Mission Peru: Arrival

Arrival

It is late afternoon on Saturday August 18, 2012.  We are on approach for landing at the Iquitos airport and I lean forward from my middle seat to look out the window.  I can see the landscape and my first thought is "I could live here, it is beautiful".  And then I see it, the houses, the poverty is apparent even at this height.  When I see the houses I think, no I couldn't live here, I could not live here and not feel compelled to do something about what I'm seeing.  And then I realize, I'm a hypocrite, I do that everyday right now.  Everyone knows there is poverty in Columbus, OH, we all know that there are people that cannot afford food.  We all know that there are homeless people, homeless families in Columbus, or as the Music Man would have put it "right here in river city".  We all know when it gets cold out that there are far too few shelter beds for the number of homeless people that we have and that many are turned away and end up sleeping outside in sub-zero weather.  We all, I, know this and turn a blind eye almost every day and yet I sit here thinking, as I see the poverty from the air, that I could not just sit by and do nothing and yet I do just that, back home, on almost a daily basis.  Am I really so out of touch that I think that occasional check to Faith Mission, near the holidays, is really making a difference or that the check I write every couple of months to the local food pantry is really what God had in mind in all the references to the poor in the bible, Hebrews 13:16 for example?  I used to think so, but in this moment, in this moment all that I have done seems to be inadequate.  Little did I know that what I was seeing right at that moment was some of the nicer housing, nicer areas of town that we would be seeing.