Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 5/15/2012
The Duck Frenzy
We head out and are greeted by the massive wall of heat that is always patiently waiting for us… Off to the orphanage to see the kids for the afternoon. We notice the giant rainclouds in the sky and pick up our pace a bit, glad that we have our rain jackets with us…
The kids nap between 12pm and 2pm each day…When we come back around 2pm, they roll out of their little beds one by one. The sleepy faces... stumble in every few minutes, tiny hands rubbing their eyes, slowing gaining focus… hair all messy.
The kids are always so happy to see us and today our squad leader Jamie brought his ukulele to play for them. We sat down and Jamie starts strumming away…. Surrounded by pairs of interested eyes…
Then the pitter patter of raindrops begin…
Here the rain begins each day at 3pm, almost on the dot. The rain clouds we noticed earlier were much bigger and much darker than usual. The light rain turns into real rain, then the real rain turns into heavy rain. The songs that Jamie was playing and we were singing to… become unrecognizable as the sound of rain gets louder and louder and louder… The wind picks up and is blowing the rain all around, even inside too… the roof starts to leak water all over. The upstairs bedroom where all the girls sleep is just a watery mess, the water is flowing through their roof, onto the their floor and now through the ceiling above us… we shuffle toward the wall… trying to remain dry… rain picks up… we shuffle more… we’re looking at an inch of water on the floor… INSIDE!
Outside the circus has officially begun… the kids are having the absolute BEST time ever… our team is out there running around with them, twirling in the rain, bikes are circling in the tiny yard with even tinier Cambodian kids pedaling away, the buckets have come out from the kitchen and the water war is in full stride, the soccer game in 6 inches of water is so fun to watch, tiny kids come running toward you, hugging you and getting you all wet.
They are laughing and playing and smiling…
The rain has made a pool out of the orphanage… everyone loves pools!
Everyone loves water fights!!!
We’re in business….
What could possibly make this moment in time more entertaining…?
You’re thinking… it sounds pretty interesting already....
How about a couple of DUCKS!!!
I’m completely serious… one boy comes around the corner with two ducks hanging upside down and begins to untie their legs… the ducks have not made even a hint of a move.. I’m thinking… these ducks are dead?
As soon as the tie is undone… ALIVE come the ducks!!!
Off they go… running around the orphanage’s new pool…
And what happens when ducks go running around 20+ tiny Cambodian kids…?
They go charging after them…!!!
We have kids running and laughing, arms are flying, we have ducks jumping and flapping, wings are splashing… It’s absolutely hilarious…!!!
I’m not sure what I’m seeing….. is truly happening…?
We are literally in the middle of a Duck Frenzy!!!
Our animal loving teammate Ada is having an absolute heart attack. It’s one thing that these ducks came from the kitchen and are on the menu for dinner but to torment them is too much for her…
Off she runs to intervene!!!
Stay tuned for the next episode of….
A day in the life of a Cambodian Orphanage!!!
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 4/30/2012
My house in Mae Ai, Thailand
Less than 10 minutes from Burma, the northern border of Thailand
Justin and I stayed here, we lived two to a home all the way down this tiny street in this little village
Group Picture - Day 1
A personal favorite
My morning run each day...
More morning run...
Seriously... ?.... So Blessed!
So Random.... but I love it !!!
Working in the rice fields
Soaked from Songkran water festival
I'm in green in the center
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 4/14/2012
Songkran 2012!!!!
Did you know that every year the Thai people spend an entire week drenching every living thing with water?
Every person, child, man or woman!
How about a truck full of monks?.... yep!!!
(And these monks are revered!!! Women can't even interact with them... but water festival... It's on!!!)
I haven't left my village house with a single thing in my pockets because within minutes I am head to toe soaked!!!
Pictures will have to wait until next week...
So where in the world am I?
Mae Ai, Thailand...
Where is that?....
About 5 min from BURMA!!!
We are 3 hours north of Chiang Mai and just minutes from the northern border of Thailand...
[I can't even begin to describe a day in the life but I'll give it a shot.....]
Wake up just before 530am to the sound of roosters
It's like a town meeting of all the animals in the village
I'm living in a village in the middle of rice fields
I exit my mosquito net and put on my running shoes
Stretch a little and off to a slight jog
Turn the corner of the last home and green rice fields as far as the eyes can see
The sun isn't up yet and I take in the incredible views
The fog lifting off the mountains and fields
The big white birds take off, the few cows beginning their day
The subtle sound of the water as it flows from one rice paddock to another
The hum of a scooter in the distance as the men head out to begin their days work
The sun begins to show
Starts deep orange, then yellow and color blind Joe is told that there is some amazing pinks as well.
I pray, I dream, I miss, I love, I laugh, I remember, I reflect, I feel.....
Two of us live in each home in this village
Our "house mom" is the nicest Thai woman ever
Breakfast of rice, fried eggs, string beans and meat bits that I'm still trying to recognize
Watch out for the red Thai peppers.... Whew!!! That'll wake you up!!!
We head out in a the bed of truck... 15 people is nothing now days...
Funny how adventure becomes the norm and the norm is hard to remember...
First corner... old man with a hose... hmmm... little for the plants... little for the white folks in this truck!
First corner of the main drag in the closest town... it's non-stop buckets, hoses, buckets, hoses, buckets...
Water is dripping off every square inch of you, there is no breaks....
The kids have SO much fun... teenagers... women... men.... everyone...all day... water!!!
Hilarious...
Pad Thai is 85 cents
Internet is 30 cents for an hour
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 3/27/2012
Dear Blog,
I wasn't feeling right the night before last, I couldn't figure it out, felt down, a heavy heart. Same the next morning and afternoon. Just found out my grandma had a stroke, she's in the hospital and can't talk.
There is so much pain in the world, in community, within families, within every person. There are tremendous burdens people carry. Wounds people carry. Unhealed hearts. It's truly sobering how much suffering is out there when you really walk along side people.
And I’m not talking about just in other countries.
Every person.
Home or Abroad.
The person you just passed in the hallway at work...
The person you passed in the grocery store...
The friend you haven't spoken to in months or years...
Just ask...
For me, it's something that I'm processing still. It's why God has me out here. To see and learn these things. It makes me want to spend all of my life loving on people, with every moment I have. With every ounce of energy I have, to pour out love in every way possible to every person possible.
I've sat with a 96+ year old woman and her husband in the mountains of El Salvador, prayed over them, both brought to tears. I've prayed over paralyzed men in their homes & drug addicts in the alleys, I've listened to girls tell me stories of abuse, losing fathers, losing both mothers and fathers. I’ve prayed over developmentally challenged children confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak. I've looked into the eyes of the man in the dump, fighting daily for life, fighting to provide for his family. I’ve sat, talked and looked into the pained eyes of men. The aching bodies of the men here that are poisoned every day they work the sugar cane fields, watching their kidneys fail and their bodies give way to the poisons left in their blood from the pesticides used. I've seen mothers look at me with no idea where their next meal will come from. I've seen kids sniff glue right in front of me because the hunger pains are brutal. I've known boys who were walking in victory over drugs and desiring to be something so much more, one in particular dreamed of being a pastor one day, only to get up and leave without notice and return to the streets. I met Eddy who's father cast his sister aside because he didn't want a girl (this is far too common). I’ve met girls who were forced into sexual abuse within their own families... it's no longer a documentary, article or photo. It's a face, a name, a voice.... a relationship.
This is what I'm processing. I'm just a man like anyone else.
And I open my heart to you as I walk each day…
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 3/24/2012
Today we visited some new villages, the first being one that consists of 450 families living beside the trash dump for Chinandega. We took a rode in that resembled a river bottom, it was full of muddy dirty excrement filled water, puddles, small lakes that made me glad we were in a big truck, trash everywhere, the road running along a huge cemetery… at the end we come into a field and are greeted by a boy running toward us sniffing glue, the typical plastic bottle in his hand, held up to his mouth every 10 or 15 seconds, hands are burned badly on this guy, his make shift bandage job is half on and half stuck to the burn sores. His eyes can barely focus, he runs… then in a daze… slows down…his brain is struggling to hold the original idea that made him run, he tries again, gains ground and then that was that… bottle back up… standing in the middle of the road in a high… eyelids half closed.
We continued up and down the different streets in this community, naked kids everywhere, covered in dirt from head to toe, their faces are just covered in dirt, genitalia covered in dirt. The homes are just a room, walls are nothing but cardboard and plastic, some with metal. The rainy season starts here in about a month, that’s when it get bad here, the plastic homes just leak, the metal ones can hang on in the heavier winds but each year is an unknown.
We come to the end of this road and just as we pull to a stop the truck passes the last house…and then you see the dump… all the trash of Chinandega... in a 12 acre pile…at least 40 feet deep from what I could see looking down at the river below from the edge… I immediately head down the dirtiest of hills, I feel my heart pulling me, I have to see this with my own eyes, I can make out people in the distance, burning piles here and there, my feet are covered in dirt instantly as I begin my trek. I walk very very carefully, checking every step of my feet, there are needles, glass, metals everywhere. I’m glad I bring hardly anything with me when we head out because the dump and the village are very dangerous places. The camera that gets pulled out to innocently capture a photo for later is enough money to feed this family for year. No exaggeration.
I walk up to a young man standing between two deep holes dug straight down, only at the last minute to I notice a friend of his in each, that’s how deep they are, dug straight down into the garbage, one shovel at a time, one swing of the pick at a time. Earlier in the day I purposely did not eat some cookies that were given to me as a gift and when I shared why I didn’t eat them with some of my teammates, to pass them forward to someone who needed them, shortly I had 4 more packs. I had no idea I’d been giving them out in this difficult a situation. God did.
I ask Francisco his name, how many hours a day he does this? All hours the sun is up, he replies. I ask how many days a week? He laughs strongly.. Todos..! (All!) We discuss what he’s looking for and the current price for the metals and plastics, etc. He stutters every so often, most likely from abuse of glue.. it’s a stutter of the mind more than a speech impediment. He almost looked surprised when I asked him his name.
I threw him a pack of cookies and another down to one of his friends in the hole. He was grateful and in Spanish thanked me from his heart and commented on my heart for being there. There is not a lot you can say but what I can do is ask about him and his life because he is important and I want him to know that. I told him he would be in my prayers and kept my eyes locked on his with my hands over my heart long after I was done speaking.
Further I walked and found the most shocking scene yet, a 12 foot deep crevice carved out of this mountain of trash, you realized it’s a mountain when you look down and see the bottom of the channel running along side the dump, I’m standing 30-40 feet up. To my right is a river of pure excrement feeding that channel, there are 3 kids that look to be about 5-7 years old, one woman and her very little girl, and 3 or 4 men. They are standing in the flow of excrement with circular magnets in their hands, running them back and forth, when pulled up they are dense with metals, quickly his hand sweeps the find off and thrown directly into an old coffee can. The other men are shoveling the walls of this crevice into the water above their partner.
We can only look down and process. I take more cookies out of my pocket and toss them down to the various pairs of eyes looking up at me from below, they open them and share, and back into their motions they go. Gratitude is in their eyes as a second glance comes back up to me.
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 3/6/2012
A very dangerous road…
Possibly one of the most dangerous streets in the entire world, definitely the most dangerous street in Honduras & its capital city of Tegucigalpa (2nd highest murder rate in the world)
Los Pinos… is the name of this colony… terrible poverty, gangs, drugs, murders, extortion and unfortunately more. It’s not a place for anyone to enter….period.
Our host Tony has built relationships within this community over the last 4 years; if we are with him we are relatively safe.
We entered Los Pinos around 2pm in the afternoon, a single dirt road in… at first glance, it’s relatively quiet… That’s because most of the trouble is sleeping off the night before. Every night is the same with the weekends being a notch above rest. Nights are filled with alcohol, drugs, guns, knives and glue. It’s a nightly routine… things get going when the sun goes down and by 9 or 10pm, things are in full effect.
We visited the school that once was a place of learning…. abandoned by the government, stripped of everything useful, walls remain, no roof and not a single other thing in it. Now this is where people use their drugs and hang out, old classrooms… no longer a stepping stone to a better future.
Los Pinos has no running water, no sewage system, nothing.
“Doing thinner” as it’s called… rags up to one’s face or a old plastic juice bottle held up to the nose… the kids hands are burned from the chemicals in the thinner… the scars are visible…
Unfortnately, when I say kids I mean kids… very young… sitting on street corners… eyes glazed over….high all day…
German (pronounced her-man) is a teenager that decided to make some serious changes in his life about 7 months ago, he used to be a leader amongst this troubled setting. Now, he lives with Tony and is attending night classes… (German’s testimony is not just a blog in itself, more worthy of a book)
Stephen is a young boy with an incredible smile… Tony has found sponsors for his education, along with Michaels, Ariel’s and German’s… 21 in all. Most have spent years walking in the description of life in Los Pinos above.
Stephen took a small group of us to his house to meet his mom, Marvel and his sister, Karen. We walked 200 feet up this huge hill, just dirt and rocks, no stairs or steps, tires and sewage though.
When we arrived Marvel was sitting in a chair, looking frail and weak. She has lost 40 pounds in a matter of months. She just returned from the hospital the other day, she has a tumor in her stomach, she is waiting to find out if its cancerous but it hurts for her to walk and move. Karen recently graduated from high school and for kids in Honduras that is a wonderful accomplishment. Now she is faced with the 60% unemployment rate in Honduras, an immense challenge. She applies and applies and can’t find work. Her mom isn’t working, she isn’t working, Stephan is a boy… What about the father? He was murdered by the gangs in Los Pinos 4 years ago!
She prays and prays and knows God will provide.
She walks in such faith.
They have no food.
We surrounded her and prayed upon her our entire hearts, she was sobbing in tears and our hugs goodbye; hugs of the sincerest love.
Stephan’s brother Carlos hasn’t been able to go to school because he doesn’t have white shoes and school supplies (uniforms are mandatory and often this cost is big problem for families). Some of our girls took Carlos to the store and had him pick out his shoes… we got him the supplies he needed.
We went to see Ariel’s mother, she came by the property over the weekend to do some laundry, visit and help Nedia (Tony’s wife) in the kitchen. She lives a single room with her kids. That’s it. No kitchen, no bathroom, nothing. Just two beds and about 4 feet by 4 feet to stand.
GOOD NEWS!!!
The good news is there is HOPE in Los Pinos for the first time in a long time. Tony held a meeting with members of the community, talked about his vision and shared a conversation he had with the president of the congress here in Honduras about Los Pinos. This man wanted to meet to Tony and hear more about the work his ministry is doing. Tony is adamant that the government step along side him and help improve these colonies. We are all looking forward to seeing that relationship grow. 21 kids are now sponsored and in school. German’s mom’s house has been painted and support beams repaired. (That house would not have made it through the next big storm with the rotting beams.)
(Carlos has shoes for school)
And this is truly only the beginning…
If Los Pinos can change… any community can change…
If Los Pinos can change… Honduras can change…
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 3/2/2012
#1
Zach was sitting in the seat in front on me, on a bus in Honduras.... turns to me and says he's going to write a spoken word for the women of our squad for Valentine's Day...
He practiced in front of me over and over again...
The men put together a whole evening for the ladies of the squad...
Each of us presenting different talents, cooked dinner, songs, all kinds of hilarious stuff...
Even flowers and encouraging notes of life and love...
This spoken word was part of it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJnLqLWdSU
Women...!!!
you are beautiful... perfectly and wonderfully made...
Do not believe anything else... they are lies...
#2
This link is one of our teams in El Salvador filling some down time....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOm0rzU3_4E&feature=related
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Posted in General Posts by Joe Wishon on 2/28/2012
Remember….HOPE…
Many well known photo journalists have spent entire careers traveling the world…
Capturing the realities of the world…
War, poverty, hunger, oppression, ethnic cleansing, child labor, famine and dozens of other tragedies…
There are a growing number of these photo journalists who have grown tired of simply shining light on the brutality… the negative…
The picture of the starving orphan abandoned in the middle of nowhere…
There is a movement occurring…
A shift in storytelling….
A shift to…..
Stories of HOPE…
Those of you that received my fund letter….
Saw those three words repeated several times…
Stories of HOPE are a direct expression of my heart.
That’s worth saying again…
Stories of……… HOPE……… are a direct expression of my heart.
I say this to you publicly…
…to let you know where I’m at…
…and to add some accountability on my end…
As I walk the world this year… my heart desires to share with you…
the HOPE that is out here…
The good things that are being done…
The progress that IS being made…
The lives that have changed…
The lives that are changing…
Motivation…
My prayer is that this year will be a chance for all of us to find our motivation…
It’ll look different for each of us…
Different situations pull on us differently…
For one of you… orphans…
For another… hunger…
For another… acting locally…
God made each one of us uniquely…
He uses each one of us uniquely…
My hope is that as I walk, write and experience this year…
…that something or some things…
…will resonate with you…
…will strike your heart strings in just that way…
And in the end…
leading each one of us…
to decide…
To Do Something…
Thank you to every one of you who has helped make this journey possible...
Thank you from every child & orphan that smiles brightly into my eyes…
From them to me to you…
THANK YOU!!!!
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