A Change in Perspective

In the United States, if the power goes out it is a major inconvenience.  If people found out the government is behind the power outage, they would be outraged! There would be a panic all over the country that the government is overstepping its boundaries and punishing the people.  People would be up in arms trying to figure out why the government would be oppressing its people.

Well in Honduras, the power has been going out here a lot lately.  And yes, the government is shutting it off.  I had my first experience with it on Monday night at the grocery store.  The power went out and a generator was providing the store energy for the lights and the coolers, but not the registers.  The cashier was figuring out my total on a calculator and then another coworker had to check it.  It was interesting to see their teamwork in what has become a routine situation. When I inquired why, they just said the government had shut it off.  I assumed this was just a one time thing to fix something and that my language barrier was preventing me from fully understanding. 

I didn’t realize this was a frequent situation until today at work.  We were given time to work on our monthly lesson plans on the computers.  We had all been working for about 25 minutes when all of the sudden the power was shut off.  All of the screens went black and all of the work that was done was lost! It did not return for the rest of the workday, which was about 5 hours.  The principal and the other Hondurans did not seem phased.  They immediately began suggesting other things to keep working on until the government decided to give us power back.  So we worked on outlining our plans on paper, had a formation session with a local priest, and we figured out how many desks we needed in each room.  When I inquired about why the government would shut off the power like that, they said they have been doing it with the electricity and water a lot lately and to expect daily shut offs of each.  However, they did not have a clear answer about why or how long this would be happening.  Someone told me that they heard that it might have to do with the fact that the government has cut ties with a few countries that provide Honduras with natural gas, therefore they have a limited supply and are trying to preserve it.  I am going to assume that statement is true.

With a slight change in perspective, we still had such a productive day.  I feel blessed to be here and as new challenges arrive I am going to try to do what Fr. Geoff Rose taught me, and hundreds of campers, this summer: Assume the best.   With that small shift in attitude everything seems a little brighter and a lot less stressful.  God is so good to us and we should assume the good in others.