The beauty of today. We went out! We got outside of the office walls, and we went to this very large mall in Guatemala! The more I see in Guatemala, the more I realize how developed it is. I may not be in love with the city, but Guatemala City itself is slowly reminding me of a Latin American version of the states. We went and watched the movie 'The Revenant,' where we joked about pop culture and maybe some things that don't matter, but it was beautiful because we shared it together. We've built fond relationships here already, and on the drive home, a few of us discussed the ways we feel we have grown.
The consensus has been that with any experience in life you grow, but you may not see it just yet. In hindsight, we find the things we have taken from each of our experiences; that breakup in high school, that bad test grade, that debate with your friend, or that trip in far away places. I hope that each of us finds those people in our life who make us grow constantly. We are never truly done growing unless we stop experiencing the world. For those who haven't noticed, life is a cumulative story of our experiences, and once we have decided to stop educating ourselves about the world, about where we are putting our money, or about what we stop seeing, we stop growing.
An example of this became the highlight of our conversation on the drive home. It is coming to a point in a traveler's life where the happiest people we meet are those who have less. It is a lesson most humble travelers experience, and yet, upon conversing about it, we choose our words as such: "These people are so happy even though..." You can finish the sentence. This life does not show us that despite that the happiest places are on earth have less, they are such. It shows us that these people are happy BECAUSE of this. We are all in poverty. "Poverty (n). the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount." Example: "the poverty of her imagination". We might lack love, humility, inspiration, or motivation, and maybe that right there is the real poverty.
Over 49% of Guatemalans are considered to earn below the poverty line. Yet, how do you view poverty? How can you choose to experience the world when you just alter a perspective about poverty? The question I have to ask myself is, am I in poverty?
Deep questions to ask myself for the future: the view of God on this mission trip and within my own life.
*note to self: be conscious of the faces you make near Guatemalans because a smile goes a long way, and so does a frown.*
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