Last week, I misplaced one of my hearing aids. I wanted to fix my hair, so I took them out and laid them on the bathroom counter. When I finished, I saw only one on the counter. After a few minutes, I located the second one. It had been on the counter the whole time, but I couldn’t see it because the neutral color blended into the similar color of the countertop.
I wear hearing aids due to a family-inherited trait. I am moderately deaf in both ears. I lose sight of those small devices quite often. They are meant to be not easily seen, to protect the vanity of the user who wears them behind the ear. Personally, I would prefer them to be bright yellow or orange as my hair covers them.
The phrase that comes to mind when I lose one of these tiny instruments for a moment is “hiding in plain sight.” If you think about it, lots of things as well as people are hiding in plain sight. They are there all the while, but we don’t seem them. Our mind fools us, and we can’t see what is in front of our eyes.
I think that the poor often hide in plain sight. We don’t see them. Our own concerns and issues form such a tight context around our lives that we can’t see the sometimes urgent problems in the lives of others.
I am no longer working in Honduras, but I am still concerned with the overlooked and unseen poor children there. I have many young friends who are not enrolled in the new school term that began in February due to lack of funds for things like shoes or school supplies. Later this week, I am shipping a small shipment of shoes and school supplies, although I didn’t have enough funds to buy shoes for all of the children.
If you are not involved in helping someone in your own community or abroad, please consider being generous with the poor. They can’t repay you, but God makes a promise to do just that. Proverbs 19:17 states that whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done. Even if you can’t quite imagine a literal recompense from God, perhaps you can agree that helping poor children ultimately benefits everyone, as well-nourished and educated children will make the world a better place, not just for them, but all of us.
Here are a few pictures of the children in Honduras. Donors are always welcome. Information concerning giving is available at His Eyes Ministry site or their Facebook site.
A note about photos: I have been questioned why our children appear healthy and well-dressed. I do not like to manipulate emotions of readers by posting children who appear sick, dirty, or with torn clothing. Also, our children are aware they are being photographed, so they chose their best clothing for photographs. The ministry also provides clothing at little cost to parents. In some cases, clothing is free, but we feel it lends dignity to charge a small fee. In addition, the men and women who sort and sell clothing receive a small recompense as their salary.
A Gumbo Pot 
It’s very hard for us in the USA to even comprehend the poverty you were attempting to alleviate in Honduras. Even here, the poor are segregated from the middle class and rich, and are seldom seen. Yet if you look at the statistics, there is a great deal of poverty in the USA, but it mostly goes unnoticed by everyone except the poor themselves. And here, because we are a rich society, there are plenty of cast-offs which the poor can fish out of the trash and use. An immigrant friend, of humble origins, managed to furnish an entire apartment here from things he found in the trash. If you didn’t know, you’d never have suspected it from looking at his place, which is nice.
Unfortunately, there’s not so much free stuff in the truly poor places. I’ve often wished we could ship all that unwanted, but serviceable stuff to poorer people SOB. Both societies would benefit.
Saludos,
Kim G
Boston, MA
Where most of the wealthier people live in the suburbs.
LikeLike
I noted that many in the upper class in Honduras didn’t “see” the poor in their own country. They chose to not see, I suppose. Or, perhaps,they saw them as God-ordained to be a permanent servant/slave class. There’s a lot of medievalist thinking in that place. If the rich in Honduras shared some of their extras with the poor, many problems would cease to exit there. The violence, everyone just about agrees on this, stems from the classist society there that is more stratified than most Latin countries. Desperation leads to many hopeless acts. However, each small act of generosity is noble, just and yields consequence such as hope, even if on a micro-scale in comparison to the larger scale of the problem.
LikeLiked by 1 person