washing the feet of the shoe shiners

We started a shoe shiner bible study a few months back and usually ten or so shoe shiners show up. Ali, David, and I will be leaving our ministries and friends here and coming back to America in three days. Last night was our last bible study with our shoe shiner friends.
David has been shoe shining consistently with these guys for most of his time down here and he was the featured speaker last night. He made a video that talked about shoe shining, but then talked about how Jesus washed his disciples feet. And after 6 months of having our feet cleaned by our friends, the shoe shiners, we followed the instructions of Jesus and washed their feet.

mud shacks

I used be of the philosophy, like most, that we will have mansions in heaven. This week I visited a small, isolated, jungle village and stayed in a mud shack and my philosophy is beginning to change.

We hiked away from La Paz for two and a half days and arrived in a mountain jungle town named Chulumani. There we caught a minibus that carried us turbulently over thousand-foot-cliffs for three hours. We got to our destination town just after the sun set. We opened the thin metal door of the dusty house. It was made of mud bricks, roofed in by metal sheeting. Magno (a shoe shiner in La Paz) had brought us here because he wanted to show us his life living in the jungle.

That night we all cut up carrots and peeled peas to help Magno make a simple soup for us. It was delicious and nutritious to my stomach and my heart. As we helped Magno fix dinner, ate together, talked and went to bed so close together, I thought, this is what we lack in American homes. Mom’s cooking dinner in the kitchen while the kids are watching TV in the TV room, and dad is in his car listening to talk radio on the way home in time for hopefully a quick dinner together. We hardly ever have an excuse to be working and living so close to each other like a house with only one room provides.

The next day we got on sandals (made of cut up tires stapled together) and hiked three hours more up into the hillsides of the jungle. They had cleared away the trees in places and terraced the land to plant crops like coca, cotton, coffee, oranges, manderines, bananas, and they harvested a lot of it every year. We cut off a big bunch of bananas, and plucked our backpacks full of mandarins and oranges and hiked up to another mud shack built into the hillside to cook lunch. We stoked the fire under the clay stove as we peeled the bananas, potatoes, and peas for lunch. Magno cooked up the soup and we ate our fill, courtesy of the land. Then we squeezed the oranges and mandarins into delicious juice before taking a nap in the sun.

The hike up was hard: thin air, slipping rocks and blistered feet. But there were moments when we got to a clearing and could see how far we’d come, from the river in the deep valley cutting through the massive mountains. And then we’d turn and realize we were among orange trees that held out their ripe fruit to freely pluck as we walked by and Aloe Vera plants waiting for us to spread their ointments on our sun-kissed skin. Cotton trees held out their buds bursting with celestial gauze for our blisters. This mountain had everything we would need, and it had it in abundance.

Ever since I had the dream where my mom told me she didn’t know if she liked heaven that much yet, I have begun to gaze upward in search of a new metaphor.

Do you think, my friend, that perhaps heaven is a challenging hike that takes us higher and higher? Maybe, each day we get closer to being like God, and getting blisters and acclimatizing to the thin air is part of the training? I think in order for people to always be able to be generous in heaven, the resources must be limitless. When we need it, God holds out all the fruit that we need for new energy, the cotton to help in the toughening process for our feet, and the ointment to heal our skin, not quite ready for the intensity of His light.

Perhaps it is a steep, narrow path but when the trees open up and we can see how far we’ve come, how much bigger and grander the view is, and how small we are in comparison, we will realize that we are getting closer and closer to the heart of our creator. And that we are becoming more like him as we strive on.

Lessons at Bolivian roadblocks- part 1

Part 1
When the robbers wanted my money last summer they squeezed off the flow of blood to my head. In Bolivia when someone wants something they cut off the roads until the country begs mercy. I was the only gringo on the bus on its way to Cochabamba when the Bolivian Coca farmers (the key ingredient to cocaine) decided to strangle their country for some reason.
I looked out of the windshield. Ahead of us they were picnicking in the middle of the road, having piled big rocks in lines across both lanes. After an hour or so I got off, driven by hunger, and walked between the burning tires and protest banners. About the time I should have turned back to make sure my bus was still there, a kind but desperate looking woman waddled by me carrying very bulky cargo, “Please, can you help?”
“Of course I can help,” I said and took her huge bucket of street glue (street glue?). I propped it on my shoulder and began the hike. About a mile into the roadblock I set the bucket down where she told me to. I turned around and began to run back. I knew that it was possible that my bus had turned around and gone back to La Paz with my backpack safe onboard but me neither being safe nor on board.
Reader, tell me this. If my bus has left without me, was it still a good decision to help the woman?
I peeked around the big Bolivian protest banner as I peaked the last hill. It appeared my bus driver was kindly returning my backpack to La Paz but they had left me. I sat down on the side of the patient road.
Was it still a good decision to help the woman? I guess it depends on what type of life I live. Perhaps I could look at this as a problem that I should have avoided. Or perhaps I could look at it as God, writing a new adventure and challenge into my life for the sake of teaching me something and making life richer. Not easier, but richer.
After a few minutes I saw a cloud of dust rising in the distant desert. A bus was at the front of it and there was a chance it was mine. It would be a long run again, almost another half mile carrying my jacket under my arm, to meet up with where it would intersect with the highway. If I didn’t get there in time, it may hit the main road and head back to La Paz full speed without even noticing I’m in very cold pursuit.
When I finally got there on time and climbed onto the bus, it seemed the whole front quarter of the passengers were in the aisle or standing waiting to hear what happened to me. First in line was the woman I had been sitting next to. I had shared a cookie with her earlier in the trip and I guess that had instantly won her over because after hearing a bit of my story (I had also found out she was quite deaf so she may not have heard any of it) she helped me into my seat, gave me a cough drop for my coughing, told me I should take my jacket off, eat this bread, told me how much she had looked for me before the bus left, and she said I cannot get out of my seat again until we get to Cochabamba. It was really a quite warm welcome, like she were my own mother, though quite embarrassing. She kept on asking why I had gone so far away from the bus. I kept on answering but apparently she was deafer than I had thought.
I had helped a woman and kind of gained a new mom. This is rich living.

Lessons at a Bolivian roadblock- part 2

We had been waiting at the roadblock for another 45 minutes or so when they said, everybody get off the bus and walk the mile or two to the end of the roadblock. We’ll meet you at the other side. So we piled off and began to walk. My new deaf mother was old enough that they said she could stay on the bus but she was very concerned that I was taken care of. She told an 18 year old young man to hold my hand walk with me so I didn’t get lost. We looked at each other and chuckled, but I had found a new friend. Out of the whole line of buses and trucks that were forging the alternate route through the rough desert, our bus was the first to make it to the other side. As the reached the road they said, “Get on quick! The Coca farmers are coming!” We all rushed onto the bus and pedaled out of there.
The next time we stopped was a false alarm, just a small traffic jam.
The third time we stopped, they told us to take our things and walk across this road block and over the bridge where other transportation would be waiting to take us the rest of the way in. My deaf mother and I trekked down the hill waiting to come upon a bridge (not without stopping once for her to drop her trunks and pee behind a tire once right there on the road). We once again walked by the Coca farmer picnics and burning tires. The sun was going down and I lowered my hat because I thought if they really wanted to make a political statement it would be easy by singling out the gringo.
We walked by police sitting on the bridge.
The group of people got to the other side of the bridge and when they saw minivans waiting there, a mad rush ensued. We luckily crammed ourselves into the front seat of a minibus but after a few meters our headlights hit a solid wall of big trucks completely blocking the road. There were kids running around and yelling everywhere, wanting to get on a bus. One of them yelled, “Go up that dirt road there!” And so we tried. But we were too heavy and I could smell the clutch burning out as we tried. He told people to get off and they did until he got up the steep part. We piled back on and the kids were now were begging us to take them with us. The bus driver said, just one. The boys ran around to the doors and looked in as if they were all going to pour in. but hardly one would fit. I looked one of them in the eye for a moment and thought, “Should I do the moral thing or the easy one.” I was confused. Did these boys even want to go to Cochabamba? I didn’t know how my deaf mother would fend if I left her by herself, and she wouldn’t let me get off to help the bus up the steep road so how would she react now? I reached down and shamefully locked the door.
We headed up and down over the rollercoaster dirt road having to stop on the shoulders to let big rock carrying trucks by us. We came a split in the road and a voice from somewhere out of the minivan said, stay to the left. We went left. We kept descending and found ourselves in a tiny town. As we passed, I saw and heard a little kid throw a handful of dirt at us. We bumped over holes and little creeks and came to a bigger creek with large branches cut and laid across the road on the other side. We forged it and paid the boy at the other side. They moved the branches aside and we passed. We found ourselves at the edge of impassible river in the headlights of huge trucks coming at us through the river. Our driver hollered at a young man standing outside our window. He came over and my deaf mother friend leaned over our minivan driver and cried mercy in so many words. “For the love of God, we’ve been traveling all day, trying to get to Cochabamba! Help us!” I’m guessing she didn’t know how pathetic and senile it sounded (or maybe just panicking Bolivian it sounded). The man said, “Where did you say you’re trying to go?”
Our driver said, “Cochabamba.”
“You are way off. You should have turned way back there. You’ll never get there from here!” Ugghs spread through the passengers. We turned around and got ready to go through the tree branch road block again. Now, ahead of us were a group of arguing men.
I seriously was thinking, we are at the total mercy of these men. I suppose they could rob us and leave us to freeze the night away (it gets cold here) here in this desolate forest by the river.
We convinced someone that we had already paid and they let us through again. We forged the creek again and headed back over bumps and holes through the town. This time the kids weren’t throwing dirt. They had made a roadblock of their own. Smaller rocks and branches were spread across the road we had just come down. Our driver got out and said something like, “Look here, guys. Nice try but we really need to pass.” And he, with another person from our van moved the rocks aside and we continued on.
When we got back to the original paved road it had cleared and we made it to Cochabamba within a couple hours. People were grateful and joking around, though we continued to pass stranded people trying to hail a ride. We passed them because we were already completely full, and the gas tank that was on empty throughout the whole ordeal made me more thankful we couldn’t pick up any more people.