What Crazy Weather We Are Having

The price of beans are on the rise in Nicaragua.  For the last few weeks the rains have started and the humidity is crazy, I feel like I am in a steam bath. When I lay down in bed the sheets feel wet.  When I leave the house in the morning after a cold shower I begin to sweat from the humidity and heat.  Unfortunately, the rains were late.  Farmers were not able to plant their crops and now they are finding it hard to get their crops into their fields.  Add to this, one of the worst drought in many years.

Hence the price of beans.  Already the prices for beans and corn have doubled as the shortage to come is eminent.  Of course for Cassie and I that is not a huge problem, we can easily pay $1.00 for a pound of beans, but for the average Nicaraguan, who is accustomed to being able to buy a pound of beans for $0.40, is already facing an economic and nourishment problem.  And unfortunately this problem is not one that is being experienced by Nicaraguans alone; it is being experienced by the population of the entire tropic region of our globe.

I keep receiving emails from friends and family back home telling me about how crazy the weather has been.  About the droughts, the torrential rain, about all the weird weather and abnormalities.  According to our friends and neighbors we are experiencing the same here in Nicaragua.  All this crazy weather is creating one big problem in which the poorest will be the ones who will suffer first.

I spoke with a Nicaraguan farmer yesterday who talked to me about the changes he has experienced in his fifty years of farming.  He asked me a question, "why would we not think that if we took all the gold, all the oil, and all the trees away from our earth and polluted it with our waste that our climate would not change?"

So when you think to yourself, wow what crazy weather we are having, I encourage you to ask yourself, “I wonder if there is anything that I do in my life that might stop all this crazy weather?”  Or better yet, ask yourself, “what might I able to do in order to stop the prices of substantive food rising to prices that people cannot afford?” 

Our earth is crying out in pain and there are men, women, and children crying out in hunger.  We are called to care for our brother, our mother, our sister, our neighbors, to care for the world, for ourselves, for our kids, for the least of these. Do not just think, wow, what strange, crazy, weather we are having, I promise you that it is only going to get stranger and crazier.