My Trip to Honduras
Part 2 - What Motivates You?
It was a 2-hour drive from the airport to the guesthouse where our Honduras team stayed. On that drive, taking everything in I could, two things became clear to me.
First and foremost, watching the late afternoon chapters of the Honduran people's lives roll along on the other side of the van windows, I knew I was witnessing the heart and soul of poverty. I have read about poverty, seen pictures of it, intellectually grasped it, but in that moment I could feel just how protected I'd been from everything I'd learned about it.
In that moment I wasn't living povert, but I felt it in a way I never had before.
The other thing that was clear - it's a special group of people that are willing to part with their own protections to experience poverty together. As I got to know some of my teammates on that drive, I knew I was with people who shared some longing to bridge the gap between the hurting and the healers.
First and foremost, watching the late afternoon chapters of the Honduran people's lives roll along on the other side of the van windows, I knew I was witnessing the heart and soul of poverty. I have read about poverty, seen pictures of it, intellectually grasped it, but in that moment I could feel just how protected I'd been from everything I'd learned about it.
In that moment I wasn't living povert, but I felt it in a way I never had before.
The other thing that was clear - it's a special group of people that are willing to part with their own protections to experience poverty together. As I got to know some of my teammates on that drive, I knew I was with people who shared some longing to bridge the gap between the hurting and the healers.
That first night together, our team gathered around a large table after we'd eaten. We were all exhausted from traveling, but our awesome Soles4Souls leader Tiffany forged us through some brief introductions. One of those introductions, for me personally, set the tone for the rest of the week.
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As part of the introductions, we were all given a question to answer. Mine asked me to name 5 places I'd like to visit. I guess I was so caught up in being in a place I never thought or dreamed I'd be in, that I could only think of 3. And for the life of me, now I can't even remember the 3 I said.
Sitting next to me was Raul Carrasco. Raul was our main Honduran trip leader. Raul was asked "what motivates you?" As I watched Raul, I could see him deeply considering his answer. I saw a look come over his face that I didn't understand at the time - but now I do. Before I tell you Raul's answer, I need to tell you a little about him. Raul grew up like many young men in Honduras. His life was defined by a broken family, violence and gangs. But one day a friend told Raul |
something that changed his life: "Raul, you think you are alone. You think God doesn't listen to you or love you. You are wrong." Those words became the hope Raul clung to as he searched for a more hopeful path.
The path he found was mixed martial arts (MMA). Raul would go on to become a MMA champion in Honduras. And in discovering the power of faith and a healthy mind and body and spirit through the sport, Raul discovered an opportunity to help young men in Honduras take a different course in life than he took.
On our last day in Honduras, we got to visit Raul's gym. The gym is a branch of the World Compass Foundation he founded. Here, in partnership with his brother Allan, Raul uses jiu jitsu to guide young men - "soul-diers" - down a more hopeful path.
We visited many places in Honduras where it was clear the people there love Raul. Why they do is found in the answer he gave to his question.
What motivates you Raul?
He said:
The path he found was mixed martial arts (MMA). Raul would go on to become a MMA champion in Honduras. And in discovering the power of faith and a healthy mind and body and spirit through the sport, Raul discovered an opportunity to help young men in Honduras take a different course in life than he took.
On our last day in Honduras, we got to visit Raul's gym. The gym is a branch of the World Compass Foundation he founded. Here, in partnership with his brother Allan, Raul uses jiu jitsu to guide young men - "soul-diers" - down a more hopeful path.
We visited many places in Honduras where it was clear the people there love Raul. Why they do is found in the answer he gave to his question.
What motivates you Raul?
He said:
"I'm motivated by the pain of my people."
The next day we were doing a shoe distribution. More children than expected showed up to receive shoes. It became clear we wouldn't have enough shoes for all of them - there were more distributions planned in other communities - so we had to establish a cutoff. For our team, that was heartbreaking. But in Raul, I saw a hurt that ate at me - and continues to - in a way I'm not sure I've ever been eaten.
Because Raul spoke their language, he was the one who had to break it to the children and families that, essentially, some will get shoes - some will not. As Raul would tell us later, those little children don't understand budgets and the limits of shoe collections and dividing shoes up among other communities. They only know he or she got shoes, and I didn't. In a country where "getting" is so rare, it's painful for a child to see their rare opportunity drive away from them in a cloud of dust.
For a man motivated by the pain of his people, that pain is even deeper.
As sad as that was to witness, it helped me discover a beauty in Raul I wish I could discover in more people. Especially people in my country.
In Honduras, the pain of the people isn't hard to see. It's in their eyes, it's written all over their aging and often underdeveloped biologies. In Honduras, life is all about helping each other navigate pain - I suppose that's why you see them leaning in to each other more than you see them leaning in to anything else.
I couldn't help but think about my home - America. My country is in the midst of the greatest suicide and drug overdose epidemic of America's lifetime. My home is full of pain. In many ways, I would argue, even though the pain is different, it's every bit as prevalent as the pain in Honduras.
In America, though, we are motivated by the pursuit of prosperity - living out the American Dream. We have branched off, away from one another, and as individuals we are chasing down individual ideals of success and happiness. The result, we are a country that has been overcome by loneliness and sadness and depression. We are a country that is better fed, better sheltered and better taken care of by almost any health measure than Honduras. But are we hurting any less?
Because we are motivated by individual prosperity and not the pain of our people, we overlook each other's pain. Because engaging in someone else's pain risks derailing our own pursuit of happiness - too often we ignore it. Whether intentional or not, when it comes to personal pain and suffering, we've been conditioned to keep each other at an arm's distance.
Don't ask. Don't tell.
In Honduras, I saw people embracing each other's pain. I saw them embracing each other. Maybe that's the uncomfortable beauty of owning pain, of it being so in your face. When you can't run from it, when you can't pretend pain's not there, when human connection is the only answer for healing it, you become motivated by the pain of your people. You pull people in tight, right up against you; in that world an arm's distance comes to define loneliness.
Don't get me wrong. Honduras isn't a haven of people walking arm and arm singing songs of hope, although we did hear some singing. They so desperately need our help. No country, no people group, should be forced to live life with so few of the necessities of life.
But in many ways, I believe the Honduran people are closer than we are to discovering the key to life: life is about learning to navigate the path of pain, not discovering the road to prosperity. It's in that discovery that we come to rely on each other for common good, and not see each other as the competition for personal prosperity.
It's in that discovery that we become motivated by the pain of our people.
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