The Goodness
of God
Sometime
around 1979, I was living in Raytown, Missouri and a newlywed. I went a few blocks to the corner grocery
store and while I was purchasing our food for the week, the Lord spoke to me to
buy two heads of lettuce and not one. I
argued with the Lord, but He insisted. I
purchased two heads of lettuce.
I arrived
home and about that time my Tupperware lady called and told me that she had
just received the order from the party I had held for her the prior week. I have tried and tried to remember her name,
but I don’t remember it, I guess it has been too many years and too much water
under the bridge. Anyway, she called and
asked if she could deliver the Tupperware right then, because they were going
out of town for vacation to visit the family and she didn’t want to leave the
order hanging.
She
arrived at my door and as she walked up the steps, I saw her four RED (flaming
red) headed boys and her husband in the car all packed and ready to go to visit
the folks. Her husband was in Nazarene seminary
at the time to become a pastor. As soon
as I saw them the Lord said to me, “Give them the head of lettuce.” I began to argue with the Lord as she walked
up the front sidewalk with all the Tupperware in hand. I told the Lord that she would think I was
ridiculous if I gave her a head of lettuce.
Anyway, I fumbled around and finally I went to the refrigerator and
handed her the head of lettuce, still not understanding why! Just being
obedient!
She said,
“Thank you!” Then she said, “Isn’t it
interesting how God answers children’s prayers.” It seems as though that morning she had gone
to the grocery store with the kids in tow and bought sandwich supplies to make
sandwiches for the road. When she came
to the aisle where she had to buy the tomatoes and the lettuce she had to make
a decision. They were on an extremely tight
budget and she could only buy one or the other but not both. The sandwiches were for the road trip, where
they didn’t have to stop at a restaurant and spend a lot of money which they
didn’t have.
She asked
her four boys what they preferred, “Lettuce or tomatoes?” One wanted lettuce and the other 3 wanted
tomatoes so the lettuce boy lost out.
Rather than being upset, he said, “I’ll pray and God will send me
lettuce.” He did and God did.
As she
stood inside my door telling me the story, she and I both marveled at the
goodness of God.
God does
care about each of us!
Since that
time, I try NOT to second guess when I hear that still small voice of the Lord
telling me to do this or that. This is
one of the reasons that I love being a missionary in Honduras. I can listen to the Lord and do things to
help others every day!
The
Wickedness of Man
Daylight gave way to
darkness as I talked to neighbor after neighbor and heard how the MI-04 police
car along with a police motorcycle had headed into Colonia[1] Habitat
this morning at 6 AM. This had started
as a beautiful sunny morning, now it was 6 PM April 14, 2012 before the dew had
dried off of the grass this morning, Boli and Peewee were dead. Long before the other police cars and
motorcycles arrived, the police from MI-04 had chased Boli down and killed
him. While he lie, dead in the grass
covering a barely used path to another colonia, the police threw a very alive,
but injured Peewee over the back of the motorcycle seat and drove him a click[2] further
down the path which runs close to the Penitentiaria Nacional[3] and
finished him off, shooting him in the mouth and blowing his brains out of the
back of his head. All this done where
they could later say he was running, stopped and then committed suicide. As the Police Patrol followed behind, they
drove through the weeds and when they saw they were close to the chicken farm
and almost to the other road, they stopped the motorcycle and killed him.
I breathed in the unique
aroma of chicken poop as I stood on the road in front of the chicken farm. When I had pulled into Colonia Habitat, I was
a very suspicious looking white woman with blond hair and blue eyes very out of
place. I had called Ana when I first
received the call that the boys were dead and several more missing, injured and
arrested. In Honduras everyone is open
game when the police have a hunger for blood.
This idea is so foreign to my United States and Arkansas viewpoint of
the world, but after so many years in Honduras, I find myself cringing when
visiting on furloughs, when I see police cars driving down the road. It is a fight or flight response, which is
not easy to describe unless you have been in a precarious position where your
life floated somewhere between life and death.
My paradigms have
shifted. I used to date a police
officer, Detective Allen Quattlebaum in Little Rock, Arkansas where I grew up;
he was a wonderful caring individual and was a real Baptist gentleman, except
for the fact that he always raced to claim his chair first when we went out to
eat; back of the room, with the lengthiest space between us and the front door,
his back to the wall, this was always his preferred spot. I also dated a DEA agent named Mark for a
while, I remember his last name but should I use it? After all he was DEA, but
maybe after thirty plus years, it doesn’t matter. I, by and large, had a great respect for
police and then I moved to Honduras.
Public opinion is almost
unanimous; police in Honduras are not to be trusted. Gossip runs rampant about many of the deplorable
things which the police do, I used to think it was just ugly tales or false accusations
invented to strike horror in the heart of a naïve gringa[4], but now
I have learned that the truth is the police here are not to be trusted. They steal, they kill for money and for entertainment,
they accept bribes, they demand payoffs, they collude with criminals, they run
kidnapping organizations and they steal cars and run them across country lines into
Nicaragua using the farm of a disgraced military coronel who has had a warrant out
for his arrest for at least a dozen years and yet remains free. “Uniformados picaros”[5] are the
people who help the drug traffickers run their drugs and distribute their drugs
throughout Central America and into the United States.
Shaking my head at the
disparity between what should be good and what should be evil, I once again watched
as the beautiful Honduran sun cascaded through the clouds at sunset, looking
out over the Valley of Amarateca to the northwest. Slouching and tired from the
sadness of the soul and spirit draining day and from not having a place to rest
my recently fractured humerous[6], I stood
there slumped over on the back of the SUV listening to a sound of a croaking frog
and the eighteenth witness telling us that the police had brutally and
heartlessly thrown an injured Peewee, with a bullet through his side on their
motorcycle and drove him across rough irregular terrain only to dump him and
kill him, setting it up to look like a suicide.
Twenty years ago, I would
have questioned this version of how things unfolded this morning, but now after
having counted out five patrol cars and five motorcycles and two unmarked white
Nissan pickups without car plates and a car from the coroner’s office, I am convinced
things are NOT as they seem and most assuredly not what will be reported in
tomorrow’s newspaper. The first patrol
car to leave with a motorcycle mounted in the back, stopped and demanded to
know what we were doing there. I was
hunched down, hiding behind the tinted windows of my SUV with my back to them
but they demanded to know what we were doing, parked on a public street, not
bothering anyone. Ana my partner in some
unknown “deleto”[7] got out
of the car and announced, I am with the “Fiscal de Derechos Humanos”[8] She was
met with an incredulous stare immediately trailed by “ojos de cascabel”[9] and then
the police patrol MI-04 slowly rolled away.
I think my first run in
with a corrupt policeman was in Nigeria West Africa. I was doing missionary work in a small town
called Ukanafun in Akwa Ibom state.
Everyone knew me, except this one policeman from a different tribe. I was visiting Moses Umoh, the local tribal chief’s
son and a pastor. I was building a
church and school for them and teaching at pastor’s seminars for them. This policeman asked for my passport. I was about six block from Moses’ home
walking with Moses and had just been in the mayor’s office talking with him
about the possibilities of a water project, when this policeman came up and
asked for my passport, Moses told him he would go home and get it so I was to
go inside the policeman’s office and wait until he came back.
The problem was when I
walked into the policeman’s office; he started pulling at me and then almost
ripped my blouse off of me. He was
interested in something very different than seeing my passport. He didn’t know what had happened when I
slapped him and pulled away and ran for cover in the mayor’s office bursting in
on his next appointment and taking cover behind the mayor’s desk chair where he
was sitting. The policeman came in after
me, but by the time he caught up with me the mayor had already seen the tears
in my eyes and heard me screaming and terrified. Since the mayor knew me and knew I was a
guest of the tribal chief’s son and a Christian, the policeman was immediately
tried and sentenced to death by firing squad.
Not to leave you hanging, I pleaded mercy for him; he was spared and is
now a pastor… Anyway this was my first run in with a corrupt policeman and I was
naïve enough to think it was a onetime event.
Had I stayed in the USA it probably would have been, but that was not to
be. God called me to be in Honduras.
My two friends were not
little angels, but they didn’t deserve to be assassinated. I guess the saddest part of it all is that
when I had shared Jesus with them, neither was “listo”[10] to
receive Jesus into their hearts at that time.
I only hope, like the thieves at the cross, they had a split second to
ask forgiveness before they died.
Tonight when my friend who
works for the Fiscal de Derechos Humanos[11] was doing
her inspections, we overheard a policeman stating “comienza la carniceria" [12] The former, was a threat spoken just loud
enough for us to hear and vocalized with the sole intent of trying to frighten
us. As we left, about a block away,
there were two men on a motorcycle, which is illegal, and without a tag, which
is illegal, and with an automatic rifle in their hands, which is illegal and although
I am sure they must have been police, there was nothing identifying them as
such. I had never seen a gun like the
one they were carrying. The stock was
squared off both top and bottom and it was very modern looking with holes
drilled into it. The muzzle was somewhat
long. The closest thing I can find to it on the internet is an UZI Sporter, a very deadly but stylish gun.
I picked up speed and flew through the market
area, jumping potholes and maneuvering corners as quickly as possible. I arrived home late having not eaten lunch or
dinner, with my cell phone battery dead from over use and my heart heavy,
wondering if Peewee and Boli had enjoyed their last meal, kissed their mom
goodbye that one last time or kissed their baby or their wife. I also wondered if the words of salvation which
I had sown in their hearts had come to them to remind them to repent as they
breathed their last breath.
"The earth also was corrupt before God, and the
earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was
corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth" (Gen
6:11-12).
[3] National Penitentiary
[4] Gringo is a slang
Spanish and Portuguese word used in Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking
countries in Latin America, to denote foreigners, often from the United States and sometimes used as a disparaging term for a
foreigner in Latin America, especially an American or English person
[5] People in uniform who
say or do whatever, even lying about and hurting others in order to get what
they want.
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