A reflection from my first real Central American experience...

I had the chance to visit southern Mexico two years ago. I spent ten days visiting homes, sharing meals, and hearing speakers who shared with us about the poverty situation. We explored the theme of ethics in a society of poverty. Throughout our trip we were accompanied by a Catholic nun who spoke no English. Despite the language barrier, it was easy to see that Lucy was a very compassionate person who truly cared for people. One of our last days in the southern part of the country, and also our last day with Lucy, we did an activity where we were asked to list some key words/themes that stood out from the past week or so. Words like community, injustice, poverty, hope were common on our papers. After we discussed what we had come up with, Lucy stood up to speak. She told us that all of us were missing something important—the most important word that should have been on all our lists. And that word was Love. She told us how love covers all of those things that we had written. Even though we had seen so much pain and poverty, love was still there. Perhaps in those times of pain love is not very apparent, but that does not mean it is not present.