Greetings from Tucson! All is well. We are enjoying our little RV in the church parking lot. And we are anticipating Christmas and enjoying all the festivities this time of year. We miss loved ones and appreciate all the photos and texts throughout the holidays!
Homeschooling for Jodi continues to be a challenge, especially with holidays and needing to get last minute Christmas gifts, baking done and other day to day things that arise. Nathan and Julia are attentive students, however, it's tough to stay focused when the weather is nice outside plus their teacher is not as organized or as creative as she should be :-). But they love reading, so whenever there is a lull, a book comes out and they are content!
This weekend we had off and decided to get out of our camper
for a while. We debated for a while, but
on Wednesday we ended up making reservations at a dude ranch just 12 miles from
where we are staying. Because we signed
up so late, they gave us a good deal since they knew they wouldn't be full.
We all had a great time.
The kids had lessons and rides with other kids their age and Jodi and I
took lessons and rides with adults. Some
of our rides were separate, however, since my skill level put me with the
"try and stay on your horse" group rather than Jodi's "loping
over the hills" group.
The ranch abutted the Saguaro National park, so our rides
went through beautiful mountains filled with enormous saguaro cacti and all
kinds of other cacti and desert plants.
It was a surreal place to ride, but at a bit risky since falling would
mean landing on rocks and/or a cactus not to mention trail apples from the
horses ahead.
Also of note is that we had our first Sonoran Hotdog, which
is a local American/Mexican fusion. It
is a hotdog, wrapped in bacon, covered in pinto beans, salsa, mayonnaise, and
mustard, in a bun, with a hot pepper on the side. It is actually very good.
Working at CHRPA continues to be great in that the work
itself is fun and being able to connect with so many people that are different
from me is rewarding. Today we put in a
toilet for an 80 year old Korean War vet and his wife who works as a cook at a
local Mexican restaurant. I have seen
poverty in developing countries before, but this is different. I'm not sure if it's better or worse, but I
guess it's all bad. Their house should
just be torn down and rebuilt. They were
very grateful and they resteamed for us the most wonderful tamales for lunch,
definitely the best I have ever had.
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It seems that I have to struggle with my own biases of
poverty here more than I do when it is overseas. As opposed to in Kenya, when I see poverty in
America I tend to tack it up to bad personal choices rather than something that
is out of their control. It is true,
when I am fixing a furnace and look over and see a big screen TV, I get a sense
of poor decision making.
However, after talking with these people face to face, I get
the feeling that they work hard and are not in poverty by choice. I am sure that in spite of a tough childhood,
many of them could have made the "right" decisions to work harder in
high school, go off to college, and get a higher paying job. There certainly are many of those stories out
there in books and on Oprah.
But when I look back at my childhood, I think I was pretty
much a product of my environment. I
tended to do what my friends did. I took
advice from and emulated my parents. I
went to college where my older siblings did.
Those people were the people that I was exposed to as a child and it
would have been hard to stray from those influences. I believe that I would be in the same boat as
the people I am working for if I were born into their household.
If I believe that, then where is my compassion?
I do not know how fix poverty in America or if it is even
possible (fixing their houses is definitely not the answer by the way!). I may
be unwilling to help fight poverty in America because of how difficult it would
be, because I don't know how, or because I feel there are more important
battles out there. But if nothing else,
I think it is important that I at least know about it and try to grasp the
extent of it.
I did happen to receive via email a couple of links that I
think are good concerning poverty in America.
www.mcc.org/fearnot/world/pennypoll (click on the photo show)
We have already received many Christmas cards, gifts, and
the knowledge that we are in your prayers.
We thank you so much for all of these.
Have a wonderful Christmas!
Eric, Jodi, Julia, and Nathan
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