Little League, High School Football, and $50 Million Bucks

As we head into another fall season of football, a couple of items caught my attention. I was at my pastors house the other night and he was watching the Little League World Series on ESPN. Today I picked up a newspaper and sat down at Cici's Pizza for lunch and there it was again. 11 and 12 year old kids playing baseball on national television. While watching, I opened the paper to the sports page and there at the bottom, just below the fold, was an article on a Texas high school spending over $50 million bucks on a new football stadium. Maybe I am missing something, but this does not seem healthy to me. In an era of less spending on education, maybe spending that $50 million on educating that schools athletes might have been a better investment. Perhaps things like kids playing baseball on national television and high schoolers playing football in $50 million dollar stadiums contributes to a mentality of privilege that tells athletes they can have it all, are above the law, and that the rules don't apply to them. I don't know. What do you think?

What's a Chilean Mine Worker To Do?

Okay, I have finally returned from two months in Mexico, am sorting through a mountain of e-mail, and I come across a headline in the news that talks about the plight of the trapped Chilean mine workers. As you may be aware, a group of 33 mine workers were trapped about 1000 feet underground in San Jose, Chile a little more than two weeks ago. After fearing the worst, authorities were amazed when they actually were able to make contact with the workers and learn that, while pretty wiped out, the boys were indeed alive. But with that good news comes some bad news. It seems as if the mine company in Chile must have contracted with BP Petroleum for the rescue because the bad news is that it will take 4 months to drill a hole through which the miners can be rescued! I am guessing that after 4 months underground the tooth brushes that the guys asked for will be the least of their worries. Maybe the Chilean government could ask Johnson & Johnson to sponsor the rescue effort and send down a case of Shower to Shower so the boys can sing out “A Sprinkle a Day Helps Keep Odor Away!” Since presumably the miners are all guys, I'd recommend the sport version...

A Ministry Break and a Chance to Blog...

This is literally my first chance to stop, take a breath and write since the middle of July. Serving in Mexico, while certainly a blessing, can be a challenge for communications, especially on the limited funds many of us missionary folks usually have. So after looking over more than 300 e-mails and returning a bunch of telephone calls, and rerouting some cancelled plane reservations, let me share a little. My last two or three weeks have been spent in Oaxaca, Mexico. For those unacquainted with Mexico, Oaxaca, located in the southern end of the country, is the second poorest state. A majority of the 50 poorest cities in the country are located within Oaxaca. These are the areas where I work. Places with names like San Pablo Guila, San Baltazar Guelavia, Santa Cruz Papalutla, and San Pedro Amatlan. The farmers from these areas are struggling to stay alive. Kids come to camp with no change of clothes because the family cannot afford one. It is not unusual for a family to go days at a time without eating meat or eggs. It is difficult for me to hear people from the United States say they are poor when I have spent time with people from these villages. Maybe poverty is relative. Maybe it depends on where you are from, or your perspective. For instance, I am writing this from Queretaro, Mexico. Almost the antithesis of Oaxaca. Next to Mexico City, Queretaro is perhaps the most advanced city in this vast country. And one of the wealthiest. Middle class homes here sell for about $200,000 dollars, not pesos! A lot of the people in Queretaro may not even be aware of the poverty many of their paisanos in the south face on a daily basis. And that is where I find myself right now. In a beautiful city with good friends, surfing the net, enjoying some fantastic food, while some of my other friends struggle to have a meal of tlayudas and beans. Because they live in a place where people steal water tanks from ranches just so they can be sold to make ends meet. Some days the tension between these realities and my life in the states is really hard.