Sunday visitor

Yesterday (Sunday) our family had dinner at my dad and mom's house. Isn't it so wonderful when you don't have to rush in the house and cook right after church? Christmas dinner was at my house, so it was a relief not to have to do it all over again.

After dinner we played boggle, Ashley beat us all, that little stinker, she seems to find every single word the rest of us come up with and then a few more obscure ones that we missed.

Shortly after our game ended the doorbell rang, and my dad's friend Fidel had stopped by to drop off tamales, and to wish my parents a "Happy Christmas".

Fidel's smile is a mile wide. My dad met him a few years ago when both he and my husband, Ted, worked loading milk trucks at the dairy farm. Fidel was a manager at one of the barns. My husband Ted (both my father and my husband are named Ted so I'm trying to keep it clear for ya!) hadn't seen Fidel in a long time, and both of their faces lit up and Fidel threw his arms around husband Ted and gave him a big squeeze.

Fidel's english is not so great but he tries hard to communicate and we all just laugh when both of my parents talk LOUDER and SLOWER thinking he might magically start understanding their language if they speak to him as if he were a first grader.

Yesterday we learned to say "babies" when asking him about his kids, even though several of them are grown with their own kids. "Babies" is the word that Fidel knows to describe children. Fidel has 10 babies!!! Wow. He then told us that his brother in Mexico has 16 babies, then he grinned and quietly leaned over and said to my dad, "no too much working in Mexico eh?" Too much free time, means too many babies I guess.

He didn't stay long, but it was a warm and loving exchange and it left us all with grins on our faces. On the way home I remembered a conversation I had with one of my children's classmates not too long ago. The topic of our discussion was racism.

The classmate communicated that he didn't like the Mexicans because they didn't learn to speak english. He reasoned that his grandparents had to learn to speak english when they moved to the United States from Holland, and that the Mexican people should do the same. The boy didn't want to hear any spanish spoken around him, after all this is America for crying out loud!

I wished we had invited that classmate over to my parents house so that he could have met Fidel. I'd guess in 10 minutes, Fidel might have been able to break thru the barriers that exist in the mind of the boy of Dutch heritage.

I have butterflies in my stomach as I type this and wonder if I'll even have the guts to post it. Racism is always such a touchy subject, I tend to avoid the topic as much as possible. But staying quiet does nothing to improve the situation, and I'm not really the type to stay quiet, so here it goes.

As a teenager I was beating a drum pretty loudly to exclaim that I was not a racist, God had created all people to be equal! Easy for me to say since I lived in a bubble, and honestly had never even met someone of a different race, except the kids in my school who were from Korea, that had been adopted by a family in the area. In fact I hardly knew anyone who was a different nationality from me. It was pretty easy for me to claim that I was not a racist when I lived amongst only one race.

And then I joined the bigger world, and I quickly realized that it is a challenge to understand the ways of different cultures and races. Not everyone was like me, or thought like me, or even spoke like me...what an eye opener! Yes, I had racism in me...it was hard to adjust to living with people who were different than I was.

So here I am back in DeMotte again, and a lot has changed! Not all the kids attending the Christian school are "vans" or "stras" isn't that great?! For years my daughter was the only Carmen and now there are dark haired Carmen's all over! Our town what I liked to call "the bubble" is changing, and for the better in my opinion.

I could weep to tell you all how proud I am of my parents. My dad quickly began to reach out to the Hipsanic guys at the dairy farms. He immediately saw his job as an opportunity to shine God's light to people who don't know Him. The first Christmas the dairies were open my dad bought fruit with his own money, and ordered religious tracts in spanish from the Bible League. He bagged an apple, an orange, and a pamphlet into brown paper bags, and went out to the dairy farms during all three shifts to deliver them to every single worker. He shook hands and shouted "Amigo" -friend (the one word of Spanish my dad knows) to each guy and said Merry Christmas, God Bless you with a firm handshake and a pat on the back. He loved them, and they loved him back.

As the number of dairy barns grew, my dad had to enlist the help of others just to get that fruit delivered the week of Christmas, but every single year he got the job done, thru rain, sleet, and snow, early morning to middle of the night he drove his little pick up over the bumpy roads, and delivered that fruit.

This year he had lots of help because "Agua Viva" a Hispanic outreach church has formed, and the pastor, members of the church and also members of the committee that helped to start the church got on board and bagged and delivered the fruit to the guys working in the barns. How fun!

Our kids used to ask us, "why does Grandpa buy all that fruit and give it away?!" Honestly sometimes we wonder too, what drives dad to give of himself so freely when he really doesn't have all that much of his own? It is because he has the heart of Jesus, and he will reap his rewards in heaven. No, my dad is by no means perfect, he'll be the first one to tell you that, but we could all learn how to love one another more through his example of selflessness.

Father change the hearts that need changing. Erase racial divisions between us. Teach us to love the way you love. Help us to see opportunities to shed your light in the darkness. Thank you for Fidel, and for his laughter and his kindness, thank you for my dad who cares about other people more than he does about himself. Thank you for Agua Viva and empower everyone involved to reach those who do not yet know about you. You desire that we all live in your light...all of us...no matter the color of our skin or the language that we speak, use us to accomplish that in Your Name.