Juan at the Tienda

Close by Café Mingo, the place I call my home, is a tiny tienda (store).  There are no big grocery stores here, but instead hundreds of tiny little tiendas.  The owner of the store is a big guy named Juan.  I frequent his store often to see how he is doing.  He is a professing Christian and attends church at the Church of God.  He worked in the United States for years, making around $8 per hour working 12 hour days in corn fields in Ohio.  As he talks to me, he reminisces about his time in the U.S.  That money goes a long way down here and his thoughts are always about returning back.  He has a family in Nebaj but his dream is to go to the United States and work.  There are many starry eyed people down here who think that the United States will solve all their problems.  In their minds, it is a paradise.  I ask him if he prays about whether God wants him to go back to the United States.  He looks confused, like the idea is a foreign concept.  He then talks again about working in the United States.  He wants help with a work visa, he says. 

While there are many professing Christians, few live Christ like lives.  Greed is prevalent.  People here think their lives will be better with more land, more money, more things.  They must find it funny that somebody living their dream in the United States would come down to Guatemala thinking life would be better and easier with LESS.  I wish they would see that contentment does not reside in things, but only in the blessings of God.  Never having experienced having more than enough, it is a hard concept for them to grasp.  Likewise, it is hard for me to grasp what it would be like to live with as little as they have on a daily basis.  Like so many of us, they focus on worldly things to bring them happiness.  Meanwhile, they go to Church like good Guatemalan Christians on Sundays.

While Guatemala is heavily evangelized, the root is very shallow.  In the United States, it seems the seed is sown among thorns and the worries and cares of the world choke it out.  In Guatemala, the seed seems more planted in shallow soil.  Lets pray for them to go deeper and seek after God and not things.