Month: July 2008

I am absolutely going to be stretched this block. I’ll skip right over the Basilica and orientations and meeting the team and head right on into debrief tonight.

We finished up dinner in the meeting room of Hotel Galaxie and I started what I thought was a pretty standard first-full-day debrief. We did the “one word” exercise to sum up the day and then had anyone who chose “unpack” their word and externally process the day. Eric jumped in a lot more than the team leaders I’ve known before (granted, that’s a total of two). I was initially glad of that just because he knows the team so well and I’m still trying to figure out 34 people’s names (and it doesn’t help to have Lindsey, Lizzi, Liz, Lacey, Lorie, and Laura all sitting next to each other). I ended up being glad of his input for a totally different reason as I finally learned to shut up and let God work.

By the end of what I originally planned to be a maybe 45-minute debrief of the few events of the day, Jodie had spoken in tongues, Liz had been healed, half the group had been prayed over and we’d had probably more than an hour of on-the-fly testimonies and confession of sins.

Not to brush off the experience with a joke, but Eric said smiling at the end “Sorry, Danny, I know this usually doesn’t happen until the last night.” The thought hadn’t even occurred to me until then, but from that second I knew that first, this will be an amazing and fruitful group and that second, I am going to be stretched beyond my imagination for the next ten days. Other than that, I’m not going to even try to describe it because I absolutely cannot do it justice, no matter how much my Grandpa and my pareja think of my ability to write. I’ll just say that I have a lot to process, and that the Holy Spirit was present.

Sarah asked me in the Taxi on the way home whether I’d ever been a part of anything like that. “Nope!” She just laughed. I’m so glad that Cameron told us during our meeting how important it would be for Sarah to just be a member of the team and for me to handle logistical things, because I can tell already how important it is going to be for me personally to be an observer here and for her personally to get to worship through a kind of service and with a group of people that are both right up her ally. Not that I plan to set myself apart from the group, and not that Sarah is not going to be a leader, but I feel like God is pulling us to totally different rolls than last block and where we will be able to serve this team and serve Him and where we will both grow ourselves.

The guys went to go see the 9:30 movie tonight. All six of us went, and when we were walking back, we passed a guy laying on the side of the street. He was on the sidewalk on Av. Americas in front of a pretty well-lit building. I saw him, and he looked kind of rough, but being a stupid North American, I just initially assumed he was drunk and glanced away to keep walking. Most of the other guys did too. I’m not sure who first said something, but even Bryan (the only Spanish speaker in the group and the only one who has lived here long-term) shrugged it off. When we were a little ways down the street Lane really stopped him.

He said the guy’s wallet was laying out next to him and it looked like he had been mugged. We turned around immediately, though we were a little slow to go up to him. At first it was hard to tell what was going on for sure. He had some leather cases on his belt that were partially covered by his sweatshirt. Teddy and I were a little worried about those, but he finally just pulled the sweatshirt up to see that they were empty. One was definitely supposed to hold a cell phone.

When we got down really close, he started to move a little bit. He would pull his head up almost like he was doing crunches in a constant effort to get up. He was hardly moving, but he was determined in a desperate sort of way, which is really what told me that he was a victim. The blood under his nose and the cut on his left thumb were what gave it away to Teddy. The way his wallet was laying in an obviously dug-through manner with cards laying out gave it away to Lane and Matt.

Bryan called the emergency service and Lane and Matt took off to find a cop. Teddy and I got our outer shirts under the guy’s head and Bryan tried to convince him to stay lying down as he was switched from operator to operator on the phone.

Teddy flipped through the cards in the man’s wallet for information as he tried to put it all back in. In seconds he’d determined his name (Fernando) and that he was a Christian and that he has a family.

A car came around the curve in the road and noticed us. A girl probably a little older than us got out and asked what was going on. Bryan told her in Spanish in between operators on what I had by this time determined was not an effective emergency service. (Iknow, Partership. Die to your prejudice. But this is one of those things that I can identify in a foreign culture as not good, not different, but bad). The girl was on her phone immediately. I don’t know who she called or what she said, but I could see concern, and that was more than anyone else who arrived on the scene from that point forward could show.

I called Lane, but he and Matt were already on their way back by then. The had found a guard down the street who had gone to call the police. We continued to try to get the man to stay down, and he continued to try to get up. We knew he wouldn’t go very far if we let him up, and I rubbed his hand to try to get across a sense of comfort and compassion so that he would at least know that we were trying to take care of him, not force him.

When the three police officers finally showed up in a Policia Nacional pickup truck, we waved them over to his location. Fernando, the victim, had gotten to a semi-sitting position. He had not opened his eyes, and only once had made a soft groan. His hands moved back and forth from his stomach when he was curled or stretched out on the ground, and to his head the more he tried to sit or stand, all in obvious expressions of trying to subdue pain.

The police did not take his wallet when Teddy tried to hand it to them. They did not try to help the man up, nor did they try to even talk to him or convince him to stay down. Because he was nearly sitting himself now, and trying to stand, Bryan and Teddy helped him up. The second they let go he started to fall over on the police officer, who grabbed one arm as I grabbed the other to steady him and help him lean against the wall of the building.

The police said he was drunk.

No effort to help whatsoever. They didn’t care that he was bleeding. They didn’t care that there was no cash in his wallet (“everything is there,” they said). They didn’t care that he was “drunk” with no sign of a bottle anywhere near him. I got really close to listen to his breathing and make sure he wasn’t swallowing or choking on blood from his nose. If anyone would have, I would have smelled alcohol on him, especially if it was enough to take a man down like that.

After about a minute and a half after the arrival of the officers, Teddy looked at Bryan and said “Our job is done.” None of us, Teddy included, felt like our job was done. None of us felt right leaving him. None of us felt right leaving him with the police. But this is not the States. I’m truly surprised we weren’t questioned about it immediately, as in, if we had been involved. I’m also truly surprised they didn’t ask to see our wallets to see if we had taken anything from him. It’s just that the corruption of the police manifested itself in apathy rather than taking down some gringos tonight. So when Teddy said “Our job is done,” he meant not that we could check this off our feel-better-about-ourselves-list or that we had truly done everything in our power to be good Samaritans, but that we had done all the police were going to let us do.

We were angry when we left. Matt said “We should pray for him, whatever that means.” I understood the second part of that sentence for what he meant and what he felt. I know how the system works here. And I don’t know for sure where Fernando will end up tonight, where he’ll wake up tomorrow. But I can say for almost certain that it will not be home. It will not even be a hospital. Jail would not surprise me, but I feel it more likely he’ll be just a few meters farther down the street than where we found him. We were angry because we felt helpless.

No one was going to use that word. But that’s what we were all saying. And that’s what we’re all dealing with now in our own individual ways, on the phone, smoking a cigar, sitting with each other, or writing. I’ve already talked about people I will probably never see again in this life. I would imagine that Fernando is one of them. I hope and pray that he is okay. I hope and pray that his family sees him tonight. I hope and pray that whoever did that to him realizes what they caused and finds something better out of it. I hope and pray that six interns really did finish their job tonight. I hope and pray that I never feel that helpless again. I’m thankful that we did find him, and I’m thankful that it was not worse.

Please pray for Fernando.