Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part IX)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

 Part IX: The Silence

On Sundays, I have my immediate family to our home for dinner. I cook for 21 people (four generations of us) including six wonderful grandchildren (by next Sunday there will be seven!). There is always the noise of children at play – laughing, crying, shouting, running, music, television, video games, and more. I love that beautiful noise – it is the noise of immortality, of legacy, of the future.

I noticed that there were many children at all the homes we visited; yet the only noise we heard was the sad sound of crying. The silence of the children was almost unbearable, for each of us knew from whence it came. It was the silence of hunger, the silence of deprivation, the silence of malnourishment, the silence of lethargy – in short, the silence of poverty!

Another generation robbed of its childhood simply because they lost the lottery of life – born in a poor country to destitute parents.

To be continued...

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