December 2, 2003

Dear Friends,

This year we have more time and have been trying to take things more slowly. We no longer feel the North American need to have concrete results immediately but nothing happens quite as quickly as we would like. Last year we rented one room in Cobán and had only one bare light bulb for illumination at night. This year we were fortunate in locating a house in a middle-class area of Guatemala City that we share with an indigenous student as well as frequent visitors who are also church workers. We have more space but we have exchanged that for a limitation of privacy as well as a higher degree of anxiety due to the high crime rate in Guatemala City. We will soon be moving to an apartment in zone 9, an area where one can find good restaurants and stores. It is a different view of Guatemala. It will be easier for us to live there and part of the edge we have felt is abating. I hope that is a good thing and that we don't lose our sensitivity to or solidarity with the daily challenges being faced by our indigenous friends.

I fear that may be an easy thing to do. How often in the United States have we neglected or simply not seen the beggar at the gate? We become inured to the plight of others and we allow our concern to become a sometime thing, making forays into the world of those we feel called to serve but always being able to withdraw at a moment's notice. Advent has been a time when we are more inclined to help; the promise of our faith makes us hopeful, makes us sense that things really can be better, that if we live out what we claim to believe the world will meet the needs and expectations of all her people. But we always fall back to our old ways and old attitudes and we experience a sense of loss when we do that. We have a basic need to feel good about ourselves. I have found that for many feeling good seems to be a primary motivating factor in mission work. No one wants to leave home only to return feeling frustrated and unhappy.

Our faith calls us to be involved in the world and tells us we have a responsibility to work toward a better day. But the numbers and anecdotal information are sobering. Here in Guatemala there are an average of 55 assaults daily on riders of buses with occasional shootouts with armed passengers; there are 300 deaths each month by firearms, and 26,000 have been hurt or crippled by them this year. Three million people live on less than a dollar a day and the price of a basic food basket was almost six dollars in 2002; half the nation lives under discrimination akin to apartheid. In our neighborhood our landlord was robbed at gunpoint while he walked his 2-year-old son at 6:00 p.m.; the private Christian school at the end of the block is located behind locked gates and razor wire, and the outside of it is patrolled by an armed guard who also has a leashed German shepherd; the street next to ours was gated off by the neighbors, which will send the criminals to our street. One colleague tells the story of how his daughter and her companion were car-jacked on one of the busiest avenues in the city with the companion receiving a gunshot wound to the leg. One indigenous friend wanted a loan to buy a gun to protect himself and his family. I wonder how many constantly live at the edge of fear, watching it erode confidence, hope, and energy? I wonder how many in the United States frequently retreat to their homes wondering what they can do to protect themselves or to make things better but who end up just doing more of the same thing? But here is a truly disheartening figure: although we have increased the world's expenditure on weapons and firearms, 2003 has seen an increase in world hunger for the second consecutive year. Every day over 100,000 people die of hunger or its consequences; that’s a number that is impossible to grasp. But we do not see these people; they are not real enough to us, maybe because, so far, they are not us.

But we have a God who waits for us, who will not abandon us. We are still like the Hebrews of the Old Testament promising fidelity to God but chasing after the golden calf or other gods as soon as there is an opportunity. We find now as they did then that this represents an empty promise and we keep returning to the God revealed by Jesus Christ. We do that now, at this Christmas season believing as did the psalmist in Ps. 27:13-14 “that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.” Gloria and I have much to be thankful for, not the least of which is having the opportunity to live in this troubled yet beautiful country and to work with people who encourage us daily by their example. We are blessed. We pray God's blessing on all of you during this Christmas season.

Peace,

Roger and Gloria

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 133