If there be a poor man, Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land. Deuteronomy 15. 7a, 10-11

As I write to you today, I am mindful of conversations and experiences I have had in dealing with the poverty we face on a day to day basis. I am mindful of a family member who visited us when I was in language school in Costa Rica. He said the most heartbreaking experience he has ever had was seeing children on the street of San Jose, Costa Rica, obviously homeless and destitute. People, he said, would pass by like these children were never even there.

Mercy and I had a similar experience months later, while at an evangelism convocation of Latin America in Nicaragua. We spent the night at Provadenic in Managua, the capital. Blocks away from the clinic were “huela pegas”, translated “glue sniffers.” Here were these children, seven and eight years old, strung out from breathing the fumes of plastic cement and other types of solvents. At the time, our Richie was the same age of some of them.

And now, every day we see and work with people who experience grinding poverty. We see teenage girls prostituting themselves. We see people begging at the border. We see pastors and church members who live in little more than shacks.

And Mercy and I are not poor. We are not doing what we are doing to get rich, and it’s a good thing, but we are not poor. In fact, as I shared with someone on a short term mission group, I need only to see the situations we see in Mexicali and the environs to become ashamed of the reasons I complain.

So what do we do?

I want you to know that there are no easy answers. Sometimes we are tempted to give trite answers from simplistic perspectives. But the fact of the matter is that if I gave a nickel (even in Mexico, a useless amount) to everyone begging at the border, I would go broke. If we tried to house all of the girls in prostitution, we could not. And as committed as Mercy and I are to bettering the lives of those with whom we work, we are severely limited in what we can do.

So what do we do?

For me, I had to deal with the reality that I can only do a little about the poverty in the two-thirds world, Mexico, Baja California, or Mexicali. As much as I want to solve problems, this one is too big for me alone. This is not conceding, but just coming to a conclusion that prevents me from being so overwhelmed that I do nothing. Yes, with that I have to deal with frustration, guilt and anger as part of the process. And pray God encourages us as we go through the process of accepting what we can and cannot do.

We also channel the blessings. When I was pastoring in Massachusetts, one of the girls from the youth group shared in Sunday worship the story of starfish getting washed upon the shore from a storm. The person knew that they would die unless they were placed back in the water. There were thousands of them, and this person knew that they couldn’t get them all. They were ridiculed by others, but the reply was “I may not be able to save them all, but I can save this one, and this one and this one.” We cannot solve the entire problem, but we are proud supporters of those making a difference in various neighborhoods in our area.

That’s why we have highlighted people like Alma and Ramon, and Gilberto and Dario and several other ministries. These people are making a difference in their neighborhoods; showing the hope of Christ in concrete actions. And that is why we continue to ask for your help. As you pass on the blessings that God has given to you, you are helping countless lives be touched in the name of Christ.

And we pray and ask for your prayers, that God would work in miraculous ways. Situations are very difficult, and are seldom solved quickly or easily. But God has ways of acting that demonstrate loving care and compassion in remarkable ways. Confronting the things we do is not an easy task. But with your help and God’s grace, God is using some wonderful people here to glorify God and grow God’s kingdom.

May God bless and keep you!
Rick