“In this paper, I will argue that Christians should show love for all people they come in contact with. I will do this by showing: first, that Jesus showed love to all people; and second, that Christians should obey Jesus and follow his example because he commanded his followers to love others. Therefore I will conclude that Christians should show love for all people that they come in contact with.”
I had two problems in this paper. Unless I confined my paper to Christians, I couldn’t come up with a reason that humans owed each other anything. My second problem in my paper was, who are the people that we owe? I finally concluded that we owe the people that we come in contact—whether in person, or through friends, or through the internet. Right now, I am responsible for you as a reader of my blog because I am coming in contact with you. I can’t always justify this, but it helps me to have a better understanding of how I can go about this. It seems daunting to me to be responsible to people that I have never come in contact with. I still feel responsible to the starving children in Africa, but I feel that if I do my best to help them, then I am still only responsible to the ones I come in contact with—because how can I be responsible to people I never meet? Still have a lot of questions.
During Bible Study this week, I asked my friends what they thought we owed the people of Nicaragua. I asked them, “If I leave Nicaragua on December 13, and never set foot in this country again, what do I owe these people?” I was so happy with the way my friends answered the question. They said, for the three more months that you are here, you owe these people your love and your respect. You owe them affirmation, encouragement, and appreciation. In the three months you are here you will leave them with an impression of Americans, of college students, and of Christ. Do your best to give them an example of who Jesus is, and how his death on the cross has changed you and made you different.” Right now, I don’t have to worry about life in three years, three months, or even three days. Today, I feel that God has called me to walk with the people of Nicaragua, and I feel like the thing he wants from me right now is to trust him enough to get up and trust him each day.
I have always thought that Christians have the responsibility to give financially. However, I have been convicted on this trip that giving money is a very detached way to minister to people. Even good intentions with given money does not mean that the money actually helps the people it was intended to help. I still believe that giving is a wonderful thing to do, but I feel like Christians also have the responsibility to make sure that the money they are giving is not just “toxic charity” and that the money is really going to improve people’s self-worth and help them take ownership of their opportunities and goals.
On Dishes: When cleaning up the kitchen after meals at home, I would often wash the dishes. On a few occasions, my mom would notice that I was only using luke-warm water, and would have me re-wash the dishes. So, needless to say it has been imprinted on my brain that dishes are not clean until they have been washed in hot, clean, soapy water. This has been a bit of a challenge for me in Nicaragua. Because water is not reliable here during the day, the families often fill up the sink with water in the evening or morning, and then let the water sit to be used during the day. After a meal the plates are washed with a semi-clean sponge, and rinsed with the water that has been sitting out all day. My friend explained to me that the soap has bleach in it, and puts some kind of wax over the dishes after they are rinsed so that made me feel better, but it is definitely one of the differences I have noticed. I haven’t gotten sick yet, so I guess it must work!
On Life and Morale: I am in a much better mood lately. I got a mattress pad, new sheets and a new pillow. It’s crazy what sleep can do for a person. I feel like all the little things that went wrong last week were magnified by the fact that I had barely slept.
On Spanish: I met with my conversation partner yesterday, and we ended up reading books together since I had a hard time keeping a conversation rolling. Although I am catching on, they use the vos conjugation which I didn’t learn very well, and Nicaraguans don’t pronounce the letter “s”, so it is like trying to understand a foreign language with an additional lisp. It’s coming…slowly!
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