Audrey Denney pens her thoughts as she completes a year in Usulután.

 

Why hello!

Audrey here with a long, long overdue update. As many of you know I was home in California for a brief stint in May, for a wedding and my mom’s graduation from seminary. It was a lovely and much needed time at home. I ate an obscene quantity of bagels and cream cheese (sorely lacking in these here parts). For all of you who came out to “Audreyfest 2008” I really appreciate your generous support of me. We raised enough money that night to fund an entire month of me being down here.

I’ve been back down in El Salvador for a month now, the weeks just seem to fly by. Its crazy that I’ll be finishing my year and moving home in just 8 short weeks!

The projects are going well: I’m working on promoting and finding funding for our big sustainable agriculture project, I planted a bunch of Moringa trees and am going to do a workshop with them in a month, I’m still working with short term mission groups. The kids are harvesting their crop from our organic garden and selling the produce. We have a garden team with officers and committees and everything. And tomorrow we will be putting the finishing touches on our greenhouse. We made it out of sticks and clear plastic. Pictures to follow. We’re also building composting bins this week. The kids are so awesome.

One girl, Glenda, is probably one of the sharpest young people I have ever worked with. She is always right on track in the workshops and knows the answers almost before I ask the questions. She is the secretary of the group and keeps track of all the applications and treatments to the plants in a binder, she takes attendance, and helps design the schedule. She is 14 and just finishing 9th grade. She will not get to continue on to high school because it is too expensive and too far away. She will stay around the house helping at home and in the cornfield until she get pregnant and moves in with her “compañero.” A free high school education, roads, school buses, are all things that we take for granted. As well we should. It is a government’s responsibility to provide for the education of their people.

These amazing kids have water in their homes for an hour and a half every 3rd day. They walk an hour and a half to school and an hour and a half home from school every day. These kids live on the margins of their society, some in houses made of sticks and black plastic trash bags. They are citizens of a middle-income country but are part of one of the five worst fed populations in the world. A country where an oligarchy of 14 families, or 8 business conglomerates controls virtually all the resources of the country. Every one of these kids has had family members massacred by their government.

That is injustice. That is the injustice in one corner of one small Central American country. When we open our eyes and our hearts to the rest of the world we see that these injustices cover the world. One billion people, just like us, are hungry without access to clean drinking water. Annually, malnutrition claims the lives of six million children before their fifth birthday. The enormity of the injustice in the world suffocates me. The despair we feel for the world threatens to drown us.

What do we do with that emotion? Do we ignore it? “I really don’t have much to give.” “There is nothing that can be done.” “The world is too screwed up.” Or do we take that painful emotion and recognize it as compassion for the world. Recognize it as a call for us to look outside of ourselves and to give to the world the gifts that we have received.

Open your eyes. Look at the rest of the world. Feel the difficult emotions. You will be transformed.