The Poor Among Us

Our house, for the last two weeks, has been full of phone calls, emails, and endless brainstorming about how we can get corn here to this valley for the least amount of money and as quickly as possible. We have been told that we need to move quickly because the corn that is available is being bought rapidly by speculators and companies in Mexico. These are things that the Ficker men (Craig included) are particulary good at.

We have thought and prayed long and hard about how to involve the community - especially the local church - in this project. We have asked for help from our good friends Oralia and Sebastian in San Andres. They are the directors of the orphanage there and have a feeding program as well which is being stretched to the breaking point. We will host pastors of the local churches to a lunch on Friday to enlist their help as well. Our thoughts right now are to ask for donations of rice, beans, oatmeal, atol and oil from the churches as well as their help in locating families who are at risk. It is a different way of thinking for most here who are used to receiving and not so much in giving. Pray with us that their hearts will be open to helping...that they will understand that giving is so much more blessed than receiving!

My prayer for many years has been to have a deeper understanding of the man Christ Jesus - this man who died for me; this man who is fully God - in whom I put all of my trust. I have come to realize something profound...that He was (and is - because He never changes) Jewish. And if I want to understand Him, I need to understand Him in His Jewishness. Now, I know very little about the Jewish faith and I do not desire to live under endless laws about how to wash my pots and pans but I do want to know what it is that moved Him; how did He think? So I have begun to study...and what I am finding has opened my eyes to so many things that I have never understood. For example, one of my favorite scriptures is John 12:1-3 where Mary, in deepest worship anoints Jesus' feet with costly perfume. I have meditated long on that and wished that I could have been Mary. But as I read the next few verses, I find Jesus saying, "you will always have the poor among you..." It has always confused me and because I now find myself living among the very poor, I want to understand why He said that. Couldn't He in all of His power, fix that? And then I read in Deuteronomy as Moses gives final instructions to the Israelites as they prepare to enter the Promised Land about the tithes that they are to give. My understanding of the tithe has always been 10% of our income to the church but now I see that it is so much more. God instructed the Jewish farmers to leave grain at the edge of their fields so that the poor could harvest it every season. They would leave 1/50th of their crop, as well as "leket"or the leaving of dropped stalks for the poor. In addition, Moses commanded that 10% of the crop every third and sixth year of the seven year cycle was to be given to the poor. Now that is a lot of rules and regulations, but the heart of the law behind all of that is that the poor are provided for; that although they are poor, they are not to be hungry; that it is our responsibility to provide for the poor. And in this agricultural culture, that is what we hope to express to the church - the body of believers here. Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow give these farmers a vision of how God designed provision for the poor? And even greater, that as we here begin to live by His rules, we would reap the benefit of His blessing - "All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock - the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out." Deuteronomy 28:2-6. Would you pray that we will be able to express our hearts to these pastors as they gather here Friday? Would you pray that above all else, that the Name of the Lord will be honored in this project?

The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed...

I usually don't write anyone or pretty much talk with anyone on Sunday evenings. I'm usually too exhausted to think...much less talk. But tonight is different. I...we, are so burdened by what we are seeing in our community that I have to share it. Friday we went out to a remote village to do a mobile clinic. We have been there several times and it is a very isolated community of indigenous people with the normal needs of most communities in this area. This time however, we were stuck by the overwhelming need. Although we only saw about 60 people, almost all of the children were very sick or very malnourished or both. When we asked if there was enough food, most said no, some said that their harvest this year would be small.




Saturday, we had a pretty normal clinic day, adding only one new child to our already full feeding program. But later that evening, Cali, our friend from the Peace Corps who works in the city office came with news of the "red alert" in our area - signifying the urgent need for food. We spent much of the evening trying to figure out ways to help.




And today, I was overwhelmed with requests for food. Almost everyone we talked to said they were out of corn, some asked for corn, others asked for money, and almost all seemed resigned and without hope. These are people who live always on the edge of desperation...even in the best of times. One woman came asking for prayer for her husband who was threatening suicide. She is 8 months pregnant and told me that her husband said that if the baby was a girl, he would feed her poison as well...but if it is a boy, he will let him live. And so we prayed for Felipe, we prayed that God would open his eyes to see his value as a husband, as a father, as a child of God; that he would see the importance of his life, that he would understand and know his God and Father who longs to love him.

But somehow in the middle of circumstances that leave me overwhelmed and grieved beyond words, I know that God is still God, that He holds the universe in His hand. I know that He sees and is grieved even more than I am.


"You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed...Psalm 10:17,18

"Feed my sheep."

It is hot and dry...so much like April here at the height of the dry season. With September usually come the torrential rains. Not so this year. The corn is dried and much of it died before ears were formed. This will be a difficult year.

Here in this culture, corn is the main staple. Those who are prosperous have dried corn stacked neatly against the adobe wall in their bedroom. It is taken out as needed, ground into meal and made into tortillas. A healthy man can eat 10-12 tortillas with each meal. A woman recently told me that her family of seven will eat 10 pounds of corn in 3 days. A hundred pound bag of corn costs about $20 - often more than a week's wages IF a man is working. When we are trying to assess the level of need in the clinic, asking if they are buying their corn is a defining question. Growing corn is a loosing proposition. Because it is so important to their diet, corn is planted year after year in the same field with seed from the last year's poor harvest. Corn will not grow without fertilizer now and that costs nearly $30/bag. So each year people actually loose money by growing corn...not as much as they loose however if they have to buy it.

In the last month, the price of a bag of corn has risen Q60 ($7.50). We have added 7-8 children to our nutrition program each week for the last 2 months. Last week we added three infants less than 3 months of age. All of their moms had very little milk because they were not eating. When mom is not eating, neither are the other children in the house. So in addition to formula for the babies, we are giving large bags of beans, rice, oatmeal, and sugar to entire families. I am concerned - this is only the beginning of a year that may prove very difficult for many families. Today, President Colom declared Guatemala in a state of emergency due to the large number of chronically malnourished. Sadly, we have the highest rate of malnutrition in Central America and fourth highest in the world. And rural areas like ours are the hardest hit.

Duane and the boys are looking into getting a container of corn shipped down from Illinois. We are not sure how it will work with government regulations and such, but we are doing some investigation. We rest in the fact that God is our provision, that He is faithful and that He is a just God. We trust that He will open doors and that He will give us creative ideas to provide all that we need to serve these people whom we have grown to love so much.

Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things: you know that I love you." Jesus said, "Feed my sheep."