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 -