The Monsoon Season is Almost Over!

Ok I do apologise for the late blog. I’ll try to not let this happen again. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me. These past two weeks have been quite weird. We finished off last week with attending a concert/play. It was really, really weird but really, really cool at the same time. You know what I mean? Yeah one of those things. It was again for the Children’s Day Celebration, and it was a play that the children from some of the orphanages did. The play was amazing. They did the whole play to an audio CD. Then on the weekend I got another earring (because I hadn’t for a while and it was starting to close up. I know some of you will be happy about that, some of you won’t, and most of you probably just don’t care haha) and was very sick (nothing to do with the earring). It was probably the sickest I’ve been for a long time. But let’s not hinder on that little fact. I’m better now, that’s what matters. And actually it kind of gave me a perspective and challenged me a lot. There are people here that feel much worse than I did, and they don’t even have some westerners definition of a house. And let’s not forget the fact of medicine too. If my sickness got too bad I could’ve always gone to the hospital, whereas people that live less than a stone’s throw away don’t even have the money for transportation to the hospital. It got me thinking how easy we have it in the West. Even though you hear some people moan about the recession or not having enough money to get their daily Starbucks or even not getting the right channels on TV, it’s still a hell of a lot better than (money-wise) than over here. And believe me, I’m just as guilty as the next person for taking all our materials for granted, but you realise a few things over here when you see certain things. Like when you see a family of four sleeping on a mattress on the side of the road right outside a restaurant that costs about $25 a head, or when you see an entire slum being demolished and al the occupants being “helped” because the government gives them a tiny house out in the countryside (what they don’t tell them is that it’s too far away for them get a job, so they’re right back where they started, except this time they have to sell the house), or seeing the toilets of the slum (which is just a 20x20 foot concrete slab), or when you see a child cry their eyes out because they lost a shoe that probably cost less than adding toppings on a pizza. I could go on for ages, but don’t worry. But as I was saying, you start noticing the things that matter in this life. The joy on some of these kids faces when the littlest of things happen to them, like just playing games with them, is more than I’ve seen on any child’s face when they’ve got a present or something like that. People value much more than materials here. There’s screen-printing thing going on at the office where we work at the moment, and there are about four or five guys that aren’t on Oasis staff that have stayed for three days, eating in the office and not really sleeping at all, from Thursday morning till today. So actually more than three days. And they do it all without a single complaint. It’s crazy how much of a servant heart these people have.
Sorry about having a challenging blog, but it’s sort of a challenging couple of weeks. Actually on Sunday the water went off as well, so that got me thinking even more about the poor. We have drinking water so really all we couldn’t do was to have a shower and wash, and that made me realise the amount of people that don’t actually any water whatsoever. That must be so difficult. I’m gonna even try to describe what it would be like for a simple reason: I don’t know what it feels. I can’t even begin to comprehend what it would be like not to have the necessities of life when there are 5-star hotels and restaurants that they could smell. That’s another thing that I find astounding. When I used to go to Mexico, the difference between the American border and the Mexico border was astounding. It’s crazy how such different lives can be divided by something as small as a river. And then one of the slums we visit (probably the biggest one we go to) is in the shadow of a 7-star hotel being built. I didn’t even know there was such a rating as 7 stars. It’s really amazing how many people don’t give a shit about the poor. And right now most of you reading will care more about the wording I used than the instances I just told you about. And don’t get me wrong, I’m exactly the same, I’m not trying to sound better than anyone. It all comes down to selfishness. The rich want to get richer and that means, consequently, the poor get poorer.
Right, that’s about as challenging as I’m gonna get, and I do apologize if it was too much. Actually… no I don’t. I’m saying what I want to say. It’s my blog right? But I understand if a few people stop reading it, but let me just end with this challenge: God put us on this earth, in this location, with these opportunities and resources for a reason. Are we living up to that reason? I know I could definitely do a better job at that. What about you?