Catching Up (part 1)

I am trying to catch up and keep this blog more up to date. As of right now I believe my rate of frequency is about every 6 months. Here's hoping I can bump that up to every 4...

So without further ado I give you:

A picture of my friend Wilson


And last month's letter

Every once in awhile I make a friend on a project. In Guatemala my new friend’s name is Wilson Alexander. Wilson is not a shy child, which is a good thing when you have a group of 20 Americans invade your home for a week. Wilson made friends with everyone in our group, and he loved the camera, (which is also good when every one of the Americans brought their digital camera.) Wilson was always available to pose for a picture.
Wilson, like just about every kid I know, also loved to be tossed into the air. As the project director, I try to let the groups enjoy what they have come to do… work, while I try to mainly stay out of their way. In Guatemala this allowed me to spend time with Wilson, his sister, and their cousins, doing what I do best, which is kid tossing. They would come ask me to toss them or spin them or some combination. With the toss-er to toss-e ratio being 1:4, I had to quickly come up with other ways to keep them entertained without falling over from exhaustion.
My anti-exhaustion solution was introducing this group of Guatemalan ninos to an old “game” my uncles would play on me. “Sack of potatoes” is when you throw someone over your shoulder and carry them around like they were… a sack of potatoes. The most important part of the game is to never acknowledge that the “sack of potatoes” is actually a child, and to continually ask the others where they want you to place the heavy load you are carrying. I was very surprised to find that even in Guatemala, sack of potatoes, translates quite well. I even made the mistake of calling it by the wrong name in Spanish, which the children were kind enough to correct for me.
I am reminded of the passage in Luke 10 about Jesus at the home of Mary and Martha. Martha worked very hard to make everything perfect for Jesus, while Mary simply sat at His feet listening. Sometimes just enjoying the moment we are in is the very best thing we can do, and to try to fill that with more activities would cause unnecessary stress and complication. I am far from perfect at being able to just enjoy the moment without feeling the need to clutter it with activity, but I know my time with Wilson was well spent. I hope that today you would find time to enjoy the important things like laughter and friendship.

Michael