Story World

Living Examples of Alternative Living

By Costa Rican News Group (Originally in Spanish)

From May to August of Golden Year 3 (2006), several initiates from Costa Rica went to Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, where we distributed a total of 270,000 Alternative Living flyers.

While in El Salvador, a young man who was also distributing flyers for the sale of homes came to ask how much we were getting paid to distribute ours. We explained to him that we were doing this voluntarily. He was very surprised that there were still people who would do something to benefit others and ask for nothing in return. He explored further, wanting to find out any other material gain or the “secret” that motivated us. We answered that all of our gain was in the hope that people would choose to become vegetarian and in this way would stop the killing of many innocent animals. This seemed to leave him speechless, and in the end he congratulated us for our actions.

We also met a lady who was very happy with our message, because she knew that eating meat was not good for her and her family. She said God is all love and compassion and does not want us to treat animals in this way. She knew that there had to be a better way to feed ourselves without eating meat, so the Alternative Living flyer was an answer to her prayers.

During our visit to Matagalpa, Nicaragua, we met people who, after reading the flyer, came back for more information. One of them was a man who initially told us he thought that animals’ purpose in this world was to be served as our food. After almost one hour of conversation, he recognized that he never had looked in depth at his point of view, and he said that from that moment on he would get more information on the subject of vegetarianism and its benefits, and he was thankful to us for bringing this important message to his town.

In the bus station of Matagalpa, an initiated sister found a butterfly that had been severely injured by a bus. She picked it up and comforted it in her hands until it died, not suspecting that this was the first of several experiences that God had prepared for her. On the following day while were distributing flyers at two universities in the capital city, the sister surprised us again with her hands occupied with a small bird that had fallen out of his nest. After investigating a little she found that a few hours ago in the university people had cut branches of some trees where this little bird and his family lived. The parents of the little bird had been able to take his brother and place him in a hole of a tree, but had been unable to pick up the second little bird. Finally our sister placed him back to his family. It was amazing to see the reaction of people when they observed our sister’s true concern for the bird, because they had seen him fallen in the sidewalk calling, but no one had helped. Some of them then assisted our sister to return the bird to his parents.

On the following day when we went to distribute flyers to another university in the capital, near the exit gate a completely disoriented horse running toward the street suddenly appeared. Some people tried to catch him by the rope on his neck, but the horse was very wild because he was scared and would not allow anyone to approach him. In spite of her fear that he could hurt her, the sister approached him little by little and to her surprise the horse let her take him and even allow her to touch him. The sister brought him back to the university, but was informed that he did not belong to the place. In this situation she did not know what to do, so she asked God’s inspiration to find out a solution. Soon she found someone who agreed to take care of the horse while waiting his true owner to appear.

We realized that we’d been given these precious opportunities with our animal friends to put into practice the message of the Alternative Living flyers. They were life examples of compassion for the people who witnessed them, where the examples speak more than thousand words.