The stairway to heaven is steep, as steep as the climb to Florinda Quino’s house, a one-room tin hut furnished with old mattresses scattered on the dirt floor where she lives with her three children in the Guatemalan mountains.
That is changing thanks to her 14-year old son, José, and Solomon’s Porch.
Solomon’s Porch was born of the passion of former Tallahassee lawyer-turned-missionary, Lloyd Monroe, and wife Melanie, and their vision that practicing Christianity is more effective than preaching it.
In 14 years the Porch has built more than 100 earthquake-proof houses for impoverished Guatemalan families. Donations pay for the building materials and volunteers from churches in this country provide the labor.
The Porch also contributes desperately needed supplies to the local medical clinic, partners with a drug and alcohol rehab group, creates jobs by hiring staff and funding small family business start-ups, and provides scholarships so children can attend school instead of working to help feed their families. Oh, yes, and the Porch also offers a low-key, non-denominational Christian-based ministry.
The Porch was building a house near Florinda’s shack when José showed up one day and pitched in wherever he could help, asking for nothing in return. Impressed by the slender teenager, members of the Porch investigated and determined that his family, too, qualified for assistance.
Florinda’s abusive alcoholic husband had abandoned the family, leaving her, José, 8-year old Rosa, and 4-year old Blanca without resources or hope. So when my wife, Jeannie, and I arrived at the Porch’s home base in Panajachel recently we were sent up the mountain with volunteers from churches in Indianapolis and Winston-Salem, NC, to work on a new house for the Quino family.
The building site, like Florinda’s hut, had no electricity, no plumbing, no running water.
Volunteers from the rehab group carried sand, cement, rock, water, rebar, and concrete blocks up the exhaustingly steep quarter-mile trail on their backs. We worked exclusively with hand tools, excavating the site with shovel and hoe, separating sand from rock with a homemade sifter, halving concrete blocks with a machete. Power tools and machinery were non-existent.
The house began to take shape by the end of our week on the mountain. When it is finished by other volunteers in the coming weeks the Porch will furnish it with an efficient wood-burning stove for cooking and heat and a small water filtration and purification tank.
The Porch will also provide a scholarship for José, who had to quit school to help support the family when his father left. He plans to complete two grades each term for the next few years to make up for lost time.
On our last day the 20-plus volunteers gathered on the site with the family and Porch workers to say goodbye. Through an interpreter Florinda thanked us at length in her native Mayan language. As José spoke next his voice broke and tears fell. The rest of us responded in kind.
The book of Matthew says that upon Jesus’ second coming he will tell his followers they have earned their heavenly inheritance by feeding him when he was hungry, taking him in as a stranger, clothing him when he was naked. In response to their puzzled query as to when they ever did such things for him he will say, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me.”
In the highlands of Guatemala the stairway to heaven is steep, but every step is its own reward.
Tallahassee lawyer, Tom Powell, and wife, Jeannie Becker-Powell, recently spent a week in Guatemala volunteering with Porch de Salomon, a 501c3 charity. Tax exempt donations may be mailed to Porch de Salomon P.O. Box 10509 Tallahassee, FL 32302-2509.
