I have been thinking about blogging on this topic for sometime & am finally getting around to it. So often, missionary blogs are filled with ministry stories & crazy foods. But there are other things that we see & deal with daily and often we get so "accustomed" to them that we don't find it blog worthy. One such thing is the sexuality and vanity of Venezuela. It is known that this country is very focused on women & the need to look a certain way. Venezuela just won the Miss Universe pageant for the 2nd consecutive year. But along with the awards & national acclaim for having some of the world's most beautiful women, Venezuela is also filled with quite a bit of what could be called "filth". I was taken back a month ago when I heard Isaiah telling Ian that we would be home soon by using billboards as his landmarks. This may not seem disturbing as kids would do the same thing in the states. The difference is that our billboards here are covered with half dressed women advertising anything from shoes to alcoholic beverages. It is quite the eye opener to see these things but like I said... you grow accustomed to the fact that they are there & you move on.
Then there are the stores. Barquisimeto has very wealthy people & very poor people. There is NO in between. Because of this there are several large malls that are very nice. Most of these malls have stores featuring shoes, make up, clothes, & catholic statues. Because the folks here likes clothes that are tight & that many of us would require the jaws of life to wear them & take them back off, you can imagine the eye full that we get every time we are out in public. Mannequins are another story. I have often said that you can tell a lot about a country by its mannequins. The mannequins here ALWAYS have on clothes & look completely perfect. They however give a false image of what women should look like. I will spare you the photo or the details of the mannequins here but let's just say that if everyone had a fit that Barbie was improperly proportioned.... these gals make Barbie look like her flat chested cousin Skipper.
So the straw that finally broke the camels back in my frustrations was sitting in McDonalds. The kids had been playing after their consumption of their chicken nuggets & cheese burgers. The place was packed & there was music playing. In the corners of the restaurant were T.Vs on a station kind of like a Latin MTV. I am not a mom who goes off the deep end at the slightest tight shirt, short skirt, or hip jiggle in a dance but the stuff I saw on this T.V was appalling. Chris & I couldn't believe that we were seeing such things in McDonalds as all these small children ate & played. How sad that this culture is so immune to this type of blatant sexuality.
The photo above is a Nestea ad from a billboard 5 minutes from our house. Imanuel calls the store we get bread from beside it the "Big Lips Store". I think this sign speaks volumes. A simple tea advertisement becomes sexual from the use of these giant lips & the words underneath that ask if your thirsty or not. I think that this nation has thirst but it is nothing that Nestea or sexuality will fill. Please when you pray for Venezuela, pray for the bonds of explicit sexuality to be broken & for this nation to view individuals & women as precious treasures & not as tokens or prizes to be won. And when you pray for our family, please pray that our boys will be guarded from these wrong ways of thinking. Please pray for that now & as they enter puberty, also that God will help their minds to develop in a healthy manner so that they will be the men of God that He has created them to be. Finally intercede that our family will be thirsty for the things of God & will be a positive influence in this great nation.
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