CHUWI TINAMIT

Can you imagine spending your life growing up in a tight nit community filled with everyone you know and love only to wake up one day and all of that be gone??? Your neighborhood is gone, your home cannot be found, maybe even a loved one is lost never to be heard from again!! Imagine barely escaping this mystery with only the clothing on your back because you were sleeping as disaster struck! You're fast asleep when you hear a terrible roaring outside and chilling screams as you open your tin door you realized whatever is going on cannot be good!! Stunned and puzzled you're pulled back into reality as you hear landslides are coming!! You begin to run with all your might to a safe place in such thick darkness that you cannot see what lies ahead or is coming from behind you. All you know is that you need to run to safety and you do so until you're completely exhausted!! As you plop down on the wet muddy ground you can no longer run, you can no longer take another step, all you can do is lay there in fear of what daylight will bring!!

But more so imagine awakening the next morning covered in mud and shivering from the cold rain as you make your way back to the only home you have ever known!! Wait nothing looks familiar!! Nothing even resembles what you knew was there!! Wondering if you were lost, somehow taking a wrong turn!! Wait no there's someone familiar, someone you know!! They can't possibly be lost too!! Then more people you know are there as you see debris scattered across the land!! Mud covering everything within eye distance!! Then it hits you, life as you know is to be no more!! You have no home to go to in fact by the looks of things your entire community is now homeless!! You have no insurance, no savings account to rebuild from, no government aide and no idea where to even begin!! Your family's one room, dirt floor, tin home is now gone!! Where do you go? What do you do? Sounds like a horrible nightmare right? Something you would only see on t.v? Well this was the reality the village of Chuwi Tinamit had to live through!!

Months after a landslide covered their entire village they finally received some aide! A wonderful organization donated tents to the families and they were relocated to another parcel of land that will act as their temporary homes!! Can you imagine this? I mean picture taking your five children and raising them in a tent with no blankets, no clothing, no food, no means to buy a thing!! Hard to imagine right? Well when I heard about them I couldn't wait to meet them and see what could be done for them!! I mean it broke my heart to know these kids don't have the things they need much less a simple toy to comfort themselves with! So I got to work determined to add this village to our stop not knowing how I would pull it off just yet!! Well God provides and He came through once again!!

Each family in Chuwi Tinamit received the blessing of a food basket, those who didn't have a blanket received one and each child received a pair of shoes and a toy!! Many of the families also received clothing as well!! They also got a wonderful distraction thanks to the clown and Santa!! It was awesome to see the people laugh when their spirits should have been broken!! To see them enjoy the cake and punch was great too!! All the smiles despite what they have been dealt makes me wonder why I let the little things in life get me down!! I mean I get upset when I can't go on a vacation or when I can't take my kids do something extra while these people have lost everything and still find a reason to smile!! They're grateful for the LITTLE things!! They share a brick sweat house between all of them to get themselves half cleaned!! There is one make shift bathroom for the entire village!! They sleep fifteen in a tent that is only equipped for six and still manage to smile!! A lot is to be said about these people and they have a reality to teach!! You may not be able to change the situation you are dealt but you can control how that situation makes you feel!! It reminded me that the happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything they have!!