Who Is My Neighbor?

Just back from our third F@W pilgrimage to Guatemala, I am stunned by the sense of deep human connection that we had -- with each other and with people there. Was it common purpose? Physical labor shared? The agricultural setting? A lack of socially separating symbols? Hardships endured together? Rituals of celebration? God's call to know we are one in Christ?

When we arrived at La Cumbre, an hour beyond San Martin Jilotepeque, a red tent and a live band marked the ridge where we would be digging a school foundation with local Mayan villagers. We had traveled two hours by bus and were anxious to begin work, but food and festivities came first. The women urged us to eat (and we did). The teacher and local leaders spoke and children performed a traditional dance of blessing. Soon many were dancing. Their joyous hospitality was overwhelming!

The village had bought one corner of their cemetery and leveled space for a three-room school before we arrived. After the festivities, we awkwardly began with picks and shovels. Soon the village men were doing the hardest work and we were shoveling and hauling loose clods of clay and volcanic sand away in wheelbarrows. Teams developed around the pick-ax experts and by the day's end, I felt the rhythm of our work as deep satisfaction. Dirty and tired, we tumbled onto the bus for quiet conversation on the long ride back to Antigua, weaving a web of community among our own diverse group.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, half of our crew went into Guatemala City to participate in the work of Potters House at the city dump. My group helped prepare a hot meal for some 200 children who arrived after school. Then we attended a crowded meeting at which women were being coached to be more effective community leaders. The next day, the Potters House group hand-mixed cement and laid a two-room floor for a grandmother and her family -- who thanked the group with an extravagant gift: two large beach towels wrapped in gift paper. Those nights were full of poignant stories shared in small groups as we struggled to understand our experience of compassion and common purpose with people in Guatemala.

By Thursday, we were ready to pour concrete footings at the village school. It rained hard that night, but everyone seemed eager as the concrete mixer coughed into motion. Mario, the mason in charge of the project, directed everyone to different parts of the job which would continue until the foundational layer was complete. I found myself lifting 80-lb bags of concrete with my partner Ray, who then lifted half the bag into the mixer when Mario nodded. Again the rhythm of our work took hold.

The local men manned the wheelbarrows this time, sliding through the mud with a full load of concrete until they could find a single board across one trench or another. At one point, the wheelbarrows couldn't reach a back section and the men began filling five-gallon containers with concrete and carrying them to the pour site. Some containers had duct-tape wrapped around bare wire for the handles, but I saw one man whose bucket had no such protection. I gave him my gloves when he came back for a second load. He nodded his thanks, slipped them on and hoisted his bucket full of cement. Later, when the pour was complete and we sat exhausted over lunch, he came over with the gloves, soaked and stiff. "Would you use them?" I asked. "Yes," he nodded, tucking them away. His name was Jose, he said, when I told him mine. I noticed that our hands were about the same size.

On the last day, after another fiesta time with them, the villagers had us line up to receive gifts. It seemed strange for them to be giving us gifts when we had done so little compared to the work they had put in on the school. Jose caught my eye and handed me a note with a special gift: a red cloth unlike the others. The note had the full name of the village on it, along with their formal words of thanks. Rory, the Peace Corps volunteer assigned to PAVA, translated their note and I said a few words of formal thanks from our group which Rory translated for them. There were hugs and not a few tears as we pulled ourselves away, no longer strangers, but friends.

As followers of Jesus, we went to extend our hands in peace. We came home humbled by the generous welcome we received, both in the Guatemalan highlands and at the Potters House in the city dump.

Marjory Bankson is editor of Faith@Work magazine and is a Steward of The Seekers Church, a faith community of Church of the Saviour in Washington DC.