Villa Nueva is a small place on the outskirts of Guatemala City.
The sun is
hot, the humidity
is high, and the dirt
streets are cluttered with garbage. "Everyday
we would be wet
with sweat from all the
humidity" Elder Whiting said. The poor
children on the streets flock
to Americans because they think
Americans have
money. "The kids are constantly
begging for money. At first I was sensitive to
them, but after a while I got
used to them and didn't pay much
attention to them.”
One day Elder Whiting and his companion stopped at the local pizza parlor
for lunch. They
were hot and tired, thirsty
and hungry. They ordered a large pizza
to split between the
two of them. While they
were sitting there a little Latin-
American girl approached
them. She was about seven years
old. Her four little
brothers and sisters were followingbehind.
She had dark, ragged hair hanging
over her big
brown eyes. Her face was dirty and
she was wearing a "sheet-like"
rag dress that looked like ithad
never been washed.
She wasn't
wearing any
shoes and her hands and feet
were covered with ground-in dirt. She
looked at
the missionaries, with her hungry,
sincere eyes and said, "Deme Pizza" (give me
pizza), three times. The
2 missionaries just casually ignored her, finished their
pizza and
went on their way.
A few weeks later the two missionaries were eating lunch again in the little
city at a
pizza parlor on the side
of the city road. From his seat Elder Whiting
could see the same little
girl running excitedly down
the road towards him. In
her arms she carried a pineapple,
quite large compared to her skinny little
body.
"She looked so happy; it must
have taken a week for her to
find the means to
get that pineapple," Elder Whiting
said. "I thought to myself,
hmm I'll show
her what it's like to have someone
always nagging at you to give them
something.
When she got close enough to him Elder Whiting said, "Deme pina" (give
me pineapple), repeatingit three
times just like she had done to him before.
She stopped quickly to glance
at him. She recognized him, and with a bashful
smile she ran away down the street
with her brothers and sisters following behind.
Elder Whiting turned back around to finish his pizza. She came up
behind
him, placed the
pineapple on the table,
and scampered away before he even had
time to see her. Heturned
around and saw the pineapple on the table but he
could not find the little girl.
"When I saw that pineapple I
felt absolutely terrible,”
Elder Whiting said. "I
was just playing a joke and she was so generous. I wished
that I could find
her to give her pineapple back but she was
gone and I never did
see her again. She taught
me a great lesson. She was a little girl who
had nothing.
She was willing to give everything
she had to someone like me
who had so much.
Even after I had not even shared
a piece of pizza, which wasn't anything important
to me anyway.
That sweet little girl taught Elder Whiting a lesson of love that no one
else
could. He learned abouttrue
unselfishness and humility. The purity and innocence
of children can teach
us lessons and remind us of
how we could be that our "grown-up"
years sometimes have
made us forget.