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It's my last official night at 6 Revival Street. While it's not my childhood home, it has been "home base" (and my permanent address) for almost eight years. Since my parents moved here after a brief stint in St. Simons, I...

• Took a semester off from college and served as an intern with Global Missions at Peachtree Presbyterian.
• Watched my big brother overcome one of his greatest challenges and begin and maintain an incredible journey of sobriety.
• Spent a semester in Argentina, where I lived with an amazing host family, gained some precious friends, and made lifelong memories.
• Spent a month in Spain to get some much-needed college credits and had my first black-out drunk experience.
• Graduated from Clemson University...twice.
• Had my beloved cat, Abby, put to sleep. 
• Made the decision to pursue a career in counseling.
• Lived for three months in Ecuador, during which I spent my days hanging out in a nursing home.
• Lived for a year in Guatemala City, working with IJM and being challenged in ways that I never could have imagined.
• Returned from Guatemala jobless, carless, and without a clue about what the future held. 
• Accepted my first grown-up job. 
• Began and ended my first serious dating relationship. 

So many of the aforementioned events occurred in other places, but this has always been the place I have come back to. There is comfort in the familiarity of this place, and I will miss that. This house has been the scene for countless memories, difficulties, joys, tears, and laughs. Above all, it has been my home and a place of incredible growth. And for that I am grateful. 

Band-Aids in a Broken System

I've officially been back a week. From Honduras, that is. I tagged along with my dad, aunt and uncle and a few other folks on a trip to check in on current and potential projects with Salt and Light (Honduran-American NGO). It was nice to get away from the winter weather here and to practice my Spanish, but the best part for me was the two days we spent in La Paz, working in a small prison.

Dad and Uncle Slade had installed a water filtration system there last year, and I was their assistant/translator as they added a new water tank and ran the water line out in to the "yard" so that the inmates can fill buckets and get water without having to be let in to the front part of the building. (Having to do this is an inconvenience for both the guards and the inmates.) We did successfully install two spigots, which will greatly improve the situation.

Overall, the prison has a pretty chill feel to it. There are about 400 guys, and they live in a 5-room bunk house. While they are locked up from 5:30pm-5:30am, they spend their days out and about in the large yard. And many of them make crafts that they sell to visitors, who are a common site. There is also a small chapel, and many of them are fierce believers.

As we cut the PVC pipes, re-routed the water line, and explained the system changes to a few of the inmates, I couldn't stop thinking about how much better these guys had it within the prison's walls. None of their families even have clean water in their homes, for crying out loud! One of the guys who has been trained to maintain the system said to us, "Thank you for taking time to do this for us. So many people don't even care about this place." 

The whole week in Honduras we confronted poverty and struggle, neither of which are new scenes for me. But I kept thinking about how we have failed so many people. "We" being all of us. With regards to the men in the prison, it is shameful that penal systems do not provide the rehabilitation that so many of their occupants need. We have not invested resources into programs that will affect lasting change and address underlying causes of poverty and crime. That's not to say that people should not be held responsible for their actions. But I think it's more complicated than that.

Rather than addressing social ills within the confines of society and modern economic systems, we should admit that the whole system itself is broken. I'm not saying that I have the answer to global poverty or even any concrete ways to better address it. But I do believe that what we need is a total overhaul rather than band-aids. The band-aids are good and necessary, but they are not enough.

Let's hope and pray that we will have the wisdom and strength to do enough.