Today I feel better. I had a rough yesterday to be honest. I serve on a committee at my alma mater of Fordham and our tight knit group was very helpful and supportive to me. As have been my friends Donna, Jeff, Bill, Al and Greg and of course, my Paulist friends Frs. Brett Hoover, John Collins and Dave Dwyer. My wife's family has been an incredible source of support for us as well.
As many of you know, we visit the dump, La Chureca, in Nicaragua(pictured, right)--
where people are living-- as an additional outreach to the people of Nicaragua during our mission trip to the Orphanage. There is no more frightening sight than to see children running for the garbage truck so that they can be the first to get the "good garbage." My biggest fear is that Patricia's mother won't be able to turn it all around and that Patricia will be forced to live in a place like La Chureca--which is basically a death sentence waiting to happen. Cancer, AIDS, and other diseases are rampant. Women are preganant everywhere you look--mostly because of the rampant prostitution there (men pay prosititutes more to have sex without condoms), but also because sex is a pleasure that doesn't cost anything. Poor people can still make love and make babies--which in turn keeps them poor because then they have another hungry mouth to feed.
We don't really know poverty on this scale in the United States. However, there are people who live like this in our own country and while not as obviously widespread as it is in Nicaragua, Haiti, or even Africa, it does exist here.
People often plead with God asking "How could you let this happen?" with regards to the poor. In turn, God has the same question for us:
"How could YOU let this happen?"
Indeed.
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