How many places around the globe do you think Americans never go in a half-mile to encounter the real people?

Joe Kramarz, Guest Frontier Blogger

I took my first international mission trip about 10 years ago. I had done some volunteer mission work around Spokane and wanted to increase my experiences by going out of the country. My honest desire was for adventure as well as service when I joined a team going to the island of Cozumel, 12 miles from Cancun, Mexico. The team leader spoke fluent Spanish and we stayed at the Presbyterian church on the island. The church was about a 1/2 mile inland from the coastal boardwalk where the tee shirt shops served the cruise ships anchored in the harbor just off shore.

One afternoon, after a hard day pouring cement for a new community center, I walked the 1/2 mile back to the beach to relax and see the tourist shops. I watched as the customers tried on dresses and pawed through mounds of tee shirts looking for special bargains to give the folks back home. They all seemed to be saying, "Look where we have been. See, we were in Mexico!"

I wanted to say to all of them -- or to any one who would listen -- "Look, you have not seen Mexico, any more than viewing a lion in a zoo allows you to say you were in Africa. Come with me IN a 1/2 mile and I will show you a more real Mexico: people living in stick houses with hammocks hung from wooden beams and hibachi-type cookers in corners to make hot meals. Come and see the ladies selling tortillas on the street as their children play in the dirt. See the people struggling with life instead of "struggling" to find your right shirt size.

On this visit I don't say these things, of course. I just sit there in the shade quietly with a cold Coca Cola and ponder these thoughts in my mind. I realize I have just made a mental 1/2 mile walk to see what my world in the US is like everyday. I still have the 1/2 mile walk back to the church, my hammock, and the next day's cement work.

The question for me would be...Was I willing to make that 1/2 mile walk in Spokane when I got back from this trip? Or would I be like these cruise ship tourists, retreating to the relative safety of my "ship" and leaving behind what I know is only a 1/2 mile walk beyond the boardwalk and a million miles of separation from where Christ calls me to be?

-- Joe Kramarz, guest blogger. Joe is the mission committee chair of Whitworth Community Presbyterian Church in Spokane, Wash.

Link: http://www.whitpres.org