More from the trip to El Salvador - The last stuff about day one I promise…
ROBERTO AND CHINESE FOOD IN CENTRAL AMERICA:
We’re staying in a nice hotel in San Salvador. Just beyond these thick walls wired for internet access and cable TV is poverty and crime. This bothered me when we checked in. How not immersive. How pampered we are even here.
It bothered Brian too. So he asked Suzie, one of the coordinators from Compassion in charge of this trip’s logistics, about the cushy treatment of us artist and speaker types. She explained that this is not a mission trip we’re on. It’s about observation. She went on to tell him that some artists, some Americans in general, shut down when they see what we’ll be seeing - this kind of sadness and depravity. So, to lessen culture shock and depression and freaking out of all kinds, especially on the part of some of the very young who’ve never been outside their hometown, we get cushy. We get American cuisine. A bus. A hot shower. Air-conditioning. And Chinese food.
That’s right. Chinese food.
We went to the Compassion headquarters for El Salvador this morning. We joined the staff’s regular devotion and prayer time. They asked us to share some music with them and then we took a tour of their offices.
And then we walked together, Roberto and our group, to Roy Lee’s - a Chinese Restaurant down the street. Chinese food in El Salvador. It was actually very good. Not very Chinese tasting but very good.
Over lunch I learned that Roberto is among the few, one out of a thousand, who has attended University here. He studied marketing and has another degree as well. He’s very young, somewhere in his late twenties and he’s engaged. He’s decided to devote is life to Compassion International instead of the corporation he once slaved for because the marketing world “had a different definition of ‘integrity’” than he did.
This move is even more strange seeing as how his mother is the secretary for the President of El Salvador. He’s grown up in politics. He could run for office himself. He has the relationships and the charisma and the brains for it. So I asked why he’s pursuing change through Compassion instead of the government. In such a small country, the size of Massachusetts, surely a godly man in the right office could bring about a revolution of the most benevolent kind or at least curb the poverty that marks this place.
He once thought so too. He explained though that when Christians get help from the government in their efforts to do good in the name of Christ, those Christians always have to compromise, at least in El Salvador. He claims that in his country parts of the bible would be off limits, parts of God would have to be avoided, in everything Christians did to help people if that help was funded or fueled at all by the government. The conversation with the least of these is thus limited before it even begins - if the government is along for the ride, or driving. He says this is what he’s seen in his country’s history. The Church then, he said, is the only institution capable of bringing all of God to the people of El Salvador. And that’s what Compassion does. It doesn’t just feed and educate and heal but it also brings any part of God and His character and Word to people that they need. And it does so through local people in local churches around the world.
The Church, Roberto elaborates, is an a more powerful institution than any government. An alternative politic? - I ask. Yes. Exactly - he nods.
Amen.
Why don’t more people see this in my country - I wonder. If only more potential politicians like Roberto went around confessing loudly the inadequacies of politics and endorsing the Church with their life’s work. Maybe then we’d be as faithful as we are political and maybe then we’d see more of Heaven on earth.
I got no fortune cookie today. So I’m making a prediction of my own. I won’t be content singing quiet encouragements wrapped in polite pop songs to the American church anymore. There’s something else I’m supposed to be about now. But what else is there for me? What else does God want from me? I feel propelled to action, inspired by the lessons learned over sesame chicken. But I’m no Roberto.
I spent lunch at the cult de sac with Brian and his family. Our realtor called warning that she was heading our way with a prospective buyer so we quickly mopped, dusted, stuffed stuff under the beds, threw covers over abandoned pajamas and headed out the door.
Of course our house looks great these days, to the naive, and so the woman who perused it wants it if her husband agrees. She’ll be back with him in tow this weekend. Thankfully I’ll be out of town and unable to participate in the mopping, dusting, stuffing of stuff under beds, throwing of covers over abandoned pajamas and heading out the door to eat Sonic in Brian’s front yard again. Too bad.
I say it looks good to the naive because only someone without a clue, or someone extremely optimistic about the living habits of a family of five, would truly believe this place is so meticulously groomed at all times. In reality the Cheeto stains were only recently painstakingly concealed with a fresh coat of paint, covering only the bottom three feet of every wall. The deck was only recently completely stained and before then sat for more than a year only two-thirds washed in the chocolate colored pain-in-the butt stuff. (I hate staining.)
And the coffee tables and end tables, glass of course for making the place look bigger, were added by our realtor. Along with a thin layer of cheap mulch in the flower beds and a few strategically placed scented candles and a cookbook on the kitchen island - opened to some fancy chicken spinach tartar something-or-nother - that says “Me cook fancy meals. We have it together. Move here and you will too.”
She calls it “staging.” Some would call it “lying” or, at best, “faking.”
She also added plants, pillows, throws, lamps, a fountain, books and nick knacks (I asked if we should add any paddy whacks. Not amused. You’d think for this kind of money she could fake a smile too.)
So the place looks amazing. Amazing enough to give me second thoughts about selling it before I left for El Salvador. I came back though and added a few things myself. And started looking for our next home. I’m partial to a place over in Brian’s cult de sac. Got to go in it. Looks great. Smells great. They have two kids but they seem to have it together...and they cook a lot.
Radio stations receive a stack of singles each week. The independent artists are filed in the trash can. The major labels and artists with big names get heard first along with, possibly, any artist from a label who’s given the program director a golf trip or baseball tickets in the recent past (actual examples). But that still leaves a lot of songs to sift through for a hit. So program directors of large stations and networks then, usually, hire a company to test this whittled down batch of songs, then play the best testing songs.
The test group is usually, for AC stations, Christian females 25-44 who listen primarily to Christian radio (BONUS: These folks are called P1’s. P2’s are those who listen but not primarily to CCM radio).
Well, we at Rocketown Records figure if this system works so well for radio types why don’t we use it to choose my next single and save our pals in radio world a little money and time. And I’m just tired of hearing “Your song doesn’t test well for us.” We’ll see about that. We’ve now completed testing on a large group of P1 females nation-wide in hopes of their collective “wisdom” guiding us to the best choice for my next single - a song that we know in advance will test well for radio stations.
But, and this might surprise you all, music, as it turns out, is subjective. Huh. Who knew? So it’s apparently hard for a group of people to reach a consensus about whether a song is good or bad. Go figure. Instead we got what stations get from testing: a big pile of expensive conflicting data. One man’s, I mean woman’s, upbeat and positive is another woman’s play-this-and-I’ll-kill-myself apparently. Enjoy SOME of the slew of real opinions from test subjects asked “WHAT DO YOU LIKE OR DISLIKE ABOUT THE SONG ‘AMEN’?”
Awesome song! Love to hear it on the radio often! I liked the music, the beat, the words!
Classic rock is it? That is at least the feel of this song. Great arrangement and production.
Don’t care for hard rock music
I like the heavier rock sound
Does not sound so much inspired as it sounds made up.
i like it because it seems honest & genuine
Don’t like his voice
i like his voice
I can relate to the song, asking God for mercy. This is a good song.
hard to relate to this kind of music- i’m sure it helps some people. the music is like secular music i hear when flipping the channels and if that is what it is supposed to be like then it fits.
I like it because you know it’s a christian song...Some you never know it is until you hear who the artist is.
I like the words, but the music and how it is sung seems dark instead of christ-like.
I like the words. They seem to be very biblical.
too slow
it’s upbeat
its uplifting
Not very uplifting
It sounds outdated
It’s a new kind of sound - I really like it!
just didnt have a good beat
Love the beat
Matthew West? I have the new CD but haven’t listened to it yet.
not charismatic enough
Sounds like every Christian pop song
Breaks the mold a bit of CCM.
too slow starting, didn’t grab me
This song captured me within the first 10 seconds! Great sound, great vocals!! Would love to know who this is?
Well, there are the results. Testing obviously works like a charm. The verdict is obvious isn’t it? Well, not until we hire a pricey radio consultant to interpret all this for us. Hey, isn’t it consultants who told program directors to test singles in the first place? Wait a minute…
More from my travel journal about my recent trip to El Salvador to investigate the work of Compassion International:
DAVID’S HOME:
David hasn’t said a word on the trip to his house. His face is round. His hands stay hidden away in the pockets of his red project uniform fiddling with marbles. We met David at his project in San Salvador, an after school program run by a church with the support of, and oversight from, Compassion International. The program is like all other projects, serving a good meal and glass of milk, tutoring students in math and reading, teaching skills like computer science or sewing to those with more initiative or interest.
In the crowd of children at the project today David didn’t stand out. He blends in. He stays quiet. But not because of melancholy. No, David looks as if he’s always thinking, his mind running far away from this place, maybe dreaming of a life different from his own. Something is being turned over in his mind and when he bothers to speak to the rest of us, the people in the real world, he is well spoken and obviously intelligent.
Roberto, our guide for the day, warns us to watch our step. He pulls the chain on the flap of scrap metal posing as a door and David bounds past us and down the stairs into his home. This is where David lives, part of what he escapes each day at the project, where he plays marbles, sleeps and dreams of something else perhaps.
Two dozen steps made of dirt and pieces of pipe take us down ten feet into a small tent made from mud and fragments of metal, plastic and large sticks. A wall of root-riddled earth is his front yard and his roof is cardboard and corrugated metal, full of holes and held down by rocks.
Beside his house is an area with no roof, a side yard I guess, the wall of earth still blocking the outside world from view and maintaining the closed in and safe feeling of this place. It’s there under the large trees that David’s grandmother drags two plastic chairs into formation, shoos arthritic scraggly chickens from her path with a wave of her bare foot, and motions us to have a seat. Her face is round like David’s but she is not as quiet. Her voice belongs on the radio, low and sonorous, hearty and expressive – almost as expressive as her face. Her eyebrows rise almost to her dark brown hairline when excited and bow almost to her cheeks when her lips pucker into disgust or denial.
“Do you go to church?” Roberto asks.
“No. No,” she puckers, “I do laundry so we can eat. I would like to go sometime but how would we live. I must work.”
Roberto turns his questions to David. “What are your dreams, David?” And David lights up, lifts his hands from his pockets and, gesturing as if holding a gun, says, “I’d like to be a soldier.”
His grandmother interrupts, “I don’t want him to go to Iraq.” And Roberto explains that some men in David’s town have died in Iraq. Many men from El Salvador are fighting with the American led allied forces. And may boys long to follow in their boot steps.
The United States, Roberto will later explain to me, funded El Salvador’s government forces in the country’s war from 1979 to 1992 with it’s own people. El Salvador is a democracy. A democracy ruled by twelve wealthy families who own coffee plantations, car dealerships, shopping malls, and other businesses of enormous riches. Members of these families intermarry in a monarchy-like fashion and from this pool of elite citizens is elected politicians and presidents. The revolution began when the poor, later funded by the Soviets, assassinated wealthy aristocrats. The wealthy retaliated by sending “death squads” into the poorest areas to torch every structure and every peasant regardless of gender or age. Their tactics were supported and financed by the United States and the eventually negotiated peace with the poor leftists. Neither side was innocent. Both were brutal.
And today young men like David dream of being soldiers, not caring which side they fight on or what they fight for, because a soldier eats and gets paid. If a soldier lives he’s better off than before. That is David’s dream.
Grandmother wants something more for David. She’s grateful he’s going to the project and learning how to use a computer and to read and write. She’s hopeful that he’ll be better off without risking his life. She says her dream for him is that he’ll be a good man and work hard and live a long time.
“That’s what we all dream for our children isn’t it? Good people living a long life?” I ask.
“Si,” she smiles.
We spend a few more minutes at her house talking about David and his sponsor in the States, about Soccer and praying for her and her family, huddled in a circle, our arms wrapped around each other like friends. One God. One Church. We love our children more than ourselves. And we want them to live.
We hug and say good-byes and make our way towards the steps and up to the outside world again. It’s been nice here, in the shade - palpable love and acceptance from a grandmother doing her best to replace a father and mother who abandoned their son.
I bet David misses this small house when he’s gone - and his grandmother’s big smile and bobbing eyebrows, the safety of a refuge hidden from view and filled with so much adoration. David has a good life, family and faith leaving him better off in the wake of war than some of his neighbors.
I say a prayer to myself as we leave. I pray his life will be long and spent taking the love his grandmother and the project lavish on him to others who dream of a life without poverty. I pray he loves them the way his grandmother loves him.
Even now, she wishes she could do more for us strangers. “I did not know you were coming. I would have cooked. The next time you come visit me,“ his grandmother promises, “I will kill this chicken for you and make a soup. I promise you.”
A bent bird scrambles away from her club of a bronze foot. I believe her.
From my journal. More from day 1 of my trip to El Salvador to observe what Compassion International is doing and how they do it:
SANTIAGO’S HOUSE:
Less than ten feet from a railroad track stands a small mound of wavy metal resembling a collapsed shed more than someone’s home. But it is a home. Santiago’s. We just toured Santiago’s Compassion International project. We visited his classroom where he’s learning how to read. He beamed with pride showing us how well he can write and giggled at how poorly we spoke his language. In fact, Santiago giggled at just about everything today.
I’m told he’s poor, his family being clothed and fed by the church Compassion partners with in his neighborhood, one of over a hundred in El Salvador. But it’s hard to believe. He looks like an ordinary eight year-old, just with an extraordinary charisma.
Santiago walked quickly with us from his Compassion project, eager to show us the way. But we took our time, our guide watching out for gang members that patrol the neighborhood. We passed a small witchcraft operation a hundred feet from Santiago’s home. The hand-pained sign draws the downtrodden to the “temple”, a house concocting a brew of Catholicism and magic spells promised to smite enemies and protect anyone willing to pay. Everywhere we turn it seems like good and evil, despair and hope, live next door to each other in San Salvador. And both have growing armies of converts.
Past trash heaps. Past the same breed of “third world dog” again and again. Past shoeless children and open fields shadowed by brooding clouds. Thunder warns us from a distance.
We open the door to Santiago’s house, peeling back one five foot tall rectangle of tin with no handle, and walk across the dirt and rock floor. “Hola,” I say to his aunt and take her hand. Roberto, a local administrator from Compassion, knows this family but asks them questions for our benefit, translating into English as he converses.
“Who here takes care of you, Santiago?”
“Just my aunt.”
“Where is his mother? His father?” he asks the aunt.
“His mother is with a gang and his father is a drug dealer. They aren’t together and left Santiago when he was small. They don’t care for him.”
The families we meet here talk about cruel realities in front of children like I ask my wife to pass the salt.
“What about his grandfather?” Roberto motions towards a shadowed man across the small room buttoning his shirt and leaning hard on a pole that holds up one corner of this plastic quilted house. The grandfather I assume. He laughs to himself but doesn’t look up.
“No,” the aunt answers, “I take care of Santiago alone.”
“Who pays? Who works here?”
“Santiago does odd jobs when he can find them. I do laundry for people.”
“How much money are you able to make?”
“$4 this week. It’s been good,” she grins.
“Good. Good. Santiago, what are your dreams?”
When we stepped into his home Santiago’s demeanor immediately melted, his frame bent, his steps shuffled, his eyes drawn to the floor. The happy child at the project devolved into a slumping boy doing his best to disappear. Something tells me he isn’t safe here. He isn’t at ease here. There’s tremendous fear or embarrassment or something weighing him down under this roof. But this question about dreams resurrects him.
He smiles and looks up again.
“Come on, Santiago! Tell us your dreams!” Roberto lifts Santiago off the dirt floor and sets him on a stump. And Santiago confidently and quickly answers, “I want to be a policeman. I want to help people.”
“Bueno. Muy Bueno, Santiago,” I said. And praise pours from the other white faces who came with me. “Muy Bueno.”
“What is a good thing about your project, Santiago?” Roberto asks.
“I play with my friends. I eat. I read.”
We talk more with his aunt and his cousins, all living in this small space with few walls, one bed and rusted tin roof balanced on sticks and bent poles someone threw away once. They tell us they’re grateful for the Compassion project and say we can pray for them. Roberto asks grandfather to join our circle and we take each other’s hands.
“Will you pray for us, Shaun?” he asks me. And I agree but don’t know where to start. Words, even words to God, seem trite and inadequate in this place. And after a long pause, longer than any I may have ever taken in my life, I pray. Small words. Simple. Love. Protect. Feed. Clothe. Teach. Thank You. Roberto translates. And we all say, “Amen”, then hug one another and I look at every set of eyes trying to nail these faces to the walls of my mind. I hope they never come down and I never stop talking with God about them, asking big things with small words.
We went to the Compassion headquarters for El Salvador this morning. We joined the staff’s regular devotion and prayer time. They asked us to share some music with them and then we took a tour of their offices.
Over lunch I learned that Roberto is among the few, one out of a thousand, who has attended University here. He studied marketing and has another degree as well. He’s very young, somewhere in his late twenties and he’s engaged. He’s decided to devote is life to Compassion International instead of the corporation he once slaved for because the marketing world “had a different definition of ‘integrity’” than he did.
