Me in Guatemala

Well as promised here are my pics form Guatemala.

Ok so above there is a picture of Gustavo. Gustavo is a 10-year-old child - yes he's 10 - and he's a sponsored through Compassion. He and his five sisters and mother and father all live in the one-room home. The home has a small front area protected by corrugated tin and held up by wood, where the kitchen is. Then inside is a dirt floor, a small room and more tin. The walls of course are not steady and the house structure is really a lean to.

Neither Gustavo nor his sisters attend school regularly. The only education they get is the education from the project. They all went to school until about second grade and then they had to drop out because Mom had some problems proving her citizenry and the family also has trouble with the $20 a month school fees. So Gustavo goes to the Compassion project and so does his sister. But his older sisters work at a bottle factory nearby. Washing and cleaning bottles.

When we went to the home Gustavo's father, Alfophonso, came to greet us. He had a shovel in his hand. He was out working the fields. Anyway he began telling to us but started to cry because he was so ashamed of his home and wished he could have a better place to live to offer us a place to sit and be hospitable.

It was so heart-wrenching because he didn't want a suburban home, with a cul de sac, white picket fence, two-car garage and back deck for his family but he wanted something better to entertain us. So selfless. So humble. So wonderful. The beauty and humility I experience when I travel to our field countries always overwhelms me and makes me just a little bit ashamed at the depth of shallowness that pervades my homeland.