Maria is about 35 years old and lives as a squatter in Guatemala City. She lives with no electricity, which, of course, means no lights, no television, no electric stove or oven, no heat, no air. Maria is currently recovering from a very traumatic miscarriage. This is the first baby she has ever lost to miscarriage, but she has lost three other children to starvation and illness at older ages. If you count the baby she recently miscarried, she has been pregnant ten times. She lives with her husband, her 18 year old daughter, that daughter’s 10 month old daughter, her 10 year old daughter, and her 6, 5 year and 8 month old sons. If you happened to be following the math with all of that, there is still once child I have not mentioned. Maria also has given one of her children up for adoption, a daughter that is now 8 years old.
Last Monday I was hired as a translator for the first meeting between the American family who adopted Maria’s child and Maria and her family. Before meeting the families and knowing their stories, I was cautious of the whole situation. All I could think of was the 8 year old American Guatemalan (we’ll call her Abby) that was going to have one of the biggest days of her life. I didn’t think about the layers of stories that weave hers together and the importance of all of the “minor” characters meeting.
There are a few things I took away from the experience.
• I strongly believe that Abby would have been one of Maria’s children that would have eventually been victim to hunger and poverty. After hearing the story of her adoption, I literally think the adoption saved Abby’s life.
• I saw poverty in Maria’s life and in her story like I’ve never seen before. This may sound weird, but I feel like I’ve seen painful poverty before – especially after our time serving at the clinic in Mexico, but Maria’s poverty hit me hard. The reality is the majority of the world lives more like Maria than like you and me.
• It’s hard to walk away from such a story without trying to put it all in perspective of my own faith. In the book of Luke, Jesus announces his ministry with these words, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor…” Not to save us of our sins, not to make our hearts clean, not to help us understand God better (although he obviously did all of those things)…the first time he says explicitly what he’s doing here on this earth, it’s to bring good news to the poor.
• Then it all begs the question, so what do I do? I have googled and wikied so many depressing poverty statistics in the past week (for example, the gap between rich and poor has more than doubled in the past thirty years), that it’s easy for me to feel like the forest really is too big to see that it’s really made of trees. But I must to something. Everyday.
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