Back in Ecuador

Wow, am I really here? Again? A little over a year ago, I was at orientation at John Carroll University, preparing myself for the journey ahead surrounded by my newly introduced community mates and other Jesuit Volunteer International volunteers. I began to think to myself, ¨God bless the JVI volunteers. They are giving up two years of their life to do service. I could never do that.¨ Well, as the season of Thanksgiving invites us to do, I can not help but thank God that I am back in Ecuador, surrounded with some of the people that taught me so much about life, myself, and the world around me and will continue to challenge me in these three aspects. At the same time, this year is a bit of a different experience; altered community, new living arrangements, new job, new pace of life, new obstacles to hurdle, new excitements and new rostros de Cristo.

One of those excitements has been my time with Hogar de Cristo. Currently I am working in the microfinance department in which low interest loans are granted to groups of ten to thirty women who live near one another. The women, in turn, are to use the money and invest it in a business. My mission/ job here so far has been to help with little odd end jobs around the office, accompany other employees as they support the women and visit their respective businesses. Hogar de Cristo serves to roughly 4,800 women in the microfinance department alone from the Guayaquil branch.

One of my blessings is that I have been able to work beside a Hogar de Cristo volunteer, Felix, who is volunteering two years of his life. Felix is from Spain and already has been here for eight months. Currently Felix and I are working on ways that we can have more contact with the women, or rather, a way that we can get to know them outside of their businesses because we know there is more to them than their business. Therefore we are working on a survey with questions that should open the door into conversations about their lives and at the same time prove to be a reliable assistance to the microfinance department. The basic principle at hand is that of the mission of Rostro de Cristo, to accompany the women and ´be´ with them.

As for living it community, it remains one of those aspects I could not live without. We have picked up where we left off by continuing to support and challenge one another. The temporary housing unit we are staying in is cozy to a point where it is a bit too cozy at times. Tracy and Amy share a room and Carolyn and I have a bunk bed in the other room. While it is a challenge, it is also a friendly reminder that thousands of people all around us share one room cane houses and how truly blessed we are.

While we live about a 30 minute bus ride away from Monte Sinai we have all started to immerse ourselves. On Friday mornings I am working as a physical education teacher at an elementary school that is ran by nuns from Colombia. I only teach three grades for a half hour each, but attempt to teach the kids some positive ways to deal with their restlessness which in hand becomes a big help for the teachers. On Saturday afternoons I am working with one of the nuns and we teach first communion to roughly twenty kids. The chapel where I teach is not in Monte Sinai but part of the same parish. So far it has been a fantastic experience and I am so amazed at how much I have seen my faith grow, continue to learn things and develop a deeper understanding with the kids as my teachers.

As the Thanksgiving season now shifts to Advent, I am still left being thankful but now more attentive to the birth of Jesus. Ecuador helps me practice being intentional with my faith so that I can be present to all that is happening around me.

Life as a Second Year Volunteer

Life as a second year volunteer has been an exciting whirlwind of activities and progress since we stepped foot in the Guayaquil airport that emotional September evening.  We hit the ground running with our new partner organization, Hogar de Cristo, as the first several weeks were spent learning the complex infrastructure of the corporation before starting at our perspective work-sites.
 
I have had the blessing to start working at La Casa de Acogida, a shelter for battered women and children of extreme domestic violence. As the shelter is less than a year old, I have had the exciting privilege and freedom to develop the placement by supporting the many needs of the house.  From the beginning I have formed a very supportive role with the children by implementing systems of structure and discipline in the shelter, preparing educational activities, enrolling them in school and helping them with their studies.  As this role develops, I look forward to fostering stronger relationships with the women by helping the psychologists with various workshops on self-esteem, health, the cycle of violence, etc...  Since the shelter is still growing and expanding, I also have the opportunity to help with more administrative aspects and learn how to organize and run a shelter efficiently.  The has been a great variety of work at the shelter and it has been keeping me on my toes as a settle into a comfortable place with the women. 
 
Our progress in Monte Sinai has been slowly progressing as work and travel to and from the neighborhood take up much of our time, but fortunately I feel that our presence has steadily increased in the past few weeks.  I have started teaching catechism classes before mass on Sunday mornings with Tracy, and have had the good fortune to spend time with many of the families through the church and the children of our classes.  Also, we have started to get to know some of the families closer to where our house will be as we have been spending time with a group of Colombian nuns that run a elementary school a few blocks from our house.  So far I have felt welcomed with open arms and cannot wait to spend more time with some of the wonderful families that we have met.  As construction of the house has recently started, the anticipation is bursting for when the day comes to move to Monte Sinai.
 
All in all, the experience to start being in a new community and work sites with Rostro de Cristo has been such a blessing.  There have been bumps in the road, and moments of smooth sailing as well as tears and laughter.  I greatly appreciate all of the support and prayers that I have felt from the greater Rostro de Cristo community stateside as I have been fortunate enough to take part in the expansion of the Rostro de Cristo community in Ecuador.  God bless and Feliz Navidad!!

The Meaning of 'Gracias'

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I have been thinking a lot lately about gratefulness. It occurred to me on Tuesday during a very fruitful Spirituality Night led by my community mate Danny that the word ¨gracias” literally means “graces.” I can’t believe that after all of the times that I have used and heard that word, I had never come to that realization before. Graces. I love that. It’s like when we thank someone, we are acknowledging a way that they allowed us to more fully encounter God’s grace and also wishing that God’s grace surround them and accompany them. As I approach the three month mark of my second year here in Ecuador, I feel joyful and very thankful for all of the opportunities I continue to have to witness grace in the people that surround me.

It feels like such a blessing to be back in this place where the whole-hearted “Gracias” spoken after sharing a meal with you seems to place a seal of confidence and sacredness around the conversation shared; this place where people say “Gracias por la visita” when it was in fact them who offered you their most comfortable chair and stopped whatever they were doing to give you their full attention and probably even serve you a heaping plate of food; this place where people greet each and every person in the room they just entered with a kiss and a smile, even if it is a meeting, perhaps to say – your presence and our interaction is considerably more important than whatever business we are trying to take care of right now. In this second year I have felt a heightened awareness of the fact that Ecuadorians are sacramental people. They do see God’s grace in everything. Being around this so much leaves a U.S. American like me starkly humbled, and of course, thankful.

I encounter so much grace and sacredness through my volunteer position in the Pastoral Ministry Department of Hogar de Cristo. One of the main initiatives of the department is to work with women in the surrounding parishes to develop base faith communities. Throughout the past few months I have been accompanying these communities that meet bi-weekly for faith formation and faith-sharing. The Pastoral office is such a fun place to be, too, because the women we serve are always dropping in to work on little projects or just to talk. I love being with them - listening to them talk and engaging in conversation with them about faith, justice, and ways that they themselves can be agents of hope and change in their neighborhoods. It is energizing. To me, these women are glimmers of hope in sections of the city that otherwise look quite bleak. One of my favourite moments was when a twelve old girl participating in a meeting about dignity said, “Sometimes in this country they tell me that because I am a girl, I can’t. But I know that I can.” Grace.

Last week, we went to visit the site for the new house, Casa Tomas, and it is going up! It has been at times hard to feel like a part of the neighbourhood in Monte Sinai while living outside on the Perimetral, about a thirty minute bus ride away. As things often are in this country, the process is slow. But after a few months of heading in each weekend to spend time in the parishes and begin to make relationships with neighbors, I am feeling so excited for us and for volunteers in years to come to grow with this vibrant community. We have been going to church and teaching catechism in the parish Bautismo de Jesús which is headed up by Fr. Colm Hogan, an Irish missionary priest from the Society of St. James. He has been a phenomenal support for us, and he is dearly loved by the members of the three chapels that he serves in the area. The largest of the three, Iglesia Corpus Christi, where we attend Mass on Sunday morning, recently started using a beautiful new bamboo church building. The lovely space reflects the energetic worship that occurs inside. I have been singing for the past few Sundays with the youth choir, Hijo de David, which is made up of committed and VERY talented teenaged musicians and singers.

The neighbors I have met in Monte Sinai are beautiful, hilarious, faith-filled, humble, and welcoming people. Are you surprised? Of course not. We have left more than a few houses smiling and saying, “That family is totally going to be friends with Rostro volunteers for years to come!” One of the families I have gotten to spend the most time with is that of Jhonny and Rosa and their two kids, Diego and Domenica. Jhonny is the night guard at the church and spends seven nights a week there on duty. He is laid back, with kind eyes and a big belly that shakes when he laughs. His wife Rosa has a gorgeous shy smile, and she giggles at just about everything we say. Our first visit there, Carolyn and I watched Diego and Doménica as they constructed a Sponge Bob año viejo, about two months ahead of time, and we shared a cola and conversation in plastic chairs out front. I looked around in that moment and felt home. What a blessing.

In conclusion, I am joyful here in the northern part of Guayaquil and feel God working in my life in so many ways. We have, of course, continued to see the ugly part of the culture and the way unjust systems oppress the very same people that we are coming to know and love. But the face of Christ is alive and shining bright in the homes and churches that we have been blessed to enter. I think I realize more and more every day what a grace it is to be part of this Foundation that has helped us to grow so much as individuals over the years and to encounter Christ more deeply. What a grace it is to be connected by this shared experience that is so much bigger than any of us. Thank you for your continued prayers as Rostro expands into a new place. I wish you and your family many graces in the coming holiday season and always!

It’s starting to feel right

It’s starting to feel right. It took a little while, I must admit – two months of homesickness (and not just for friends and family in the states anymore), learning new buses, new smells, a new routine, getting used to living my life in Spanish again . . . but here I am, finally.

Things are moving slowly – no big surprise considering this is still Ecuador. I am still negotiating my place at work with Hogar. We are still waiting for the house, although we have seen some progress in the past few weeks. I don’t think that big piles of dirt have ever put me in such a good mood. I can’t wait until I can say that I actually live in Monte Sinai. Patience is a virtue, and is the lesson that God has been trying to teach me these past few months.

My favorite time of the week here are the weekends (anyone else know that feeling?). Because we don’t live very close to the new neighborhood, we haven’t been able to spend time there during the week – extreme bummer. So, we take advantage of the weekends. Friday morning through Sunday afternoon, it is pretty certain you will find us wandering around Monte Sinai. We have become great friends with a community of nuns who live a few blocks from where we will be living soon and run a small elementary school in the neighborhood. They have taken us under their wings, introduced us to families, fed us, and let us use their home as our satellite place to rest on the weekends between house visits. I have also started teaching catechism there with them on Saturday afternoons. I have been given a group of 20 or so kiddos between 9 and 13 years old. Its nice to be in educator mode again.

So, everything is new – new faces, new stories, new questions, new relationships, but something about it is strikingly familiar. Spending hours in conversation, walking house to house in the sun, hugs, kisses, playing with kids, sharing struggles, laughing – oh man do we laugh. It’s Rostro. It’s comfortable. It’s home. It’s why I came back to Ecuador for another year. The families I have been getting to know are wonderfully welcoming (again, no surprise there). The nuns have helped us out by explaining a bit about who we are and why we are in Monte Sinai in the first place, and between the four of us here, I think people know what we are about (or should I say Who we are about?). And, all in all, it seems that they are excited about having us around. It looks like Rostro really fits here. When we are in the neighbors houses, or when we are at mass, it is impossible to not feel God’s presence. He brings me such peace in the moments when I’m not really sure what I should be doing to best serve Rostro. He has filled my last two months with challenges and grace. Those two tend to come in an interesting pair.

All in all, the time here is full. I think of you all often, which sounds strange considering many of us have never met, but your legacy, the work you have done, or better put – the way you have been in Ecuador – I carry that spirit with me in a profound way in this new year. Being a part of this new step for Rostro makes me think about everything that past volunteers have done to get us to this place. Thank you so much for your prayers and for continuing to hold Rostro in your lives.

Some Thoughts on Advent

Hello! Happy Thanksgiving a week late, and happy Advent to you all! It's hard to believe that we are already in the midst of the holiday season. It feels very strange - and sometimes lonely - to be spending my holidays here in Ecuador, to be preparing for Christmas when it's getting hotter and sunnier every day, to hear Spanish carols pouring from cane houses, to be celebrating advent in Spanish at the misa, to be celebrating here with children whose biggest - or perhaps only - gifts might be the etch-a-sketch and sunglasses they just received from their sponsorship program, 'Children International.' Yes, it's incredibly strange. And yet, I am discovering, it is also a beautiful, beautiful blessing.

With Advent beginning last Sunday I've been reflecting on what Advent and Christmas mean here, in this time and this place. And with every day and every reflection I am finding myself more deeply thankful to be spending Advent here, in a world in which the message and reality of Advent and Christmas suddenly seem more raw, more real, more applicable, more possible. I wanted to share a few reflections...

Entering the Advent season here has prompted me to consider that this world of poverty and injustice that I am surrounded by here in Ecuador is a world very similar to that into which Christ was born. Monday night as my community was praying with Luke's annunciation story, I couldn't help but think that one of my young neighbors, sweeping the dirt floors of her small wooden home, might make a very appropriate Mary, and her young son playing on the floor at her feet might then make a very appropriate Christ child. Yes, this world is the same desperate, oppressed world into which Christ was born, a world of poverty and violence and corruption and gross inequalities (all things that also exist in the States but that have reached such proportions here that they can't possibly be hidden or ignored).

I have been considering, too, this idea of waiting, and what it means to wait in solidarity. I am waiting, as we do every Advent, for Christ's coming, but that seems to take on a new significance here. Here I wait with my friends and neighbors, with my students, with the patients at Damien House, and with the beautiful children who make my life here so joyful. Together we pray 'come Lord Jesus,' come into our hearts and our families, come into our communities and our country, enter into our entire world. Come Lord Jesus, we pray, and turn our world upside down. May the last be first and the kings pulled from their thrones and the rich sent away without, as you have promised. Come Lord Jesus and lift up the little ones you loved so much, here in Ecuador where those little ones, the simple and the weak and the poor, fill the streets. Come Lord Jesus I pray, together with my neighbors, and together we wait in hope.

And I know that this is important too, that we not only wait but that we do so in hope. This can be hard, especially here. Many days our world seems incredibly broken, irreparably shattered. It seems hard to conceive that even Christ could put it back together again. Hope is sometimes hard to come by. And yet as I pictured the annunciation the other night I found myself brimming with esperanza. What an incredibly long time, I reflected, the Israelites were waiting for their Messiah. And who could have ever imagined that that Messiah would enter the world in the way that he did, born in a stable, out of wedlock, the son of a carpenter and a young, insignificant girl in Galilee, destined to become the friend of sinners and the champion of the downtrodden and powerless. As Christ's birth, life, and death have shown us, God's time is not our time, nor are his means our means. And as Christmas inevitably comes after Advent, we wait in hope that Christ's world-turned-upside-down must inevitably come as well. This waiting, of course, does not mean idleness or indifference. I firmly believe that Christ's world is slowly breaking into our own, that our own attempts to love and to work for justice and peace help to bring his kingdom slowly into reality. And yet as we struggle through the day by day, when progress is far from apparent, we Christmas is God's present to us, his promise that, as Oscar Romero tells us, love must win out - it is the only thing that can.



And that is where I leave you today, on a thoughtful note. Thank you for reading my ramblings and my thoughts. Whether or not they meant much, this is where my heart is right now. I know I have said nothing of my comings and goings; I suppose that will have to wait until a later email. Know though that I am thinking of each of you, holding you all in my heart! I am thankful for you all :)

A lot, a lot of love is being sent your way from South America -

Hello from Ecuador!

This is my attempt to keep my word and try to stay in touch more
regularly. Perhaps then I can keep my notes a little shorter and more
manageable... thanks to all who actually made it through my last
message! Very impressive.

So here is some of the news from here in Duran, Ecuador:

I have been back for a week from my vacation in Baños in the Andes
mountains - which was incredibly beautiful - and I am so very happy to
be settling back into a routine and to be able to spend time with my
community and with our Ecuadorian neighbors. As usual, there have been
emotional highs and emotional lows, days where I am smiling all day
and days where i might start crying at the slightest things, but I'm
realizing that is life here in Ecuador - the emotional swings are
incredible and there is very little middle ground. Sometimes I feel
like I might explode but all in all i am so thankful that I am feeling
here - really and truly feeling things and experiencing things and
living things with my whole heart.

And I am growing - I think my heart is stretching and my faith is
growing and I am learning to open myself and empty myself a little
more every day.

To talk more concretely, an interesting fact, I suppose, is that we
are experiencing an energy crisis here in Ecuador right now. We are
coming up on the rainy season, which begins for real in January, and
usually during the transition from rainy season to dry season it will
begin to rain, little by little, as January approaches. This year,
unlike most years, there has been no rain as of yet (it has not rained
here in Guayaquil a single time since I arrived here in August), and
they are not forecasting rain for a while. This means that the rivers
are very very low, and although I don't completely understand it all,
much of the country's energy comes from hydroelectric power. Anyways
with this power shortage they are rationing energy by shutting off
power to certain parts of the city at specific times every day. For us
in Duran, the power goes off from about 7 in the morning to 10 every
day and then again at night from 6 to 8. We are well situated to deal
with the lack of energy because we generally still have water due to
the way our plumbing is set up (another thing I dont fully understand)
and we have a gas stove, so especially in the morning, lots of times I
don't even realize that we don't have power. At night though it is a
little more tricky, as it gets dark every night at 6. It's a little
dangerous to be wandering around at night without light - the other
night I tripped over the dog and almost fell on my face - and we are
also often cooking eating etc in the dark. It was an adventure at
first and a little annoying now but we are becoming very adept at
living with a combination of headlamps, flashlights, and candlelight.
The energy shortage is forecasted to continue for the next 2 months so
I'm sure by the end then we will be experts at surviving sin luz.

In other news, I love teaching more every day. A lot of it I think has
to do with finally feeling like I know what I am doing, at least a
little bit, and also getting to know my students a little better and
earning their trust. As I type this I just got out of an hour and 20
minute class with my high school seniors. We just started discussing
the idea of 'us' versus 'them' in our modes of relating with people,
and today we discussed racial stereotypes within the United States and
here in Ecuador. We started out discussing the legacy of segregation
in the US and I explained to them 'Brown versus Board of Education,'
and from there we were able to have a really great discussion on
racism, including whether or not we might all be 'inherently racist,'
simply because of our background and our fear of the unknown, the
'them.' Sometimes I feel like trying to get my class to talk can be
like pulling teeth and sometimes it is so hard for me to get them to
think critically but I think the discussion today really resonated
with them, and I think we all walked out of class with a lot of things
to think about. And it all seems like such a blessing to me, to be
able to discuss issues like this with students in a culture different
than my own, in a culture where i am actually the 'them,' and to
really feel that genuine interest and the understanding, to know that
we are all growing and learning together. What an amazing blessing.

i think I'm going to leave it at that today - - hopefully if I stay up
to date with these notes I will be able to continue sending a few
paragraphs at a time instead of entire chapters :)

Once again thank you for all of your support and your prayers and your
love. Thinking of you all as the holidays approach. I wish i could be
there to celebrate with you but i will be holding you in my heart.

Mande?

I've been planning to write this next update for a while now but it hasn't happened. I feel a little as though I have been waiting for inspiration to strike, but it hasn't been coming. The problem isn't that I have too little to report on but rather too much... how can I even begin to explain life
down here?

In the end perhaps I will have to settle for sharing a few snapshots of my daily life:

First, let me introduce you to the most used word in my vocabulary: ''¿¿¿¿Mande????'' As in, 'i have no idea what you just said to me. Could you repeat it, possibly in a much slower manner?' The language is coming, poco a poco, like everything down here, but that doesn't mean I don't make a fool out of myself 3,415 times a day... At the same time, I have to be thankful for the patience and understanding my Ecuadorian neighbors and coworkers show me.. Its so very humbling (which I am trying to embrace!).

Speaking of humbling, as a gringa down here, I am allowed a certain number of faux pauxs, I am pretty sure that I am far exceeding that number. There are so many cultural norms that I just don't understand, and that's if I am even aware that they exist. Im sure the neighbors get a fair amount of laughs at us, many times when we dont even know. And THEN, if the language isnt there to defend yourself with... well it can be frustrating. And yet this is such a great opportunity for growth... I was reflecting the other day about how hard it is for me to be bad at something. I am scared of messing up, of falling on my face. And yet in a sense, that is what I am
forced to do here (very literally in fact... I have fallen on my face once, in one of our afterschool programs, haha! I still have the scar on my knee to prove it. It made for a good joke for a while). It is inevitable that I will make a fool of myself; I do it every day. And yet I have to get back up, and keep trying. I am learning that even when you fall, life goes on. You pick yourself back up, patch your knee back together, and try again... possibly with a slightly better grasp of your own brokenness and your own limitations. And it is the knowledge of my brokenness, my limitations (and my horrible horrible awkwardness in so many situations!!) that teaches me compassion towards others when they, too, inevitably fall.

Another very present reality of my life - - the million and one hugs and kisses I recieve daily. Ecuadorians greet each other with a kiss on the cheek (well, for the most part - - - women give each other kisses on the cheek, and guys give girls kisses on the cheek, but guys greet each other with a very manly handshake). Why don't we do this in the states? It's wonderful. But this doesn't make up a quarter of the hugs and kisses I recieve daily, because most of all they come from the kids... Sometimes all
I have to do is step out on the street and I am bombarded by 15 hugs. Kids from Semillas de Mostaza, our afterschool program, kids from the soup kitchen where I like to stop by and chat, kids from Nuevo Mundo where I teach. Sometimes I have no idea who they are or where I possibly could have met them but they greet me like we have been best friends for years. The children here fill my heart with joy... and most of all, with love. I want to introduce you to Abraham, Luis, and Carmen, three kids from Semillas. Every time I pass their house I am guaranteed a 5 minute hug, and then
another one, until I've been hugged for 20 minutes and I'm impossibly late to wherever I'm going (I have to admit that sometimes I go out of my way just to pass their home). And then there's Veronica, comes to Semillas as well. She is eight years old but because of malnourishment she looks like she's four.... but she is one of the most embracing, loving children I've ever met. She calls me 'preciosa' and insists on giving me a hug and a long wet kiss every time I see her. And Wellington, the 8 year old son of a neighbor, who goes to Nuevo Mundo, where I teach. This morning I took him to the cyber to practice the ´computacion,´ like his dad wanted... Basically I just helped him to send emails to past volunteers: ´´Hola, soy Wellington. Como esta alla? Te extrano. Ven a mi cumpleanos el 25 de Diciembre. Ciao.´´So cute!

Final snapshot, perhaps, should be of my community. Every morning we scatter off to different worksites, sometimes we see eachother at midday, some people work together in the afternoon. Most nights, no matter where the day took us, we come back together for dinner and prayer. It is hard work. Sometimes I just want to be at the neighbors,
hanging out. Sometimes my community mates are driving me crazy. Sometimes I have no desire to pray.... and this goes for all of us, of course. It takes a lot, a LOT, of intentionality, knowing that in signing up to take part in a ´´christian community,´´ we have committed ourselves to relationships in which we dont just pass with a
smile and a hello in the hallway but rather we have a responsibility towards one another, we hold one another accountable. Truly trying to live as a community, sometimes little decisions get turned into big ones. The other night we had a 30 minute discussion on how much cheese we should buy - - really. ´´Is it a luxury item, how much can we afford,´´ etc etc. Yikes! And recently we had a perhaps more serious
discussion on alcohol and what role it should play in our experience here, given our differing backgrounds, given our intentions for the year, given the prevalence of alcoholism in Ecuador and the effects it has on our neighbors. What might be seen as an individual decision in the states caused some arguments and even some tears, and the issue eventually evolved into the question of how accountable we are to each
other as a community. It was intense! What a sense of accomplishment, though, when after numerous, long discussions, we reached a conclusion that everyone felt okay with, especially when the conclusion showed how we are growing to support and to trust one another. When I signed up for this experience in Ecuador, I thought the community living would be the easiest part.... it may turn out to be the hardest! The
hardest things, though, generally end up being the most rewarding. I
am incredibly thankful for my community here.

A Beautiful Day

It´s a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon here in Ecuador! The first
draft of this note was composed from the hammock on my front porch,
where the shade hid me at least from a bit of the heat. Right now we
are in the coolest part of the year for Ecuadorians and lots of
mornings it is cloudy and cool, but when the clouds burn off it gets
really warm. This morning there were no clouds and the heat started
early, promising a hot, muggy day. I think I probably sweat my body
weight in water every day here and so I am trying hard not to imagine
what its going to feel like January through April, when the rainy
season hits, promising muggyness and mid90s to mid100 highs every day
(I am praying that I can become accustomed to the climate!)... The
heat makes me feel lazy, and I am taking a day off after a long week.
Some of my community-mates are off visiting a neighbor, and others are
planning to go watch a soccer game later today, but I think for me the
plan for today is to get a big of breathing time in, to catch up on
the notes to family and friends, to do some laundry and to relax so
that I can start the next week running!

Perhaps I should begn my update by sharing my worksites with you all.
To be honest, they came as a surprise even to me! As we started the
discernment process, I felly expected to feel drawn towards one of the
two medical placements, an AIDS clinic and Padre Damien´s, a hospital
for people with Hansen´s disease (leprosy). I did like both of those
sites, and could imagine myself working at either one of them, but
ultimately I felt called in a different direction. In the afternoons,
I am going to be teaching English (the last thing I expected - or
wanted - to do coming down here!) in a school called Nuevo Mundo (new
world). In the mornings, I am our new ¨community outreach worker,¨and
I will also be spending a day a weeek at Padre Damien´s, letting me
fulfill my medical interests too, and affording me a possibility to
participate and translate durng the times that medical teams from the
states come down to work.

Let me tell you a bit more about my two placements, though, and about
why I am so excited. Nuevol Mundo was founded 30 years ago by Pat, and
ex-nun from the States, and Sonia, her Ecuadorian partner. In the
morning, it provides a high-quality, bilingual education to wealthy
students of Guayaquil. From the money they made with the morning
school, 25 years ago the two women were able to found the afternoon
school, where I will be working. This afternoon school provides the
same quality education to intelligent, highly-motivated studenbts from
areas such as the neighborhood in which I live - students who
othervise would have no access to a quality education. The afternoon
school will open doors to them which would never have been possible
otherwise. I will be partnering with an Ecuadorian teacher to teach
fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, and we will split the classes and
teach the same material. I truly feel called to this position but at
the same time I´m feeling pretty nervous about my teaching abilities
(or lack thereof!). Keep me in your prayers...

The main emphasis of my morning site is to further Rostro´s
relationship with the communities in which we live, as well as doing
some extra housekeeping stuff for Rostro. The exact form this position
will take is still a work in progress, but it may end up looking
something like spending Monday visiting neighbors in the AJS community
and Wednesday in Arbolito, doing some accounting and errands for
Rostro on Tuesday, Nuevo mundo planning on Thursday, and going to
Padre Damien on Friday, as well as working at our local soup kitchen a
few days a week, visiting the sites at which my community-mates are
working to familiarize myself with their services and to be able to
refer people in the community to those places, etc. The variety and
the room for creativity in this placement really appeal to me, and
most of all I am excited about the conversations with my neighbors,
about the opportunity to share and to accompany and to learn.

I feel like this note is running long but I´d like to share one more
thing with you all before closing, a moment that I fould to be
particularly powerful and meaningful to me. On Wednesday I went to
Mass with two of my community mates at their worksite, el Proyecto
Salesiano chicos de la calle. This program, or ¨Chicos,¨as we call it,
is a home and school for boys that were formerly living and working on
the streets of Guayaquil and surrounding areas. The gospel for mass on
Wednesday morning was the one about how ïts harder for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven.¨I´d
heard the passage a million times over back in the States, generally
sitting in an air-conditioned church, surrounded by other
estadounidense churchgoers, many of whom, like me, led a very
comfortable life. What a change, then, what a contrast, to listen to
this gospel passage surrounded by those we in the states would easily
define as the poor - boys that had left their homes to live and work
in the streets! You don´t get much poorer than that. And then came the
homily, in which the priest, the man who runs Chicos, proceeded to
tell these boys just how rich they were - rich in abilities, rich in
opportunities. Here, he told them, you are rich, because you have the
opportunity to get an education. Here, he said, you are rich because
you get three meals a day. Here, you are rich because you have your
own bed to sleep in, while many sleep 3 or 4 to a bed, or have to bed
at all. Once he had firmly established how very rich these boys were,
he proceeded to chastise them for the times they didn´t do their
homework, for the times they didn´t bathe or present themselves in the
best manner, for the times they weren´t grateful for that which they
had been given. More emphatically than I had heard in any homily in
the states, he told these boys that from those to whom much had been
given, much was expected........... It certainly put a few things in
perspective for me. I feel as though I have been given the world.

I want you to know that I am thinking of you all, and that I hope that
everything is going well for you! I can´t believe that summer is
already drawing to a close. I hope those of you who are heading back
to school, whether in the form of student or teacher!, are feeling up
to the task... I´m sure you are all going to do great :) I am
incredibly thankful for the notes I received in response to my last
email - keep them coming, por favor! I am missing you all, and it
makes me feel just a bit more connected to you all at home.

Sending you an incredible amount of love, straight from this tiny
internet cafe in the middle of Ecuador to you, wherever you might be
in the States. I am grateful for you all!

Touching Down

So after two weeks of orientation in Cleveland, I'm a week and a half
into my incountry orientation in ecuador... a few more days and that
should all be finished and i will be, i hope, VERY well orientated by
that point!

We spent our first week here living in the retreat house, where high
school and college kids stay during their immersion trips here.
Saturday night we got split into two different houses, as Rostro has
two separate houses where volunteers live in two different
neighborhoods. We will still, hopefully, be seeing a lot of one
another but the split determined who we would be living with and
spending time with on a daily basis.

I'm now living in the Arbolito community with 5 volunteers, an there
are 5 other volunteers in the Antonio Jose de Sucre neighborhood.
Arbolito is the newer, less developed and visibly poorer of the two
neighborhoods. I live on a dirt road in a very urban area. Many of my
neighbors live in cane houses. In the AJS comunity, the roads are all
paved, and the houses, for the most part, constructed of cement. And
yet they all face the systemic issues. Lack of running water, poor
education, children going to work to provide for their families. And
the list continues, always multiplying, kind of like the holes dotting
the tin roof of the home of one of my neighbors. I can only imagine
what the rainy season must be like.

And yet.... dont want this note to be full of shocking descriptions
of the poverty around me. I do want to give you a bit of a picture, a
bit of a context in which to place this year for me. To complete this
context, though, I might have to introduce you to the friendly faces
of Wellington, Eduardo, Omar, Isidro, and Elvis, our guards. To
Ricardo, Diana, and Aide, the Ecuadorian staff of Rostros after school
programs. To Joseph, Daniel, Elvis, Junior, the funny, welcoming
teenage boys who serve as "ayudantes" in the afterschool program in
Arbolito. To Kiki, the party crazy but wholly warm and welcoming woman
who is active in the local church, to Nanci and Patricia, who welcomed
us into their homes, to Sister Annie, who runs Padre Damiens home for
people with Hansens disease, to all of the beautiful, beautiful
children who come to our afterschool programs.

Its funny, this past week has been very different for me than if Id
come here as a retreatant, one of the high school and college kids we
host for a week or two. For example, weve been visiting different job
sites and discerning where we might fit for the next year. The home
for street children, the AIDS clinic... these arent just passing
visits, something to see and soak in about Ecuador... these are
possible job placements for me. Visiting peoples homes, I am not so
much marveling at their poverty as seeing them as my neighbors, as
potential friends. Meeting people on the streets, I smile and say
"buenas" and think "wow. this is my community for the next year." In
sum, I suppose this week has felt a lot less emotional and a lot more
pragmatic than one of those whirlwind tours. I like it. Every day, I
feel incredibly thankful to be here.

I promised myself, and you all, that Id keep this short. I have to
apologize already...

Please keep me in your prayers, as we will be discussing job sites and
deciding where we will be working over the next year within the next
day or two. You all, of course, are continually in my prayers.

Gracias a Dios

I spent last weekend at Playas Beach with my community and with 2 former volunteers, Mike and Jill, who flew down to direct our last community retreat of the year. Our last retreat...the fourth out of four...so hard to believe. I remember loading up the van in November to head to Crucita or our first retreat of the year. What a different place I was in then! At that point, I was looking ahead with a mix of excitement and weariness at the 9 months that still lay ahead of me. Somehow, I blinked, and it became June. Now I find myself looking back over the last 11 months with a full heart. I have felt so many emotions, and really have been transformed by the reality I have lived here.

The weather was beautiful at the beach. Breezy and cool at night and sunny but not suffocatingly hot during the day. On Saturday morning, I was sitting on the beach, looking out into the big, beautiful, breathtaking ocean. I mean really...the sight of the blue, green, white, turquoise, sparkling waves; the feel of the fresh, crisp air brushing over my goosebumpy arms; the INMENSITY of the water stretching out to meet the blue sky...it gets me everytime. I love praying on the beach. I was sitting there with my journal in my lap, and suddenly my pen just began to go. This is why I love journaling. I am never really sure what's coming when I sit down to write, but it is always therapeutic. As I was reflecting, I was really aware of the cool air around me and how I felt on the beach. My mind starting wandering back to all these times in my life when I had felt similar feelings...shivering in my towel before swimming lessons at the Fairfield pool when I was little, being on the beach with my family on many different occasions, being in Daytona with college friends (although that was a little less calm, haha), and other times this past year in Ecuador. I felt so happy in my heart thinking about those times, but also a little sad, because I know they'll never be back in the same way.

I started thinking a lot about family, and what a gift it is. I've been thinking about this even more than normal since Grandpa Pete died in April. I think about how much I miss my family. How much I miss my Grandpa Pete. How he won't be there when I get off the plane in August. I think about how much I miss the times when we were younger and all together. My mind wandered and I randomly thought about the day that my parents dropped me off at college. I tried to remember how I was feeling during that time. I remember the night before leaving, sobbing with my mom in the kitchen. I remember feeling empty, scared, and excited all at the same time. What a milestone that is in our lives in the United States! I don't think I really understood at that moment just how much my life would never be the same. Since then, I have only lived in my parent's house for a few months at a time, I have traveled a lot, I have found myself in Ecuador for 2 years, and who knows where my life will go from here. How could I have predicted any of that as I lugged my pink and purple comforter and new laptop into Marycrest Hall room 793 at UD in 2004?!

It's just crazy how life happens. I wrote in my journal as I sat on the beach: "I wish we got little warnings growing up -- Hey, stop arguing with your brother! Someday you won't be living in the same house anymore! Hey, stop complaining about what your mom made for dinner! At least you're at the table with your family and at least there is food on that table! Hey, get off of instant messenger and go downstairs to be with your family! Appreciate where you are NOW! It's not always going to be like this! ... The whole family being together, eating dinner together every night, weekend trips to grandparents' houses, family vacations -- what a special time of life that really is. I am so thankful to my parents for giving us all of those times. Looking back, I wish somehow we understood in those moments just how special they really are. I feel like we do get little glimpses of understanding, but it really is impossible to grasp how deeply special moments are while they are still happening."

As I wrote this -- the lightbulb went on. I am SO bad at wishing away experiences as they happen. I am always looking behind, looking ahead. I live through moments but wait until later to REALLY cherish the goodness in them. I am sooo good at being nostalgic. But often times in daily life, I focus on the negative, I long to be where I am not, and I just don't realize the beauty happening right before my very eyes! I felt like God was speaking to me directly in that moment -- Tracy, BE GRATEFUL. For where you are, for the people you are with, WHILE it is happening! I smiled. What a good reminder to receive, especially at this point in my year in Ecuador. Since that retreat weekend, I have felt a real sense of joy in my heart. I find myself looking around at the people I am with -- I mean REALLY looking at them, with loving eyes and a grateful heart, and saying a short little silent prayer -- Lord, thank you for these people. Thank you for this moment. Thank you!

I have much to be grateful for. This last month has been wonderful. The retreat was a really rejuvenating experience. My morning work at Redima has been very fulfilling although in some ways disheartening. Melissa and I started a support group for people living with HIV and AIDS. Last week, we had the second group meeting. I was nervous, because I wasn't really sure what the group would actually do for people. I was moved speaking with one of the men before the group started. He told me just how much he appreciated being able to come to this safe space and share his feelings. "My wife knows I have HIV, my mom knows, and I have one other friend who knows. Otherwise, it's not something you can talk about. My job would fire me if they knew." I am so grateful that we are able to provide a safe space, and I am so grateful for all the ways in which these people teach me about life. I was moved watching the way the members of the group supported one another.

Teaching at Nuevo Mundo is wonderful and difficult and hilarious as always. This semester, I am a little more comfortable and prepared in the classroom. I think I have finally learned that asserting my authority and disciplining does not make me a mean person, haha. The other day I even gave my students a pop quiz when I knew none of them were paying attention to the lesson. They were so mad, but it was actually kind of fun for me. haha! In general, the kids are such a joy. I love their hugs and jokes and laughter. They also still give me lots to laugh about. Last week, we were learning about adjectives and comparative sentences. They were each coming to the board to write a sentence like "Tracy is taller than Rosalia, " for example. Adriana was wagging her hand furiously in the air, ready with her sentence. I called on her, and she skipped to the board and wrote, "Lissette is easier than Lisbeth." (Lissette and Lisbeth being 2 other girls in the class!) Turns out she thought that "easy" was the word for rápido (fast)... oops! haha! I love my job!

As usual, I have been spending all the time I can with my neighbors, who continue to impress me with their will, kindness, and generosity. After 11 months together, I feel very close to many of the families. In many ways, this is beautiful, but it is also hard. As we get closer to the families and they trust us more, they tell us more and more about how difficult their lives really are. The problems of alcoholism, abuse within families, extreme poverty, infidelity in marriage, rape, inadequate healthcare...they have all become very much more real and personal. My worldview is challenged every single day.

Despite the challenges in life here, my friends and neighbors continue to be joyful! This past weekend, Gina and I went with our guard Eduardo Lunas to visit his hometown of Pedro Carbo. We went with Nancy and Eduardo and Wellington and a few of their other relatives and stayed in his sister Mirella's house. The city was small and very poor, but super animated - especially this weekend. Every year, they have a huge festival for the feast of Saint Peter. We went out with the whole family and danced to a live cumbia band from about 9 pm until 3 am. Gina and I were definitely the only gringas in sight! It was a wonderful weekend. The Lunas family welcomed us in like were blood relatives! My hips and calves hurt like mad today from all that dancing, but it was totally worth it!

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday, and I really looking forward to celebrating it here. Jenny is cooking me shrimp for lunch, and I could tell that the ladies at my morning job are up to something! At night, I am having dinner with my community, and then Abrahan is having a little dance party for me. Mostly, I am feeling so humbled by all the love I feel from all those around me, and I can't wait to spend my special day with them.

We have about a month left living in Arbolito, and so we are all feeling a sea of emotions. I have finally begun to process and understand many of the things I have been learning this year about faith, the world, and myself. I know I will be reflecting on those lessons for years to come. I am bursting with excitement to be home for awhile, and I am also feeling a deep sadness about leaving behind all the friendships I have made here. Like I said earlier, I am working on just living day by day, moment by moment, being grateful and soaking up all the goodness as it comes!

May God bless each of you with peace and happiness everyday! Thanks for reading as always!

a swirling idea

I was sitting in church the other night, enjoying the pleasant breeze that drifts through the open rafters above the lit up auditorium of a holy space, when it dawned on me that love is a choice.

this seems obvious, basic to the most elementary of schools. however, somehow in my mind I was caught up in this idea that love was something God did in me, and that the more time that passed in my life, the more God would come in and do His life in me. In essence, I thought I would be off the hook. I was looking for the easy way out.

This past week I got to host my second retreat group, a lovely bunch of high school girls from Magnificat in Ohio. They were a joy, bursting with the excitement and curiosity and passion that our elders gladly smile upon to see coming up as tomorrow´s leaders.

Our reflection one night asked the question of where we see the face of Christ, and although my head swirled with images of smilling children and neighbors in Ecuador, my heart lept back to the country I left behind, where a host of people live without knowing anything about Ecuador, about this hidden part of the world that I happily stumbled into.

It can be easy to see Christ in the poor. They are the ones who know what is important in life. They are the ones who cling to God, who give what they have to others without ever counting the cost, who love without limit and without exception. They are the face of Christ to me.

But in thinking on the person of Jesus, this weak man who came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth, I realized that His love was for everyone. everywhere. He gave us the hardest commandments of all, to love one another; to see Him in EVERYONE, even our enemies. Not just those who are easy to see Him in.

Going home will be hard for me in a lot of ways that I can´t explain, maybe can´t even imagine. I suspect that this creepy and sneaky little thing called self-righteousness will crawl up in me, that I will be very tempted to judge those who have much, knowing the people I loved and left have so little. But I think that what Christ calls us to most, is to see HIM in the brokeness and pain and sin of others. I think He calls us to see Him where we are least likely to expect Him.


I have 5 weeks left in this glorious place of love, where people are accepted for who they are and embraced with open arms. I pray that God will channel, in all His power, the love that I have experienced here into something that sticks with me and spreads to others.



Love is a choice. One that we make everyday, for ourselves and for those around us. I pray that today you experience the freedom to choose love, and to know that its the only thing that matters.

Lessons

¨Under the Cherry Tree¨

The other day I was at a neighbors house and was invited to go pick cherries from their grandmother´s tree. The kids and I popped over the 2 houses to a small, empty dark house, whose backyard hosted a magnificent array of green leaves sprinkled with red small fruits. The grandma of the little children hoisted herself up upon the rusty old trash can that sat dormant in the backyard for such occasions as picking season. With broom in hand, she proceeded to gently tap the small wonders, branch by branch, until soon enough, small red miracles were falling all around us. The boys and I scrambled to retrieve them, running under the thick green branches, tripping on the scattered rocks, reaching for heaven, hoping to catch in the air a trickle of the red shower, ducking and dodging to avoid the itsy bullets. It was so amazingly beautiful to me, the simplicity of life. Cherries falling all around, three tiny laughters floating up into a blue and white sky. The vintage worn dress of the grandma, mingled and twisted in with the winding branches of brown, the flowered pattern flapping in the wind, telling the world that life has its own breath. It was one of the moments that checked me into reality, the preciousness of life, the fraility of time and how fast we move by the true delights that God presents to us everyday.

Upon filling a basket full of red happiness, we entered into the tiny dark kitchen, where an open refrigerator door revealed the emptiness of its possessions. The small basket was quickly scooped up to be washed with a sparing amount of precious water, each drop important in its mission. With trophy in hand, we left the small empty space to head home to warm lights and open arms, for the boys to share with their mom the treasures they collected. Before I left the house, small dirty hands flooded the basket and came up bearing huge gifts. They were gathered up in a small bag, and with my hands full of gifts, my heart heavily weighed what had just been shared with me. What is mine is yours. Though we have nothing, we give. Love.

Easter

Easter was one of the most joyous and real holidays that I have celebrated in a while. Somehow the meaning of holidays and events seems to be a little shaded or tilted towards family traditions or individual preferences for me in the states, but here, it is dominately celebrated in the same union of spirit, for the same singular cause. Easter here was about Christ, walking with Him in a way that most of us never dare to outside of our daily lives. It wasn´t about the baskets of goodies burried around the house, or the special family brunches, or even different musical festivites on Sunday morning. It was about Christ, plain and simple. Beautiful.

We had the honor of being invited to paricipate in one of the renactments of Christ´s death, which meant that we would parade through the streets of Duran, following a man carrying a cross, with hundreds of witnesses doing the same. We were elected to be the town people, the bystanders that watched Jesus brutual walk up the mount. The procession started in the heat of the day, and the 3 hours that followed didn´t prove to be any cooler than high noon. We wore sheets, which looked like togas, to better prepare ourselves for the dress of the day. These proved to increase the heat, and made the journey a tad more realistic at the hint of suffering we tasted under all our layers. It was so moving, to be walking down the middle of the main street, cars haulting and stoped for blocks, and hundreds of people walk silently and mournfully behind the man carrying the cross. At times it was too bright to see anything, and in those blind moments of surrender, I felt like I could have actually been right there, broken hearted, witnessing the painful march, all done out of love, for me.

Later that night we did another procession to the church for 9pm mass. We started out a group of 30 of us, carrying candels and singing to the guitar that strummed along behind the cross. As we passed through the woven dirt roads of Arbolito, more and more people came out of their houses, carrying their own glowing prayers, their hopes and hearts. Before long, I turned around to find that there were hundreds of people, families, walking and singing into the cool April night, candles waving over the darkness. The most memorable thing for me was seeing all our of kids, all the little people that we pour our hearts to through our afterschool programs, wandering through the mountain of people, running up and grabbing our hands, walking arm and arm with us, singing and smiling together towards the goodness of God. It made me feel a familiar feeling, that of a community embraced and settled in love, reaching out and being enough.

The next night we had a mass at the larger church across town, and this one was also a candle light service, and being a part of their worship, of the lighting of the incense, of the kindling hope for what tomorrow, Easter Sunday, would reveal and change for the world, made it all seem like something very Divine, very much a part from our ordinary and human lives as volunteers.

I think that the focus on Christ, what He suffered and what He went through to deliver us over to eternal life, is what surpirsed and awed me the most. I had never put so much thought or energy into it, and it had never been displayed for me in such a community sense, where everyone worked at making it real and visible so that all might understand and live differently in light of what happened.

Christ rose. He is alive, and we are alive with Him.

That message still reverberates in me, to my bones. All of us, living as One, because of God´s love, displayed and written in death. Death turned to Life.


Peace be with you.

Better Late than Never!

Yup...I am still alive, and still in Ecuador, although you might not be able to tell from the lack of blogs I have written in the last few months. I even got an email from one of my biggest fans...a man named Dan Kemme...asking me to please update, even if its just a few sentences a week. haha! It really is not in my blood to write short things, but I will try to be better about updating!

Washing of the feet

As a Rostro de Cristo (“Face of Christ”) volunteer, one of our goals is to strive to see the face of Christ in the world around us. A few months ago, I was blessed with a moment in which I saw His face alive and right in front of me. I have wanted to share the following story with you since it happened, but reflecting about it on Holy Thursday brought it even more meaning.

In the rainy season, the streets in Arbolito turn into rivers and mudpits. Some are worse than others, but they are all pretty bad and make getting around much harder. Huge puddles of standing water allow bacteria and diseases to grow, even sometimes below people’s cane houses. In Sector Four, the poorest and most dangerous section of Arbolito where our friends Kika and Lucy live, a few houses even fell during the rainy season due to the weakening of the foundation in the wet ground. This season makes life a little more difficult for the already difficult lives of our neighbors.

One day in February after a particularly strong rainstorm the night before, I was walking with Carolyn to visit Lucy. Around Lucy’s house were some of the worst puddles that we had seen. It was literally impossible to walk to her front door because the entire street was filled with water, and even walking around the side to the back door led through lots of mud. Carolyn and I had been tip-toeing and puddle-hopping the whole way to Lucy’s to avoid getting our feet too dirty. However, as we took the route around the side of the house to the back door, I mis-stepped, and my foot landed in a big pile of wet mud. With a nice big “schhlooop” sound, my whole sandal got sucked in. “Shooot!” I said as Carolyn and I laughed and I pulled my foot out. It was just caked with mud. Lucy laughed at me as we walked through her back gate and toward her house. She handed me a little bucket of water so I could clean my feet before coming inside. I stood on her cement step, trying to balance as I took off my sandal, poured water over my feet, and tried to use my free hand to wipe the chunks of sticky mud off. I clearly was having a hard time and looking totally awkward, haha.

At that moment, Michelle, an 11 year old neighbor and friend of Lucy, got up from where she was sitting in the house, and walked over to me. “Mira” (Look), she said simply, as she took the little bucket from me. She removed my sandal and set it next to my foot. Then, with care, she proceeded to pour a stream of water over my feet and wipe the mud away. She did it matter-of-factly and almost nonchalantly, as if there was nothing out of the ordinary or special about what she was doing. I felt like I should protest – my feet were so dirty! But I was speechless. I watched, amused and deeply touched, as she passed her hands over my feet until they were completely clean. “Gracias, Michelle,” I said, unable to really express the wonder and deep gratitude I felt in my heart. God was right there in that moment, staring me in the face. My heart was full for the whole afternoon, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the power of the moment. Washing feet is something we do in church once a year, as a symbol, to people’s whose feet are really already clean. Nobody REALLY washes each other´s feet, right?! It was such a small act, but it spoke volumes. When I got home that day, I took out my Bible, and found the passage about the washing of the feet.

“If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet. I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do. Amen, Amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master, nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him.” (John 13:14)

So, there it is, plain and simple. Jesus tells us explicitly in this verse that we are to serve others, no matter who we are, earnestly, humbly, with love and care. I have been thinking a lot lately about the phrase "Blessed are the poor in spirit." I don't think I ever really understood what that meant, but after living in Duran for 9 months, I am starting to get it. It is just this earnest and simple love for others, an understanding of our need for God, and faith in Him that is truly inspiring. When I looked down at Michelle’s face that day as she scrubbed away at my feet…wow…I saw the face of Christ alive, staring right at me. It was so beautiful! She saw that I was in need, and so she helped. As she washed my feet, I knew she wasn't thinking about any barriers of race, nationality, age, wealth...How I wish that I could have such a simple, humble heart whose only instinct is to reach out to a neighbor when they are in need - even when it means stooping down to wash mud off of someone's stinky feet. I feel so blessed to have received this little but POWERFUL reminder of God’s call to love others. Every day, I continue to learn what it means to lower ourselves in the humble service of others and to encounter the joy that God offers us when we do so.

Allowing ourselves to be nourished

I´ve learned something about God´s love this past week. Mom and Dad were here visiting, and in their week here we received countless invitations from neighbors to share meals with them. So we accepted, and ate homemade ecuadorian meals until our sensitive american bellies were full, full, full. Mom and Dad offered to buy the food they´d cook, or to pay for the desserts they served us that they normally sell from their homes, and no one would ever accept any kind of payment or reimbursement. Mom´s [grateful] reaction to this hospitality was ¨how do you ever get back at these people? how do you ever get even with them if you can´t give them anything in return?¨

Well, the point isn´t to ´get back´, ´get even´, or try to match or even outdo their hospitality. It´s a lesson in humbly receiving. Our neighbors here have a beautiful gift of giving, wholly and selflessly. And sometimes we just aren´t so good at being on the receiving end of that. I´m finding that this year is a lesson in receiving the generosity and love that is poured out for us, in allowing ourselves to be humbled in a way that we are not used to and not always comfortable with. Sort of like God´s love, right? I mean, who among us thinks that we´ll eventually be able to ´get even´ with the love shown to us through the creation, redemption, and sanctification of humanity? The Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection? We can´t match that. But we can open our hearts to it, humbly receive it, let it take root within us, and reflect it to others in the way we live our lives. Jesus washed feet, but also had his own face wiped. And that Face of Christ is in the giving and receiving of love, which often takes place over a delicious ecuadorian meal. So maybe God´s love is like when you drop by a neighbor´s house and somehow end up with a heaping plate of rice, lentils and plantains in front of you when you didn´t even think you were hungry....but it´s so yummy that you eat it all anyway.

[thought: i wonder who brought the bread and wine to the Last Supper?]

Retreat Group

I find it hard, as the days pass here, to find the time and space to write out my feelings and thought processes. For those of you who know me and what a journaler I am, you will appreciate the fact that I am on my fifth journal (thanks Dawnie for #5!) and the entries keep getting longer and longer as more and more of my life spills out into the open cracks of this country. I will try to relay a few of the larger incidents of the past week.

This past week I had my first retreat group and God was there. It was awsome to spend an entire week with Manhattan College, and I was surprised by the sadness that I felt when I had to take them to the airport to say goodbye. One night for dinner they asked everyone to think of one word that described where they were at in the week, and instantly the word REVIVED came to mind. The group was freshing, they reminded me of all the reasons I first came down here, and lent me the energy to be passionate again at the challenges that overtime had become more and more cloudy. They reawoke my passion for sharing reflections and more importantly, sharing deep thoughts about God and His role in our world and lives. They were truly a blessing to me and they reminded me of all the good people that exist in the world and who are fighting to make it better. They were a little slice of America to me, and they truly left an impact on me that they will likely never know.

One of the conversations that we had during our nightime reflection was a discussion about simplicity and what it means in our lives. I want to share one of the thoughts I had during the day as I prayed about what direction to take the group in.

As I thought about simplicty immediatley materialism came to mind and I imagined myself cleaning my closet at home. But one of the things that I have learned in being here is that everything external, or materialistic, is really only a symton of something much deeper within ourselves. Simplicity is the cleaning of our hearts, to make room for the things that really matter. It requires that we take inventory of whats in there, and take everything out that doesn´t align with our purpose or beliefs. Simplicty means making space for God to dwell in us, to clear out all the garbage that we believe and try to follow. The bible verse, ¨You cannot serve both God and money¨ came to mind while I was processing this, and for myself I decided that my greatest struggle is not with money, but with seeing myself as number one. I cannot serve both God and Colie, and perphaps that is where the most complexity has come for me in trying to have a lifestyle of simplicty. This means dumping out all of my desires, letting go of all control in my life, emptying out vain wishes and goals and consciously placing Christ in the center of my life. Simplicty is, above all things, a state of being, and the best place to start is in the heart.

With this mindset I have been trying to discern the will of God for my next step in life, how I can keep Him in the center of my life. Please pray for me as I move into the second half of the year. as I discern and pray about where He will call me to next. Being with the retreat group has opened up my heart to the possiblity of doing campus ministry, so I would ask that you would pray for me in that, to trust that God has a plan if that is where I am called.

Pray for the kids here, the hospital, the neighbors as we enter rainy season, and all the retreatants who are going home to live out all the things that they found here; namely love.

I pray that your days are finding you well, and that the spirit of love in dwelling rich within you.

Enjoy the snow for me, it is the one thing I have not found worthy of missing.

Death

As haunting as it may appear to seem, this has been the theme of my past few weeks. Not only in the physical sense, but also in the metaphyscial, the emotional self that I carry here, and the ideas that I hold tightly. Let me explain.

Christmas here was a wonderful time, we crammed into a small church to witness the birth of Jesus with families with babies brimming over the church pews in happiness and eagerness of the season. I felt full in a way I didn´t expect, since being so far away from family I thought it would be a tough day to pass, however the simplicity of it brought me into a new understanding of Christ´s coming into the world. It made me full. One word stung me more than others in the myriad of phrases that swing out and about around the holiday. Emmanuel. God is with us. That message was evident in the collectivity of the holiday, and stripped away from everything the season has come to represent in the states, it brought me back to the light I need to carry in my days here: God is with us.

After the 25th my community was given some precious time for traveling and I can say that I drank in the beauty of the Andes mountains and the exotic Amazon rain forest with a fevor I had long forgotten since back-packing through Chile and Peru. I will hopefully regale those tales of the mountainside another time, but for now I want to explore a more pertenant subject.

Upon returning from vacation to normal life, Andrew and I had a horrible awakening awaiting us at the hospital. one that blindsided us and scooted us right out of vacation mode and into the darker reality of Duran. Our first patient, the only one to see us through the entire first five months, unexpectedly passed away on Christmas Eve. We had not been notified of it earlier because we were on vacation, but returning to the hospital and finding her empty room shook both of us up. I had a gut moment where in the loss of her I started to question why we are here, what we are actually doing, and if in anyway we had done what we were called to with her. I tried to remember the last thing I said to her, probably have a great Christmas and we´ll see you when we get back. She was a joyous child, patient in suffering and always fighting through whatever her tiny body recieved in silence. Pray for her poor family, this is the 3rd child they have lost to TB.

Her death brought out a theme in my days that had I not been observant, I easily would have passed. Death had become one of the central symbols of being here for me, and by that I mean this year has been about dying to myself and my life in ways I didn´t know were possible. In leaving the states to set out for this adventure I had a fuzzy feeling that when I got down here I would grow and learn to love and be happy. Everything sounded easy, and sure a little painful, but surely I would get through without too many marks. I have had to let this realization go, or let the ambiguity and ignorance of it leave me. So far this year has been hard, because unlike what I thought of love before, a fluffy warm glow, it is a hard decision that you make every minute and it requires us to place others before ourselves constantly. My heart has ached here at feeling so powerless, at feelings of hopelessness inside myself when I recognize what little I give or offer these people. Most days it seems too much to put the needs of others before myself, I am much too concerned and focused on curing my own wounds.

God calls us to die to ourselves, to pick up our cross and follow him. I thought this would be easy when I got down here, once I had left my life behind in the states, but the hardest part of dying to ourselves exists within us, not on the exterior. Its been a struggle that I am slowly going through, with the end no where in sight. The more I try to let go of myself, who I am, my selfish desires, my need to see reults, the harder it gets to see where I am going, and the more self confidence I lose. Death ultimatley renders us powerless and empty, a most painful and undesirable experience, and yet we must chose it with our free will. God cannot do it for us.

I have seen hope come in the examples of others who have died to their ego and pride and weaknesses and allowed themselves to be perfectly flawed and human and wrapped in grace and love. I think we will all need to pass through our own deaths in order to really love people like we are called to do.

If you will pray, pray for the family of our patients in the hospital. pray for the women who suffer in ways unmentionable and unseen by society´s eyes, pray for the hearts of our kids, pray for the inner deaths of us all, so that we may hang them on the cross with Christ and live in the freedom of a love we are called to.

May each of you be able to experience a death in yourself that gives way to new life. The old is gone, the new has come. Let us rejoice.