April 15, 2005
Dear Friends,
Hello from Honduras! This month is flying.as is this morning, so I'm going to jump into this letter.
Do you remember Keyra? The youth director I mentioned in my last letter? Keyra, for the handful of new people receiving this letter, is the 22 year old youth director and evangelist in a small rural community called San Nicolas in eastern Honduras. Every 15 days I travel to San Nicolas to offer pastoral support to the church and community. Obviously, I spend a great deal of time with Keyra, her mom, Leticia, and her family. This letter, I'm suddenly realizing, is going to be one very long intro to a prayer request.
Samuel and I arrived in Olancho Saturday afternoon of Easter Sunday weekend and immediately after the turning off the highway, we rolled the windows up. The dirt road was so dry it was like driving through a field of talcum powder. "This," I told Samuel laughing, "is what it is like to drive in the snow." Indeed the dust was so thick that, mingled with all the smoke from the burning fields, it actually shaded the sun.
We arrived in san Nicolas with sweat leaving trails on our dirt powdered faces. Everything was brown and hot and tired and coated with dust. NaNa, Alan, Junior, Pelon, and Nicole, Leticia's grandchildren were tearing around outside when we arrived and ran screaming to the house, "they're here! They're here!!"
We arrived into a water crisis. Unfortunately common, there had been no water in the community for almost three full weeks, and as a result, the entire community was hot and tired and tense.well, about as tense as rural Hondurans can be!
I found Keyra in the church in the back room restacking hymnals, taking inventory. We leaned together on the window sill in silence for a long time.
"So she's going." I finally said.
"yep," she responded quietly. "Sunday night. 3am."
Easter Sunday night. It's a community exodus, really. In this journey, seven people left: Moncha, Belkey, Lupe's daughter, 2 of Keyra's uncles, Jessi, and a 19 year old boy that I had never met. They were leaving in the dead of the night, terrified, heartbroken, desperate, mojados, illegal for the United States.
At this point, I look here at the computer screen and try to figure out how to explain to you why they are leaving and crossing illegally into the United States. It's not because they want the life they see in Hollywood movies with big cars, blonde girls, and fat wallets. They leave because there is nothing here.
I can romanticize the simplicity of poverty, the conventional, rural way of life, cooking beans, feeding the chickens, sweet country communities that rise with the sun and relax in the evenings. But let's be realistic. Unemployment is escalating, salaries are dropping and land is worthless. Coffee values almost nothing on the international market, rice harvested in southern California is cheaper to buy than rice harvested in the Juticalpa. Public education costs are increasing, soon there will be no generic medicines available in Honduras. Gasoline costs over $3.50 a gallon and so all transportation costs have hit the roof. Families are sliding further into poverty; children have big bellies and brittle blonde hair. Their legs are scaly and dry from malnutrition.
Hondurans leave to escape this hopelessness. They leave with the hope of supporting their families that cannot leave. They leave the violence, the AIDS, and this world that breaks the fighters. They leave this genocide of poverty.
Let me just clarify something here. The Lutheran church here does not advocate that people leave illegally for the States. They encourage people to fight, to sacrifice for their education, to work and save and try. But the church is also aware that sometimes the situation is too desperate and too heartbreaking and so, we hold these individuals that leave illegally in our arms, cry with them as they prepare to leave their communities, and pray to God to have mercy on their lives as they make the perilous journey North.
Saturday night in Olancho, we celebrated Easter Worship and the resurrection of Christ. I spoke of Mary Magdalene and her journey to the tomb in the darkness of Easter morning. I spoke of her hope that had been crucified three days earlier. She was desperate and tired. But, it this story, God resurrects her hope and carries her from the darkness. We spoke as a community of what it means to feel the darkness and to feel as though all hope as been crucified. And then we spoke of God's promise to resurrect our hope and bring us into the light.
That night at three in the morning, we all stood together outside and bid the seven community members farewell. Moncha held her three children and left them with Keyra. We drove into Juticalpa and I left them at the bus station.
And so, that's my introduction to this prayer request. Several members of the group have passed safely into the States. Last week, Moncha and another young woman were beaten and robbed and the coyote (the person leading them across) left them in a city in Mexico with the promise to return for them. They journey is so dangerous. Women are raped, people lose their lives. Please pray for these women. Please pray for their safety.
May the God of Life protect you and keep you safe.
Lindsay
first photo: four boys from the community, Alan (no pants) one of Keyra's nephews who lives with her. Both of his parents are in the States. (Mer, remember this kid from the workshop?!)
second photo: one of Moncha's daughters (that we call NaNa) standing at the pila, the outdoor cement sink/basin where they collect water, wash clothes and dishes, etc.
third photo: youth from Olancho: panchita and keyra (in bandana), Dora, Josué, Pete (my brother), Victor and Misael
Lindsay Mack
Iglesia Cristiana Luterana de Honduras
Apartado Postal 2861
Tegucigalpa M.D.C.
Honduras, C.A.