That  (my title) has been my thought the entire time I have been in Miami, “wait when did I leave the country?”  How can there be people living in extreme poverty in the United States?  How can these impoverished people be without so many opportunities that I have had afforded to me, such as extra -curricular activities at their schools, opportunities to go to college, jobs in high school and so many more.  How can there even be people in the United States who do not have access to grocery stores because the only neighborhood stores are “convenient stores” and they have no consistent transportation ( because they mostly rely on friends with vehicles or public transportation) to get to other stores.  And then if they actually get to the stores how can they actually afford to buy the healthy stuff?  Real fruits and vegetables and lean meats cost way more than processed unhealthy food.  The hardest thing for me to deal with in seeing all this is being aware that indeed we are still in the United States, “the land of opportunity”.   I have learned that it isn’t just the food or the jobs that bother me.  It is the way that I approach the situations that I am confronted with.  I see all of this and I am sickened by it and yet I am hesitant to DO something about it.  True I am working at Touching Miami with Love, an organization that works tirelessly to do something about the problems in Overtown by building relationships with the people in the community, but I am less willing on a personal level.  Or at least I was; now I’m getting used to being uncomfortable, and I love it.  I remembered the other day why it is exactly that I love mission stuff and why it is that I love the way that I have recently been exposed to missions.  It is because no one says anything about “evangelism or whatever” people actually do stuff.  For example last Wednesday night one of the girls in Over town tried in vain to teach me how to hula hoop and that was all there was to our interaction.  It meant so much more because no one tried to go up to her mother (who watched us) and talk about God or anything, it was just socializing.

And then on top of all of that this week has been especially difficult.  The shooting in Overtown has taken quite a toll on many of the teenagers from the community.  It has just been hard for all of them and the tone of the community has been sober.  Please be in prayer for the community of Overtown because the people are hurting from so many different ways.  As TML interns we are all learning first hand about the many challenges faced by the people in Overtown.  The poverty that they face is only one issue and the violence is another. The thing that stuck out to me the most about the reaction of the kids and teens to the shooting was the lack of tears.  They were all so jaded from seeing shootings and other acts of violence that it didn’t bother them the way it would me.  It just made me want to cry and I didn’t even know any of the victims.  How can there be such senseless violence and poverty in a country with so much opportunity?  What can we do to make a lasting impact?