Wednesday Food Crew -- Humbled and grateful and truly happy

Humbled and grateful -- those are usually the two emotions that our food crew teams report back with after they've delivered food and a modest number of household items for cleaning to the homes we visit in Maneadero. They also often remark in the wake of their visit to these homes how surprisingly happy and gracious the people are even though they have so little compared to us. Slowly...we're beginning to realize something we've always been told, something we've always known but that now is real to us because we've actually experienced it for ourselves and there's no more powerful a lesson than real life. Slowly...we're understanding that true happiness is independent of circumstances, that things can't make us happy, that they don't define, that sometimes the things that we count as blessing are obstacles to the real happiness we seek. And if that knowledge and understanding is the only souvenir we come home with from this trip. We will be truly blessed, indeed. Lord knows.