke 23: 35-43] shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters." -Oscar Romero, November 20, 1977

Alex

One of the things i've become a part of at MCM is our afternoon sports program. On Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, boys from the neighborhood can come play soccer on our high school's concrete court. The program is for "at-risk youth". Some of the boys study in our school; some of them study in the Catholic or public schools; some work at jobs like selling newspapers on the street seven days a week; some are neither in school nor working. Besides providing a place for youth to engage in Honduras' national pastime, we try to encourage the youth in the program to reflect on and develop values like honesty, justice, fair play, etc.

Working in the sports program has been difficult at times. We are currently trying to make it more formal. In the past, the sports program has been a place for youth to come and play soccer for two hours. Now, we are trying to incorporate reflections, activities, exercises, etc. into the program. However, like any program here, consistency is a challenge as one day we are sticking to a strict program and not allowing youth to enter the court after the program starts, while the next i'm the only adult leader there and the youth and i play pickup for two hours.

Besides these challenges i've faced with the program, i've faced other challenges as well. And one of their names is Alex. Alex is 18 years old, the oldest youth who consistenly attends the program. From the first day i visited the program, Alex struck me as a smart-ass mainly interested in causing problems. For awhile he really liked yelling things at me in English like "Where's the rent?!" or "The money! The money! A dollar!" This was really frustrating as i felt like i didn't need to be reminded by some kid that people here will look at me (not inaccurately) as a rich U.S. American, when that's not how i want to be viewed at all.

But, i tried to be patient with Alex, and a few weeks ago, things shifted ever-so-slightly through an unexpected event. I was playing goalie for my team, and no one was really taking the game very seriously, but still, Alex, who was on the other team, was celebrating every goal he made (more than i'll admit here) a little too enthusiastically i thought. At the same time, another one of the older kids and i were shooting baskets on a net behind the goal. As i was holding the basketball, getting ready to shoot, i turned around and saw Alex coming down the court all by himself on a breakaway. "Oh great. Here we go," i thought. I walked out in front of the net, ready to give a token effort at stopping his breakaway. Then, as he got close, i realized that i was still holding the basketball. Impulsively i reeled back and fired the ball, hitting the soccer ball and Alex and causing his shot to go well wide of the net. He was shocked (as was i for a moment) and then, in a sudden letting go of frustration that i had felt about the way Alex had been treating me, i started laughing, gave Alex a high five (which translates to "we're cool, right?"), and we kept playing. Just a few days after that Alex spotted me on the bus and said "hi" to me, and after that things were a little more friendly between us. I think seeing that i had a sense of humor and was at least partly able to stick up for myself caused Alex to respect me a little bit.

As welcome as these changes were, a lot stayed the same. Two Saturdays ago, we hosted a tournament in Nueva Suyapa for girls' and boys' teams from Nueva Suyapa and two other communities that we have a network with. Alex and some of his friends showed up in the afternoon and were very disruptive. Alex chased one of our players onto the field during a game between the two other communities and started kicking him. He and his friends were being very loud and kept fighting a lot. Finally, as Alex and a friend of his were running around, being very loud, and fighting, i finally decided that it was time for him to leave, and escorted him out of the court. While i was unhappy with how Alex and his friends had disrupted the tournament, i tried to keep loving Alex.

On Thursday, as i was getting ready to leave the court, i stopped to say goodbye to Alex. Instead of a quick "see you later," we struck up a conversation. He asked me what part of the U.S. i am from, how long i'm going to be in Honduras, etc. Then, suddenly, he asked me, "Why don't the people there love/want Hondurans?" I was struck by the sincerity and vulnerability in this question from this guy whom i'd only seen as a troublemaker, smart-ass, and goof. I tried to tell him that there is racism and pride in the U.S., but that not all people are that way. I told him that i would not be living in Honduras if i didn't like Hondurans.

This conversation transformed the way i look at Alex and myself. Throughout my whole relationship with Alex up to that point i had judged Alex according to the most obvious, external layer of his personality and behavior without giving any thought to the deeper layers that might cause such personality and behavior. By having just one brief conversation with Alex i realized that his actions towards me were not because of hatred or simply the desire to make me look ridiculous (although he presented them that way), but rather more likely out of fear and mistrust based on my identity as a U.S. American. I realized that, as much as i dissociate myself from my U.S. identity in my own view of myself and expect others to do the same, that's simply not reality, in either case. The fact is that my identity has been shaped more than i can even realize by my U.S. context and that people here will make initial judgements of me, for better or worse, based largely on the color of my skin and the way i speak Spanish (and the way i play soccer, i.e. badly). I realized that although i had been so frustrated initially by how Alex treated me, i actually had a lot to benefit from his rude reminders of how he (and others) looks at me. And as Alex gets to know me better i hope not to make him view U.S. Americans and the way Hondurans are treated in the U.S. differently, but rather, simply to cause him to view me in a more complete way and to respect me for who i am in spite of my faults. And i hope to do the same towards him.

This weekend we had another soccer tournament, this time with some churches in Nueva Suyapa and our team from the sports program. Alex once again showed up, but this time not to disrupt and to fight, but to coach. The director of the program, Henry, could not come to the tournament, so if it were not for Alex, who i didn't even know would be there, i would have been left to try to coach our team by myself, which wouldn't really have been coaching at all. But with Alex there to assign positions, call out instructions, and give the halftime speeches, i could play the role of the supportive assistant and waterboy. I really respected the way Alex showed up for the younger kids in the sports program. And largely thanks to him, we won our final game and took third place in the tournament. We even got a trophy.

An introduction

Many events have come together to bring me to this place. I intend for this blog to be a place where i can share the story of my life here in Nueva Suyapa with friends and family at home and around the world. But i hardly just ended up here by accident, so it's hard not to start by summarizing some of the events that have taken place over the past few years and the convictions i have come to hold that have in one way or the other influenced my decision to move here.

Since i got here a week and a half ago, the question has been asked to me, and i've asked it of myself (maybe you are also wondering): "Why am i here?". My experiences among the poor, especially in San Diego, Tijuana, and Mexico City, and the hundreds of conversations these experiences have sparked, the dozens of books these experiences have led me to read, the new understanding of who God is and what it means to be a follower of Jesus that these experiences have led me to, convince me that for me to follow God means being with God's poor in Tegucigalpa. In the summer of 2008, after spending six weeks working with an organization called Servant Partners in a "slum" of about a million people in Mexico City through InterVarsity's Global Urban Trek, i, along with other college students, committed to respond to perhaps the most dire and immediate need facing humanity today, the incredible growth of slums all over the world, by spending at least 2 years after college in service to the urban poor. I was attracted to Central America largely because of the region's experience of civil war, violence, and genocide in its recent history and its current struggle against neoliberal economic policies that threaten democracy and harm the poor.

My own country has played and continues to play a terrible role in the suffering and poverty of this region. As someone who believes that the message of generosity, forgiveness, simplicity, and peace found in the gospel of Jesus opposes the message of property, retribution, prosperity, and coercion found in the gospel of the American empire, i feel that Central America, a collection of "banana republics" both dependent upon and suffering under the economic and military policies of the United States, is the right place for me to work for God's kingdom.

After traveling for six months in Central America and meeting different people and organizations working among the poor all over Central America, i ultimately decided to work with Ministerios Cristianos de Mayordomia in Nueva Suyapa, a colonia of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. MCM has been working in this colonia of 40,000-50,000 people for almost 20 years. They currently have an elementary and high school of about 900 students, a microloan program serving almost 1,000 clients, a community gardening program involving more than 250 women, programs to combat domestic violence, a dental clinic, a summer camp, daycares for single working mothers, and other projects. In a community where 60% of people live on less that $1/day and 60% of households are led by a single mother, MCM's programs, aimed to empower the poor to struggle for their liberation from social, economic, political, and spiritual oppression, have had an encouraging impact in the community of Nueva Suyapa, though there is much work left to do. The fact that MCM seeks to care for and transform the whole community and the whole person in many different areas, including education, health, economic opportunities, care for the environment, violence reduction, and spiritual growth, led me to want to join their work here.

I will be working with volunteers who come for various lengths of time either as individuals or in groups. I will help place volunteers in housing and in projects and help them familiarize themselves with life in Nueva Suyapa and work in MCM. I'll also do communications work with partners and donors, as well as contribute stories for the website, newsletters, or other media.

So why am i here? I'm here to be faithful, not to be effective. I'm here not because my presence and work here will change things, but because i wish to be faithful to my belief that it is possible for things to change, and that if those who follow Jesus truly seek to follow the gospel of good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, sight for the blind, release for the oppressed, the year of the Lord's favor, that things will change, certainly not in two years, certainly not in three, probably not in my lifetime, but someday. I'm here through a small, hesitant, uncertain, but promising step of faith.

Over the coming years you will probably often find the words of Henri Nouwen within this blog (including in the title). Here are a few words of his to end: "True ministry goes far beyond the giving of gifts. It requires the giving of self. That is the way of him who did not cling to his privileges but emptied himself to share our struggles. When God's way becomes known to us, and practiced by us, hope emerges..."