A letter from Tim and Gloria Wheeler serving in Honduras
December 2014 - Hope—Living Into the Future
Dear Friends,
The new year brings a new opportunity and new hope for achievement, for throwing away the old and reaching toward our goals for a better life. Our religion tells us to live in a new way, with new relationships based on love and by doing this to make the world new. This sounds wonderful, but can this really become reality, especially if you are poor with little education and a family to feed? Gloria wrote the story that follows about her friend, Maria.
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Maria and husband, Margarito—little steps big dreams
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Daughter, Carmen, with family chicken project
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Wilmer and Antonio, Maria’s children, have a better future
Maria got up one morning very happy and full of dreams because it was the day that she would start learning something new. For the first time she was going to learn how to use a sewing machine. As soon as she started walking from her community of Cerro Azul, a small community in the district of Trinidad, Honduras, she started to feel worried. “What will happen if she could not learn?” she thought, “I don’t know how to read and write and if I really can’t learn because of that…hmmm...” She was sure that there were more women in the workshop. She went into the room and went up to the instructor. She told him who she was and that she could not read and write. Now she knew why she had been so nervous as she had walked from her village—this had happened to her before; she had been turned away because of not being able to read and write. People like her hadn’t had all of the opportunities that she hoped to give her children. In some ways the miracle was that she was present that day and was trying to reach past the untouchable, reaching into the unknown, and dreaming of something better.
She sat down in the place that was assigned to her. While she clutched her hands nervously, her thoughts flew off to her home and her husband who was looking for a piece of land to rent in order to plant a little bit of corn and beans. Antonio and Wilmer were at school, Carmen with a neighbor. When she went home she would serve beans and tortillas, and would have the same ready for the next day.
A voice brought her back to the reality of what was happening. The teacher had spoken about the importance of being able to read and write in order to take this course. There were all of her illusions and dreams broken into pieces on the floor. Would she leave them strewn around the floor? She gathered up the pieces, pieces of dreams that were scattered, piece-by-piece, and put them in a crystal jar in her mind. At some opportune time she could focus on one of the pieces in the future. Right now she had to walk home; her family was waiting.
When she got home almost at dark she served the beans and tortillas and went to bed. She slept and slept, more than usual. A rooster woke her that crowed from a fence. She had forgotten that recently she had received 10 chickens and a rooster; her life was changing and would change more. She could learn new things. That was her hope as she continued to reach into the unknown by going back to the sewing class again and again for several months.
At this time of year we hold up this story of this wonderful woman, someone like so many, with common fears and seemingly impossible dreams, but with a special determination to overcome them and to change her life. So many would not have persisted as Maria did in common everyday life in Honduras, overcome by their own fears and feelings of shortcomings.
As we hold up Maria in the light and admire her will, we are holding up women who have overcome so much with little steps and little victories that, when added together, begin to change the world around them. Let us have the vision of many such experiences among people around us in the year ahead that begin to change the world as we live in it.
David LaMotte in his book Worldchanging 101: Challenging the Myth of Powerlessness tells us that “hope is the conscious decision to live toward the world you would like to see, to take action to move closer to a better way, regardless of your chances of achieving your goal.” We leave you with this thought as we move into the New Year and with the story of Maria and of how she put this thought into practice in a real and personally challenging way.
I invite you to continue supporting this ministry we share, through your voice, your daily living, your financial contributions, and your prayers. Together, and by the Grace of God, we will continue to transform this world in which we live, and may we all enjoy a sense of new hope around us.
Faithfully,
Tim and Gloria Wheeler
Apartado 15027, Colonia Kennedy
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 43
The 2015 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 68
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