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© Jenny Roberts,
3381-9438
A Cup of Cold Water
“Happiness is when what you
think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mohandas K. Gandhi
I wasn’t paying that much attention to the chatter my son
Jacob was carrying on with some tourists the other day. He’s my outgoing one,
the one who moves so effortlessly in and around a crowd, like water around
pebbles. Then I heard one of the tourists question him, “Church slash
hotel?” in a tone that sounded skeptical, as if to say, “What kind of
establishment is that?”
I elaborated for Jacob to our friend-for-a-day tourist:
“Yes, believe it or not, it’s actually a church slash hotel slash
coffee shop slash water treatment provider slash soup kitchen
slash recreation facility …” But the skepticism behind the tourist’s
question got me to thinking, What kind of establishment is it, really? The
church?
The church in general. And particularly, the yellow Son
Rise Calvary beside the road in Sandy Bay. It’s certainly not the building, with
its ever dusty floors, its termite-riddled, half-missing siding, and its leaky
sanctuary roof.
When I walk the church grounds, something so much more
substantial than wood and concrete materializes: island-wide interdependence,
which reminds me of something Jesus told his disciples. What was it? By this all
men will know that you are my disciples, … if you pack out the pews and ring out
the hymns to the far reaches of the neighborhood? If you know your Bibles
backwards and forwards and can recite a verse to anyone with a problem? If you
dress appropriately for your Sabbath day and on most other days too? … No,
simply, “if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).
No church is perfect, but the people at Son Rise Calvary
seem to have a pretty decent handle on the “love one another” command.
Walking toward the coffee shop, I pass an open door and see
a Finding Nemo measurement chart on the wall—remnants from Nurse Peggy’s Clinica
Esperanza. Ms. Peggy needed a place and Son Rise supplied it to her—for over two
years until the construction of her hospital a stone’s throw down the road.
Stephanie Poschwatta from Canada runs the Higher Grounds
coffee shop at Son Rise. She’s got lattes and mochaccinos and all those other
chic-sounding specialty coffees, along with biscotti and whole
wheat-honey-ginger bread (my favorite) and extremely sticky sticky buns. She’s
got bookshelves stuffed with Bibles and books and games—and crafted jade and
onyx jewelry by Yourgin Levy on display. A Sandy Bay resident, Yourgin’s passion
shows in his eyes when he’s describing the quality of each piece of work, work
that supports his family. But I think it’s the hours he spends visiting the
inmates at the Coxen Hole jail that stirs the passions of his heart most. … My
heart is stirred by the total affect of Stephanie’s little haven for human
connection—around tables which have caught both tears and laughter, Uno cards
and sticky bun dribbles.
Walking through the screen doors toward the serving counter
on a Sunday after church, there’s usually a line of thirty or more children,
most of whom show up without their parents, all waiting in line to receive a
plate of food. From no run-of-the-mill “soup kitchen” either. Watching Tia, wife
to Pastor Chuck Laird, orchestrate the feeding of as many as a hundred is like
watching an artist splashing paint on a canvas. It might be messy at the start,
but it all comes together beautifully in the end. This Sunday: spaghetti, salad,
garlic bread, watermelon, iced strawberry cake and Tang. Another Sunday: chicken
and rice, beans, tortillas, watermelon and spiced banana cake. Adults help the
kids carry their overflowing plates and drinks down into the sanctuary, which is
quickly converted every Sunday from church rows into tables and chairs. Tia
says, “I just want God to be glorified, not us. We are such imperfect vessels.
And He’s the one doing the work.”
Behind the counter, filling the plates and pouring the
drinks, stands Tia, with warm eyes and a thoughtful smile, along with anyone
else willing to pitch in. Maybe Suzanne visiting from Pennsylvania or Davinci
from down the street in Sandy Bay or Esmeralda who grew up on the mainland. Just
people, differences aside, working together, depending on each other. True
community.
That community is just what I see in the mural on the wall
down in the sanctuary. Luma (Dennis Mejia) an artistically talented,
dreadlock-donning church member, has depicted islanders going to a freshwater
source for water, playing in it, being baptized in it, carrying it away in jars
of clay. I would bet Luma’s choice for subject reveals both the physical and
spiritual nourishment he’s drinking in at Son Rise.
In response to my description of Son Rise as church
slash hotel slash etc., Stephanie, sitting in the coffee shop
painting an “open” sign to hang out front, says, “You know, the water treatment
ministry is the one that gets me most excited.”
Pastor Chuck Laird, who before coming to Roatan owned a
small water treatment company in California, is mostly quiet and soft-spoken
(even when he’s preaching). He’s ever ready to throw himself headlong after a
ball on the volleyball court out back, and he’s just as moved to action on
behalf of the residents of Policarpo Galindo Colonia, where the families of over
400 homes have been without well water for over eight months. He relates with a
burdened heart what he’s seen there:
“When
their wells went dry, they started digging into the gray water ditches to get
water for cooking, cleaning, bathing and drinking. Tiny children, as small as
Carlton [his eighteen month old], wrap their entire bodies around these
five-gallon water jugs to haul them five or ten steps up, then rest, then do it
again another five or ten more steps, and again and again, until they make it up
to their homes. With jugs full of parasite-infested ditch water.” Nurse Peggy
Stranges of Clinica Esperanza says that since the rains have stopped, the
Colonia health problems caused by contaminated water have risen from 50% to
75%. “It is just a matter of time before cholera will be in the Colonia if the
water and sewage problems are not corrected,” says Dr. Robert Buckingham, an
epidemiologist employed at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Buckingham, who
recently visited the Colonia and could smell open raw sewage, works with both
PAHO (Pan American Health Organization) and the World Health Organization.
Pastor Chuck, partnering with Henry Zittrower, founder of
Living Water 4 Roatan, has been providing a temporary fix for the Colonia’s
water problem, hauling purified drinking water in trucks every Tuesday and
Thursday, as many as a dozen trips each day (about 5,000 gallons a day). Pastor
Chuck says, “Our good God provided an abundant water source from the well on
Henry’s land, which is the site for the treatment system,” a MIOX treatment
system that is able purify 1/3 million gallons of water a day for 100 lempiras
per 1,000 gallons. The MIOX is the only water treatment system known to purify
even chlorine-resistant parasites by using mixed oxidants.
Mission teams working with Son Rise dug trenches and ran
pipes down the hill from Henry’s house, across the road, through the church
property and into the Sandy Bay community behind the facility. They also
assisted Ms. Peggy in installing a new well and purification system for her new
Clinica Esperanza.
Pastor Chuck and Henry have obtained permission from
landowners for running the water lines along property lines from Henry’s well to
the Church of God’s Prophecy in the Colonia, to be distributed daily—an
emergency clean water line to alleviate the need to truck water. The lines are
almost complete, but in the meantime, Pastor Chuck makes sure to take his water
gun on all those water hauling trips to entertain the kids (and himself).
Six-year-old Josue is in the crowd that’s already gathered
and waiting under the shade of some banana trees when Pastor Chuck’s little
Mitsubishi pulls up. All sorts and sizes of empty containers wait as well. The
distribution process seems almost quiet and reverent, with people queuing up and
helping each other—except for Josue and other little shirtless boys who’re all
yelling “aqui!” to the water-gun wielding, boyishly grinning pastor.
Maybe it’s the water that has brought Josue down to the
church at Son Rise Calvary. Maybe it’s the nourishing lunches after church.
Maybe it’s the children’s church with occasional visits from “Captain Amazing.”
Josue doesn’t smile all that much; his face already has an adult quality. He
picks up a crayon to draw a picture of himself during craft time and asks for
help when he can’t get the arms and legs right—and he’s receiving it. Help, that
is. Not from just one or two—from the whole community that makes up Son Rise
Calvary Chapel. From those keeping the diapers changed and the faces smiling on
the littlest ones. From those keeping the energy alive and contained in the
outdoor children’s church. From those donating for kids to get back in school
and those changing the sheets in the hotel rooms. From those translating the
sermon message and those counseling couples. From those meeting for Bible
studies and those stopping to pray on the spot for a need. From those sweating
in the kitchen and those getting drenched from a squirt gun in water-laden
delivery trucks.
Island-wide interdependence. That is church.
That’s what kind of establishment Son Rise Calvary is. And I think it’s the
kind of community Jesus had in mind for his followers. A community that keeps in
harmony what they think, what they say, and what they do, wherein Gandhi said
lies happiness.
But wait, before you start thinking I’ve painted a utopia
of happiness. Writer John Eldredge describes the underside of community better
than I:
“It is a royal mess. I will not
whitewash this. It is disruptive. Going to church … to sit and hear a
sermon doesn’t ask much of you. It certainly will never expose you. That’s why
most folks prefer it. Because community will. It will reveal where you have yet
to become holy, right at the very moment you are so keenly aware of how they
have yet to become holy. It will bring you close and you will be seen and
you will be known, and therein lies the power and therein lies the
danger. … Living in community is like camping together. For a month. In the
desert. Without tents. All your stuff is scattered out there for everyone to
see. C’mon—anybody can look captured for Christ an hour a week, from a distance,
in his Sunday best. But your life is open to those you live in community with.
Some philosopher described it like a pack of porcupines on a winter night. You
come together because of the cold, and you are forced apart because of the
spines.”1
It never gets that cold here in Roatan; but there is a cold
that’s bringing these people of Son Rise Calvary together, and keeping them
together. When they see the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the
sick, the prisoner—they see Jesus, who says “I tell you the truth, whatever you
did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Not only
that: “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones
because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his
reward.”
Rewards might be few and far between when you’re washing
another pot or digging another waterline trench, and the true community living
practiced by these people might be difficult and downright nerve-racking at
times, but they’re still handing out cups of cold water. Literally and
figuratively. One cup after another. Loving one another.
1 Eldredge, John.
Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive. Nashville, TN: Thomas
Nelson, Inc., 2003
READ THE STORY THAT WAS
PRINTED BECAUSE OF THIS LETTER: "H2O FOR THE POOR" by Jenny Roberts