Go to the people. Live with them, Learn from them, Love them.

Start with what they know, Build with what they have.

But of the best leaders, When the work is done, The task accomplished, The people will say, “We have done this ourselves.”

-- LaoTzu; Chinese poem, 700 B.C.

It’s going to be a while before I’m ready to grab a shovel, haul dirt in a bucket, cut rebar with a hacksaw or mix concrete by hand.

Those were our primary duties on a recent Thrivent Builds trip to El Salvador.

My business partner, Jerrod Stearnes, and I were privileged to participate in a 10-day mission trip in conjunction with Thrivent Financial and Habitat for Humanity.

Despite our sore muscles and aching backs and knees, we’d do it all over again.

Ibuprofen became our best friend as we worked four and a half days on a Habitat home in a quiet neighborhood just outside the larger city of Santa Ana, El Salvador.

After all, we’re used to sitting behind desks and drinking gallons of coffee during the week.

Swinging pick axes and hauling wet clay in five-gallon buckets aren’t normal parts of our daily financial planning and insurance business routines.

In reality, our “mission” had a dual purpose.

In addition to helping construct a Habitat for Humanity home, we also took a side trip to Ataco, El Salvador, one of four Sister Cities with a connection to Fountain Hills.

As a former board member for Sister Cities, I hosted an Ataco student (Carlitos) about eight years ago, while two other families hosted students as well.

The following year we took a goodwill trip to El Salvador, visiting that friendly country and seeing our exchange students once again.

Ataco today

Now fast forward to 2016, and the opportunity came up to participate in a Thrivent Builds trip.

While we could have gone to various other places in the world – such as Fiji, Nicaragua or Vietnam – I talked Jerrod into visiting El Salvador.

Ataco Mayor Oscar Gomez has been to Fountain Hills and remains connected to our town through Enrique Melendez, a local resident and honorary consul for El Salvador.

One may also recall that a large contingent of Fountain Hills High School students about five years ago traveled to Ataco to help begin construction of “Colonia Fountain Hills,” a small neighborhood of tiny homes in the foothills of Ataco.

A gracious Mayor Oscar arranged transportation for us from the capital of San Salvador to Ataco and treated us to a nice meal with some fellow council members and staffers.

To my utter surprise, he arranged for Carlitos to be at the restaurant with his family!

I was in tears as I embraced them all and expressed my delight the best I could in broken Spanish.

The day only got better as we then traversed into the rough and tumble mountain foothills surrounding Ataco to reach Colonia Fountain Hills.

We stopped at a small crossroads and our contingent was met by about 100 locals as they gathered from throughout the steep hill country.

Mayor Oscar explained to his constituents who we were and why we were in El Salvador.

He also explained that my wife, Brenda, and I had hosted Carlitos and previously spent time in Ataco.

Again to my surprise, the female exchange student who came to Fountain Hills, Laurita, lives in the foothills and gave me a big hug as well.

She is now married and has two children! Carlitos, meanwhile, remains single and lives in the big city, working as a delivery guy for a company.

The mayor updated the crowd on political conditions, since the federal government froze its budget and he had to lay off some municipal employees because of it, including Carlitos’ father.

These folks are so friendly and humble. They live simple but happy lives, grateful to God for the little that they have.

Jerrod and I experienced jumbled emotions during this personal visit.

It was uplifting to see Colonia Fountain Hills and the good that our students had done. It was also humbling to hand out food provisions courtesy of Ataco since these people rarely get to town and subside on minimal supplies and resources.

Housing issues

Safe and secure housing remains a major issue for families throughout El Salvador, hence the big need for Habitat for Humanity in that country.

While the country’s landscape is beautiful with greenery, hillsides and inactive volcanoes, the flipside is a real and distinct vulnerability to such natural disasters as hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes and active volcanoes.

A big economic disparity between social classes and an El Salvadorian civil war as fresh as the 1980s reminds us Americans just how fortunate we are and how precarious things really are in Central America.

Drugs and gangs are a problem in the USA; just imagine how much larger those issues are in the smallest country to our south.

That’s why our company, Thrivent Financial, remains the largest non-governmental organization supporter of Habitat for Humanity.

Jerrod and I were part of a group that included 16 American citizens from throughout our country.

The average age of our group was 56 (guess I was the most average guy there, since I’m 55). Seven folks are in their 60s and three in their 70s.

About half of the group is part of a contingent from a Lutheran church in Baltimore. They’ve been coming to El Salvador for the past seven years to work on a home.

Since we were 16 strong – earning our moniker of “32 Manos” or 32 hands – we were split into two groups of eight to work on separate housing sites.

Our particular site was in the beginning stages. On average, it takes about six weeks to build a small Habitat home in El Salvador.

Because of earthquakes, the homes must be extra sturdy and made of masonry block.

Due to site constraints, we were limited to hauling dirt in buckets, fighting off resident chickens and using small sledgehammers to break up old concrete and rebar structures.

Power tools are not part of the equation. Moving huge piles of dirt in buckets through an existing small home was the norm.

Resident masons, Habitat interpreters and neighborhood children become your best friends – not to mention hanging with your group daily, during meals and through the evening devotions.

Our fearless leaders from Baltimore, Kevin and Diane, deserve plenty of kudos for their efforts, organizational skills and boundless energy and love for the locals.

Consider this quote from Jim Wallis of Sojourners: “We have limited lives until we ‘cross over’ into the concrete world of another country and another culture…I have forever left my small word to live with the tensions and the tender mercies of God’s larger family.”

There is no question we crossed over into a different world.

The limited lives of Jerrod and I have definitely been stretched and improved with this Thrivent Builds trip.

Jerrod called the journey a “life-changing experience.”

There is definitely a lot of hard concrete and rebar in the small country of El Salvador, but the hearts of its citizens are large and generous and soft.

We were touched by their willingness to accept help and to pitch in, offering what skills and efforts they could.

The ever-shrinking world we call Earth becomes more real when we leave our sheltered lives in Fountain Hills and witness firsthand the humble conditions experienced by most others around this globe.

We now realize more clearly that life does not consist in the abundance of “stuff.”

We didn’t come close to finishing that masonry structure, but no doubt by Christmas the inter-generational family will be living there and grateful for a house they can call home.

We can’t solve all of the world’s problems in one fell swoop, but at least for this family, our efforts will make a positive difference for a long, long time.

And that is enough.

Until the next trip…