One Life One Chance #5 - Nothing Is Easy

Part 1 - The Trip |  Part 2 - Orientation | Part 3 - The Empty Lot | Part 4 - New Home Owners

We have a fascination with making things faster, easier, and more convenient.  The iphone, android platform, blackberry exist to satisfy the human cravings for more and faster.   Interfaces must be user friendly, customer support needs to be like your talking to a best friend, and we must, must not ever wait - wait for a file to download, a video to render,  or a text to arrive.   Somehow that fast changing reality with the promise for more has fully captivated the modern life.  Whether all the red bull buzz is actually making our lives better or worse time will decide.  But what is uncontested is that ease and convenience are highly sought after values.

Yet, Rob and Brenda run towards inconvenience, chaos and hardship.  Why?  Because, what they find there is the purpose they exist - to help people. People whose life is poverty, survival is not a tv show, where the very basics of life is in scarce supply - safety,  water,  health and certainty.

Nothing seems easy in the Baja.  Life is on the edge, and it often feels only one small step from chaos stepping in.  It's easy to get sick,  car accidents are frequent,  and bank lineups are measured in hours. There is no couch with big screen to retreat to.

There are local pastors to help,  missing tools, food needs to be delivered, the bus breaking down again and there might be a hurricane coming through in a couple days.   Things break, staff retire, funds are tight, constantly under staffed and there is another knock on the door - a local pastor needs some support for his church member.   Balance that with being gracious and generous hosts at Los Olivos to the various teams that cycle in and out all summer long for single week short-term missions.

Nothing is easy or straightforward.  There is the language barrier.  It's not just the spanish english thing, its all the different dialects of spanish that needs to be stickhandled.  You can have a spanish conversation with one person and understand  them, but it all changes when another comes with a different dialect and tries to explain something urgent and you are missing each other by a million miles.

Some local helpers on the job site. 

When you are 6 hours south of the US border and you remotely run a business back home and you may have to submit bids for a large job in BC, you will need to keep your nose above the chaos of the Baja.  You can make the bid, but what if the power goes off or the internet decides to take a vacation and the bid needs to be in an hour?  Stress and chaos are normal. Must keep things going at home, yet life and death needs are right at your door step that need attention now.   Constant juggle of priorities and survival may mean developing both a deep compassion and then being able to suppress  it for a time when life back home needs your immediate attention.

The problems in the Baja are complex.  All the systems have some level of flaws.  Roads are sketchy, banking is uncertain,  policing and government are distrusted,  there is little social safety net outside of the churches, education is unavailable to many, health care is unaffordable by many.  Infrastructure that we take for granted like water, sewer, electricity, roads, bridges,  are patchy or nonexistant.

Bring your iphone apps, your western linear mind, and an overestimation of yourself to try and "make a difference" and you will be humbled.  There are no easy answers.  No quick fixes and no single development model that will fix it all.

What is needed is a long term investment of one life to others.  There are plenty of books that are all about 150 pages with endorsements that string together glowing reports announcing systemic, sustainable approaches to fixing other people's problems - I have about 10 on my shelf.  But nothing is easy that really matters.  Not raising your own kids nor helping people in a 3rd world country.

Life for Rob and Brenda is complex.  They are at peace and content in the middle of brokenness and chaos.   They have made a life out of doing what God has been doing for centuries: repairing, reclaiming, and restoring people. And they are seeing a difference, they are seeing change.  Keep going Rob and Brenda, you are an inspiration.