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.