Many of you who know my wife Jenny and I are familiar with our story.

We met in college and were married in 2002. For our honeymoon, we were invited to volunteer for a few months in El Salvador. After seeing the incredible work of rural pastors, our three-month honeymoon turned into nearly eight years of living in El Salvador. Our children were born in El Salvador, and we’ve now been involved with ENLACE for more than 17 years. I would have never imagined what God had in store for us when we said yes to a trip to El Salvador.

This month ENLACE will celebrate its 25th anniversary in Corona Del Mar! We are overjoyed and so grateful.

Every year, just before Christmas, ENLACE hosts a Pastors and Leaders Retreat. It is the one time when all of our local church partners and staff get a chance to learn together, pray and encourage one another, and have a lot of fun! Every year it has been something special. There was one year, however, that stands out and continually reminds me of ENLACE's purpose and vision. 

“These people seem so happy! They seem so thankful, even though it seems that they have so little to be thankful for.” This is a sentiment that I have frequently heard during my 15 years of introducing North Americans to people in rural El Salvador. While El Salvador does indeed rank very high on the “happiness index” there is something disconcerting about calling impoverished families “happy” and “thankful.” I think something else might be going on here. Could it be that visiting an impoverished community simply shifts our baseline for how we measure happiness and thankfulness?

Flor and her little son FranklinIn many ways, Flor and José Hernández are a typical family in rural El Salvador. They have two young children and live in a simple home on a small plot of land. They work very hard but are very poor. Like most families in their village, they lack indoor plumbing. They haul water from a community well and use it for all their cooking and cleaning needs. And instead of indoor bathrooms they dig pits near their home.