I will lift up my eyes

Happy Anniversary to me!

2012-02-04T15:56:00.002-05:00

One year ago, I moved into Torre Fuerte! That's the longest I've lived anywhere other than my parents' house up to this point. It's been a year full of changes.

One year ago, the night we moved in, our living room looked like this:

Now, it looks like this:

This was my bedroom a year ago:

And this is what it looks like today (other than the desk is much neater in this photo)

Definitely an improvement for the better.

Of the five of us who originally moved in, I'm the only one left. Then, there were the others who spent some time living here- the boys lived with us for 2 months, Abi spent about 6 weeks with us. My new housemates started arriving in July when Rae Ann moved in. Peter moved in in October, and Jessica moved in last week.

I've loved this first year of turning a house into a home and having a place to show hospitality. Countless lunches and dinners with friends, many unplanned, overnight guests, parties, hosting women's Bible study have given me a sense of belonging, right here, despite the endless traffic noise, the drunks outside my window, the homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk.

Today also marks another anniversary- 2 years since I arrived in Bogotá! Somehow it seems like it's been longer than 2 years (probably because our 3rd school year already started), but in other ways it's hard for me to believe it's already been 2 full years.

Here's to another year full of learning, loving, and serving!

Poor kitty

2012-01-23T18:25:00.004-05:00

Our kitty Misha didn't make it through her last bout of sickness. She died the morning we officially started back to work here, which was not a good start to the work year.

My friend Emily's cat had kittens back around Thanksgiving, and we had already offered to take one, so on Saturday she dropped off a little calico. Despite the fact that we all had our reservations about getting a new cat so soon, she's won us over with her ridiculous cuteness.

We've been spoiling her all weekend long as she gets passed from one person to the next, cuddled and played with. Today, we were gone all day. As soon as we walked in the door, I went to check on her. She was meowing, loudly, indignantly. I checked in her basket. It was empty. Behind the washing machine where Stephen says she likes to sleep. Not there. She sounded closer though. Then I looked down. We have a utility sink in the laundry room, and I couldn't get it to drain the other day when I was cleaning. It has an inch or 2 of nasty water at the bottom. And there was our sweet kitten, standing in the water, bedraggled, wet, smelly, and shivering.

I fished her out, brought her upstairs, dried her off with a blow-drier, and then sandwiched her between my shirt and my stomach so she would warm up. She stayed there for a long time, shivering anytime I peeked to look at her, but now she's back to her happy self, curled up on my lap and cleaning off the nasty water she fell in.

Isn't she cute?

Disposable

2012-01-21T21:44:00.002-05:00

Sara and I are standing in the doorway, waving good bye, when he shuffles around the corner, startling me. He clenches a torn sheet around his shoulders, his beard is overgrown, but it's his eyes that catch my attention. They're piercing, hurt, and look at me more directly than I've grown to expect from men on the street. He asks if we have any bread and Sara goes to get him some, while I stay in the open doorway. He greets me, I ask how he is. "Soy desechable" he tells me, "I'm disposable". It's a term used here to describe the homeless. Unwanted. Unworthy. Unvalued. "They might say that about you", I tell him. "But you're not, you're a human, made in God's image and likeness. You are worthy, and you have value." He thanks me, and I stand, not sure what to say or do next. Sara comes to the door with bread and cheese and hands it to him, and he shuffles off again.

And I wonder, did he know I really meant it? Were those few words, and a bite to eat offered from our house enough to give him even a glimmer of hope? Does he believe the lies he hears about himself? Is he, in his own mind, disposable?

I pray for him. I pray for me. I pray all of us, broken, reaching out to other broken lives.

Around the table

2012-01-20T18:20:00.001-05:00

One thing that I looked forward to as I moved into Torre Fuerte was the opportunity it would give me to have guests over. This past year, the moments I've spent around our table, laughing with friends over food, have been some of my favorites.

Coming back after spending time with my family, one of the things that made it easiest to come back was the community we've built around the table. My first week back, there were only 2 days that there wasn't someone sharing a meal with us at home. Friends called to see if they could stop by. All of us who'd been out of the country brought back things for those who couldn't travel, and we got together to catch up, give gifts and packages that had been sent to us for them, and just hang out. As the afternoon stretched on towards evening and we all started getting hungry, we naturally gravitated towards the kitchen and started cooking- a trip to the corner store to pick up missing ingredients, more laughter as we cut and stir and taste. "where there's enough for 4 there's enough for 5 (or 6, or 7. . .)" has been heard many times here, as another friend drops by, or a housemate not expected back until late walks in as we're setting the table.

Of course, once we settle back into our work schedules and we're with kids again, we'll be busier; I doubt we'll have another week with friends around our table 5 days out of 7. But, they'll still be here from time to time, and as we enjoy each others cooking, we'll share laughter, work through our struggles, encourage one another, and grow in community.

"Always be eager to practice hospitality." Romans 12:13b

A guava walks into a corner store. . .

2012-01-18T16:27:00.005-05:00

I pull our metal shopping cart behind me as Rae Ann and I walk into the meat section of Palo Quemao, the indoor market. I don't like the smell in this section, and I've stopped buying meat here ever since my friend at cooking school told me about a study they did on the hygiene of the meat here. But, it's the closest entrance from my house.

Once we've walked down that corridor though, we come out into the central room, my favorite. It's full of fruits and vegetables, every stand run by a different vendor.

I choose tomatoes, sample strawberries (and buy a pound for 60 cents), and stock up on more fruits and vegetables. The problem with Palo Quemao is we always buy too much. It's cheaper, fresher, and there are way more options than at the local grocery store. Then we have to be creative to use everything before it goes bad.

The market is a labyrinth that I still get lost in. One section sells only citrus fruits. Another sells beautiful hand-made baskets, vases, and other house decorations. Then there are the small stalls selling bulk grains, dry goods, and paper products. If you get there early enough in the morning, outside there are dozens of flower vendors, selling roses, $2.50 a dozen. One day we stumbled across several kinds of chili peppers (which I haven't seen anywhere else), and I know one stand that sells bok choy and Chinese cabbage.

We remember to stop and pick up eggs and cheese on the way out. You can buy them singly, or in flats of 30. We don't refrigerate eggs here and it doesn't seem to be a problem.

Stocked up on groceries for the week, we head home.

We have traditional grocery stores here too, though the aisles are narrower, the options different, and the salad dressing selection and canned tomato products almost non-existent. But, on days when we have time before Palo Quemao closes in the afternoon, I love to do my shopping there.

Help us remodel the Jungle

2011-12-24T15:51:00.002-05:00

I'm super excited about a matching grant Formando Vidas has received, and I want to share about it with you and ask for your help.

I think I've talked on my blog before about the Jungle. Twice a month we invite neighborhood children to our indoor play space. We've been averaging around 150 children lately. The neighborhood isn't pretty- homeless men sleep on the street, the sidewalks are littered with garbage and dog poop, the smell of pot wafts from open windows, prostitutes wait in doorways a few blocks away. Many families rent rooms by the day, an entire family living in a room smaller than a walk-in closet.

When kids come to the jungle, they have a safe space to play. They scale the climbing wall, slide down the slide into the ball pit, cross the swinging bridge, slide down the fireman's pole, play foosball, soccer, ping-pong, basketball, mini-golf; make-believe in our playhouse, swing in the hammocks. Some of them come with guarded faces, but before they have left they are laughing, unguarded, free to be kids for a few hours.

After a couple of hours, we gather the kids together. They sing, they watch a puppet show or skit, and they hear us share God's word with them. We divide them into small groups and work on a craft with them that reinforces the message for the day. Before they leave we give them a snack.

Just last month we started something new- in another building down the street we've invited mom's to attend a program while their kids are playing. The first week, 30 women showed up to share, pray for each other and hear God's word. We're partnering with a local church that has begun to meet in the Jungle building. They've seen new people coming to their church as we recommend them to families that are looking for a church.

We would love to reopen a smaller program several days a week to reach out to some of the most consistent children. To do that we need to pay off the Jungle and complete a remodeling job to create classroom and kitchen space and update our bathrooms. We need your help to do that! A company has offered us a $36,000 matching grant- for every dollar we raise, they will donate a dollar up to the $36,000. We're hoping to find 1000 donors who will give $36! For $72,000 we could completely pay off what we still owe on the buildings and complete the remodeling project in the jungle. Click the link to find out how to give a tax-deductible donation to our matching gift grant! Your gift will be a blessing to kids in Barrio Santa Fe in Bogotá, Colombia!

highlights from my first day back

2011-12-19T21:53:00.003-05:00

*playing with my little siblings * talking to my mom * pepperoni * a hot shower with decent water pressure * Hershey's kisses * pepper jack cheese * no traffic * indoor heating * orange juice * hot water in the kitchen sink * milk that doesn't come in a bag * a QUIET bedroom *

contrasts

2011-12-17T21:35:00.003-05:00

I live in a city of 7 million. The other week, from my bedroom window I watched fireworks being set off from the 50 story Colpatria tower, the tallest building in Bogotá, just 12 blocks away. Every night as I lay in bed, the glass in my windows rattles as buses speed past. I can think of 7 bakeries within easy walking distance (and I'm sure I'm forgetting several). I can hail a cab or catch a bus just outside my front door.

And yet, every morning as I'm getting ready, I hear a rooster crow through our open bathroom window.

Christmas in Colombia

2011-12-14T19:28:00.007-05:00

I love Christmas. Every year, the mystery of God come to earth as a helpless baby astounds me. What unimaginable love and creativity. ". . .Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." Philippians 2:5-7

Not only do I love the mystery though. I love the traditions of Christmas. And this year, for the first time, I'm celebrating them, and making new traditions here in Colombia.

Our whole "family" met up one Sunday after church, went out for lunch, and then went Christmas tree shopping. I love real Christmas trees, but, despite the prevalence of pine trees here, they're a different kind of pine, and Christmas tree farms are non-existent. So, we had to satisfy ourselves with an artificial tree. I wish I'd brought my camera with me on our shopping expedition, but petty theft rises around Christmas time and I didn't want to risk it. But, imagine if you will, 4 straight blocks of Christmas stores, every one selling trees, ornaments, decorations, nativity sets. . . In the street, vendors sell Christmas tree skirts and Christmas doormats. People swarm everywhere, looking for the best deals on Christmas decorations. After looking at our options in 4 or 5 stores, we finally settled on a 2 meter high Christmas tree, brought it home, and then left for a week long retreat.

The next Saturday, we decided to decorate. Cookies were baked, hot chocolate was made, friends called last minute to see if they could come and cook dinner with us, and before we knew it, we had a tree decorating party on hand. The extra ornaments we picked up at 70% off when we ran to the store for more ingredients for dinner made the tree just about perfect.

Thursday was a national holiday (Las Velitas, it's called here, celebrating the immaculate conception of Mary). Rae Ann and I headed over to Luz y Vida around 11 to get a head start on mixing cookie dough. By 1:30, 7 of the Luz y Vida girls, Rae Ann, and Ingrid had showed up to help. We made peanut butter, gingerbread, chocolate chip and empire cookies. By 5 o'clock, we sent some happy girls off each with a plate of cookies, and collapsed exhausted on the couches. Later, we set aside cookies for 2 parties and 5 businesses in the neighborhood that we frequent to say thanks for being good neighbors.

On Saturday, a group of people assembled again for what will hopefully be the first annual Torre Fuerte Christmas party. After a tiring afternoon at the Jungle, swinging kids in hammocks, corralling rowdy teenagers, and making dozens of angel crafts, we were all ready to crash when we got back to the house. The good thing is, Sara and I cooked before we left- Mashed potatoes were warming in the oven, the roast was ready in the slow cooker, and glazed carrots waited to be heated on the stove. After a relaxing dinner and a comical time of multi-lingual sing-along karaoke Christmas carols, we started in on our gift exchange. Gifts changed hands over and over, everyone got a good laugh, and in true Colombian fashion, most of the edible gifts were shared and almost gone before the guests left.

Sunday Rae Ann, Ingrid and I headed up to the farm to help Bibiana celebrate Christmas Venezuelan style. Hallacas are a traditional Venezuelan Christmas food, and we spent the day helping to prepare them. Corn dough is spread on banana leaves, topped with a spiced meat filling, tied into pretty little packages, then boiled for an hour over a wood fire. I became an expert at tying the hallacas.

We spent the night so we would be there bright and early the next morning for the staff Christmas party. After a time of Christmas carols and games, we celebrated true Colombian style with asado (a cook-out) followed by an overwhelming variety of desserts. Stuffed and tired, we headed back down to Bogotá, getting stuck in lovely traffic for over 2 hours.

Last night was Rae Ann's last night here before she headed home for the holidays, so we had one last "family" dinner together. Afterwards, we decided we really needed a family Christmas picture too, so we posed in front of the Christmas tree. Here we are, in our Christmas best.

And that, I believe is the end of the Christmas festivities, at least for me, here in Colombia.

Will I not act?

2011-11-21T21:52:00.005-05:00

Remember this post from last month? The post where I was so discouraged? God is so tender in the way he deals with us. He knows I needed to be encouraged, still need encouragement, and he faithfully sends it my way.

Just after I posted, my pastor here preached from Ezekiel 37 , the passage about the valley of dry bones. Ezekiel was a lot like me. "And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” (verse 3) He didn't want to tell God no, it was impossible, and yet, he didn't quite have faith enough to say yes. But God is a God of hope. "Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost. . .’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves. . . .And you shall know that I am the LORD . . . And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live” (verses 11-14).

God spoke to me- I can make them live again too. There is no circumstance too hopeless for me.

Then, reading through the book of Isaiah, I found it again and again. "For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:11)

Last Friday, we went to a Hillsong concert. Surrounded by thousands of Christians, I listened again to the story of Gideon. "And Gideon went out in the strength that he had" said the speaker. "the strength that he had". The words resonated in my heart. Gideon wasn't perfect, he didn't have it all together, he was frightened and doubted himself. But God used him to bring about change and accomplish his will. Again, I was encouraged- God can use me in my weakness.

But then, as we sang, I was confronted with something. God whispered to me, 'this isn't just about me encouraging you. This is truth'.

You see, I had stayed stuck with the same feelings as Ezekiel- "only you know Lord". Could he act, could he change my students and their families? Without a doubt. But was I believing that he would? Not truly. But that evening, thanking God for encouraging me yet again, God pushed me to look at my own lack of faith. "would I say it just to encourage you? This is true of who I am. Will I not act?" was what sunk into my heart.

So, here I am. "Will I not act?" God asked me. So, I wait. Trying to wait in faith. I want to see God in action, want to see his mighty power. Maybe it will continue to come slowly, unfolding step by step. Maybe there will never be one moment when I say "ah, finally, God showed up!". Because, honestly, life is full of miraculous moments we don't even recognize. And God is always here. But, I have his promise- he not only can act. He will. He is. He is here.

I sing the mighty power of God

2011-11-20T18:35:00.004-05:00

I sing the mighty power of God that made the mountains rise,

that spread the flowing seas abroad and built the lofty skies.

I sing the wisdom that ordains the sun to rule by day;

the moon shines forth at his command and all the stars obey.

I've been able to take two day trips with friends outside of Bogotá lately. I live in such a beautiful country.

out on the lake by Guatavita

mid-afternoon in Guatavita

The sound of water running over rocks, fresh mountain air, and even being out in the drizzle all make my soul rest.

fog in the mountains near La Vega

I didn't realize how much I miss the sound of running water until I was here.

culture quandaries

2011-11-13T21:22:00.003-05:00

I point with my lips, chop my vegetables super small, waggle my finger back and forth when I don't want something, raise my index finger instead of my hand, motion people to come with a downward motion of my hand, express surprise by saying "ush", pleasure by saying "uhy" and doubt by saying "hm". And I whine.

They weren't, mostly, intentional adaptations to the culture. I've just come to realize they are things I've come to do at some point over the last few years, ways I blend in with those around me.

The whining is what most caught me by surprise. It isn't even something I've really been consciously aware of, until I realized that the way I ask people to do things is completely different in English and Spanish. I was sitting with English speaking friends, chatting over milkshakes about the Hillsong concert we'd been given free tickets to and who all was going. "Peter's going too", I said, "though I had to convince him. I really am whinier in Spanish", I said as the realization hit me. "Say what you said to him, but say it in English" one of the girls suggested. So I did- "Peter, you should really come. Your dad wants you to, and I do too, and the kids will be really happy you're there". Not the words so much, but the tone of voice, had us all laughing. I sounded ridiculous in English. In Spanish though, it sounded normal. And I'm still trying to figure out what I should do with that. . . Is whining culturally appropriate, and therefore expected (and by extension ok), or is whining always obnoxious?

Cook-out, Colombian style

2011-10-31T23:46:00.005-04:00

The day started out gorgeous and sunny, but by midmorning it was chilly and overcast. That didn't stop our plans though. In the kitchen we chopped onions and tomato, marinated meat, scrubbed potatoes and peeled yuca. Outside, they worked hard at getting the fire lighted.

the view from the grill

Once the grill was lit, Edwin, Alex, and the teens took over grilling while Bibiana and I made arepas (a corn-based flat bread)

the grill masters

me, making arepas

Despite the fact that we started before 11, lunch wasn't ready until 4. It was worth the wait though: grilled meat, ripe plantain, guacamole, arepas, salted potatoes with hot sauce, yuca, salad. Enough for 26 people with leftovers. And believe me, we ate.

the finished product (not pictured- grilled ripe plantain or my plate of seconds)

looking for hope in the dark

2011-10-22T17:41:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, I wanted to give up. I am surrounded by hopelessness. Every morning, I walk to work, past 9 or 11 or 14 homeless men, huddled under tarps or blankets, sometimes a bare foot sticking out, making me wonder how they have the will power to keep moving, keep struggling to survive. Prostitutes standing in doorways have just become routine; I happen to notice they’re less provocatively dressed on a chilly, rainy Sunday afternoon. Half a block away from my house a couple approach me, 3-year-old son trailing behind. There’s a joint in the dad’s hand, he passes it to the boy’s mother as I walk past them, hurrying to escape the overwhelming smell of marijuana.

At work, I open an email, from some organization fighting poverty somewhere. “What’s the best way to fight poverty?” the subject line asks. Inside, they ever-so-optimistically proclaim, “provide education” and go on to encourage you to sponsor a child. And I wonder why they make it sound so easy. It isn’t enough to send a kid to school, teach them to read. My kids are all learning to read. They’re adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. But I’m discouraged. One family, with 9 children, rents 2 small rooms daily. One room is as wide as a single bed. The parents and 3 youngest children sleep there. The other 6 kids share the other room, mattresses on a floor. Absences are frequent as the bigger kids stay home to help with the littler ones as their parents run errands, trying to make a better life for their family. Even the oldest, who seems most motivated to succeed, is falling behind in school work.

My students fight, argue with their teachers, complain about everything and anything, and don’t show any desire to change. The kids who were doing well last year, the ones we sent to normal schools, are almost all doing poorly, failing classes, missing days. The kids we decided we needed to work with more are making progress academically, but their hearts seem untouched. Sometimes behaviors even seem worse.

I feel overwhelmed. If their heart attitudes don’t change, if they don’t long to seek Jesus, if they stay in the same environment, education won’t do much for them. And I start to question everything- the hours and hours, the prayers and tears, the creative examples and book shopping, all for what? So they can throw it all away, live a religious but faithless life, selling things from a cart on the side of the street, having 5 kids with 4 different men by the time they’re 25, renting a room by the day? Can we really make a difference?

Where is God in all this? I really don’t believe he made this world and now will just let it run its course. I believe in divine intervention. But I’m not seeing it, here and now, in the lives of these kids. And I’m discouraged. Why don’t I have stories to tell about lives given to Christ, whole families being changed by the power of God at work? Why is it an uphill battle? Why do I see so little success, and so much of what fails like failure? Why does it all have to be so hard?

****************

Circumstances haven't changed. But hope creeps back in. Words in an email from my mom, "While we may seem to be failing--perhaps we are planting and watering where someone else will reap." A conversation with a friend about children who grow up in the church and leave, but come back to Christ later, "that was me" he said. And God's word, spoken in Isaiah 42 “I have held My peace a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will cry like a woman in labor, I will pant and gasp at once. I will lay waste the mountains and hills, And dry up all their vegetation; I will make the rivers coastlands, And I will dry up the pools. I will bring the blind by a way they did not know; I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, And crooked places straight. These things I will do for them, And not forsake them."

We don't always see God at work, but that doesn't mean he isn't working. God might be still and restrain himself for a time, but he won't forsake us. He called me here. His reasons for that haven't changed. I can never love more than Him.

So, I keep on, praying for more faith in a loving God in the dark.

a random collection of thoughts

2011-10-16T20:29:00.005-04:00

My blog has been neglected this month. I compose in my head, but nothing ever makes it to paper, or I suppose, the computer screen. So here, in no particular order, are some thoughts and happenings from the past few weeks.

I went to an all day workshop, part of which was about personality types. I am a task oriented person. I realized something about myself and my job at Luz y Vida. When I am completing tasks like putting together a modified schedule for a week with changes, or working on a reading curriculum, I feel productive and accomplished. I am working towards completing my end of year goals. When I am doing a people oriented job- talking with a child who's having a rough time, listening to a teacher who is looking for a better solution in the classroom, although I know that what I am doing in the moment is important, and I enjoy it, I feel less productive. I can't cross anything off my list, I'm not reaching those year long goals. I wonder how I learn to value more my people-oriented moments and not feel like they are somehow less valid.

I love cooking for and with people- having friends over for soup and salad last Saturday night before going to see a play, making pizza at a friends house on Thursday, making pancakes for breakfast for my housemate and a friend who spent the night yesterday morning. I love the moments spent together in the kitchen, and the talk and laughter around the table. And food, I love to eat too. :)

My cat is getting better. Her scabs are almost gone, she unfortunately lost most of her hair when they scabs fell off, but it's growing back in. She looks a bit like a tiny jackal.

I added "the final touches" to my bedroom over the past month- a desk, a rug for the floor, pictures on the walls.

My 4th and 5th graders finished reading their 4th chapter book. They did horribly on their test, and I realized I never taught them how to study. We spent an hour going over some basic study skills and making flash cards, and when they did a retest, their grades improved substantially.

I love this city. I love 50 cent snacks, knowing how to get around by bus, knowing which section of the city to go to buy office supplies, appliances, shoes. . . I love the hustle and bustle downtown, the quiet, quirky, gritty, or trendy neighborhoods that change their feel every few blocks.

Working with at-risk kids is heart breaking.

I dream and I plan, but I have no idea what I want to be "when I grow up".

And, I'll be home for Christmas!

Mi parce

2011-09-28T18:03:00.007-04:00

I miss my cat. Parcero escaped out of an open window the end of July, and never found his way back home. I dreamt about him again last night, that he just showed up.

Parcero staring at a candle flame, entranced

He was such an awesome cat. He was friendly and inquisitive. He would ride around on my shoulders and run to the door to greet me when I came in.

Our other cat, Misha, is stressing me out. She has scabs all over her body and isn't responding to meds. The vet thinks she probably has an auto-immune problem. She's had a round of shots and is getting a twice a day topical spray treatment. She's miserable and no one wants to touch her because she is so gross. If she doesn't respond to these new meds soon, the vet says she should be put down.

It all just makes me sad.

When I don't like me

2011-09-20T23:39:00.001-04:00

"Do you ever have days where you don't like yourself?", I asked my friend, sitting at the island, watching him cook lunch. "Sure," he told me, "days where I like myself, days when I don't, days when I think I'm ugly and days when I think I'm good-looking. Women aren't the only ones you know."

Misery loves company, so that was good to know, but it didn't really change my attitude. I was tired of being me: the tablecloths that I never got around to cleaning and returning to a friend, the new light bulbs I hadn't put up yet, the garage that didn't get swept out over the weekend all externally representing the clutter I felt in my mind and heart.

I felt unworthy- unworthy of grace (that's what makes it grace, isn't it?), unworthy of the privilege of serving God and seeing him move, unworthy of the love of friends who want to be with me even when I don't want to be with myself. I felt like giving up on me- a lost cause who would never really be transformed to look like Christ.

And that's when I felt God ask me if I wanted to live by the lies I was telling myself, or the truth he spoke about me. Here's the truth- God sees me as a precious jewel, buried in the mud. I look at the mud and reject me. But God never does- he sees the value of his precious creation, dirtied by sin. He won't be satisfied until he's taken me from the mud, cleaned me off and polished me to reflect his glory. But he won't abandon the jewel because it's dirty. He won't leave me in the mud. My value to him is not reflected in how good I look, but in what he made me to be and nothing can ever change that.

I wish that gentle reminder were all that I needed, but I wallowed a bit more in the mud of self loathing. But finally, home alone at last, I shut my door behind me and praised God. And turning my eyes from me and my unworthiness and to him and his glory made all the difference. I didn't need to focus on my worth in his eyes, I just focused on his worth, and when I was done, I knew I was loved and treasured, washed clean in the blood of the lamb.

So, if you're feeling worthless, valueless, ugly, a lost cause, remember this- In God's eyes you're a beautiful jewel, buried in the mud. His desire is to dig you out, scrub you off, and polish you. Your fear, your lack of self-control, your short tempered response, your selfish choice, doesn't make him turn away from you in disgust. He won't reject you because you're not perfect. He came looking for imperfect ones to wash in his son's blood. He defines your value- not your actions. We can't be worth more, but neither can we be worth less. So, don't be content to stay lying in the mud. Turn to him, and lovingly, patiently, he picks you up again, cleans the mud off of you, and delights in the jewel he created.

My latest project

2011-09-14T21:06:00.004-04:00

With my Chinese party over, my afternoon decoration making project is over too. So, on Monday when I found myself with some time on my hands, I decided to see what I could do about the chairs in our living room. They were donated to us and were dirty when we got them; being used as step stools during our painting and cleaning when we moved in probably didn't help. This is what one of the chairs looked like on Monday.

I headed to the new mall by my house and bought 2 brown duvet covers and some cute pillows and came home and ripped out seams in the duvet covers. Tuesday after work I walked downtown to where all the fabric stores are to buy beige colored ribbon and then got to work on transforming our chairs.

Step 1- Center the fabric over the chair

Step 2: Tuck the fabric into the cushion

Step 3: Pull the fabric tight around the arms

Step 4: Sew the crease on the arms of the chair in place and strategically tack the extra fabric on the sides of the chair in place.

Step 5: Tie a ribbon around the chair

Step 6: Add some bows and a decorative pillow

Quite the transformation, isn't it? Our living room is looking more and more home like. Now I have to figure out what to do with the other couch. . .

Chinese Mid Autumn Harvest Festival

2011-09-12T14:29:00.006-04:00

When I was home in December to visit family, I decided that despite the fact that I would be missing my family's Chinese New Year celebration, I still wanted to celebrate Chinese New Year, so, in my crowded luggage, I packed my 12 pairs of special chopsticks, ginger candy, Chinese snacks, and my Chinese dress.

The weekend of Feb 4 was the first weekend of Chinese New Year. In the States, my family had a party at home, went to the Chinese New Year celebration at church and the local Chinese association. Here, I moved into Torre Fuerte which still had a lot of painting and cleaning before it would be ready to host a party in. By the end of the month we were to the point where we could think about hosting parties, and then B&C moved in with us and all party plans went on hold and shortly after they left, Sara and Stephen went back to the States for the summer and I didn't want to have the party without them. So, finally, with most of my housemates here and the house looking good, I decided to pick back up the party idea, but I couldn't very well celebrate Chinese New Year in September. So, I looked for Chinese holidays and discovered that today is mid-autumn harvest festival (or moon festival).

So, invitations were sent out

decorations made

help recruited for cooking

and on Saturday Torre Fuerte hosted its first ever "Fiesta de la Luna China"

Our house was fuller than I've ever seen it, with over 40 people there. We played games

ate lots of delicious food (on the menu: dumplings, beef and noodles, fried rice, garlic ginger green beans, sesame chicken, sweet and sour chicken, egg rolls, and curry)

And chatted

When the majority of guests were gone and there was space enough, we finished off the evening with dancing. After all, what truly self-respecting Chinese Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival doesn't end with some salsa, merengue, and vallenato?

Walking to Baranquilla

2011-08-11T17:27:00.004-04:00

Before we left for vacation, we finished reading the 2nd chapter book for this school year. As the kids walked in on Tuesday and spotted the new book (Robin Hood!) they squealed with delight. "Let us see it", they pleaded. They eagerly looked through, reading chapter headings, exclaiming over pictures. We worked on some background the first day, talking about the history of the times of Robin Hood, sharing what they knew about legends. Apparently Colombia has a much richer oral tradition of legends than in the States. Between 3 girls, in the space of about 5 minutes, they came up with a list of 15 legends. They were amazed when I confessed I had no idea who "Patasola" was. "She's from Baranquilla", they explained, "and she only has one leg". I explained to them how legends, since they begin as stories that are told from person to person, don't always travel as far as stories that are in print and that the distance from Baranquilla, Colombia to Pennsylvania, USA is really far. "How long would it take to get there?" one of them asks. "One day traveling by plane, about 7 hours flying" I say. "No, what if you were walking?" I explained that the Panama canal and unsafe conditions made that impossible, but estimated it would probably take 9 months to walk it if you could walk. They were suitably impressed. Their disappointment was vocal when class ended for lunch time and we hadn't started reading the story. The next day, they didn't want to stop when they got to the end of the chapter.

I LOVE how excited they've gotten about reading. They told me the other week that reading the book was their favorite part of Spanish class. Seeing as this is the same group of students who at the beginning of the year whined, "we're reading a book AGAIN" after a couple of weeks of class, I find it even more encouraging. They still struggle with comprehension. Fluency is still a challenge. Their writing still lacks punctuation and capitalization and spelling is capricious. But, they are learning to love to read. They are finding adventures in books. And that, I think, is one of the most important parts of becoming an independent reader and learner.

Letting go. . .

2011-08-10T23:27:00.003-04:00

My first graders have a teacher again. Two teachers, to be exact. Rae Ann (my new house mate too!) will be with them full time, and Claudia, a girl we met at the YWAM retreat, will be with them til lunch every day. I'm so happy for the kids, to finally have some stability. I'm happy for me, to be able to focus on my responsiblities as academic director and not be so divided anymore. But, letting go is hard! I've spent so much time with the first graders over the last 3 months. I have been the most consistent teacher for them, and they see me as their authority and love and respect me. They need to start to see Rae Ann and Claudia that way too. So, instead of sitting with them at breakfast and lunch, as I've been doing, I leave them with Rae Ann and Claudia. The kids come up to me, "can I use the bathroom?" "He said.... She did....". I say, "there are 2 teachers sitting at your table, go talk to them. Or, sitting across the room, I hear something or see something that should really be corrected. "back off", I tell myself. "Let them take care of it. They need to establish themselves as the authorities, and the kids need to see them that way". How many times will I need to say that to myself before the urge to step in goes away?

A country girl at heart

2011-08-08T19:23:00.002-04:00

I grew up with a field of hay behind my house, where we'd go exploring every summer, and come back to search ourselves for ticks and wash ourselves in cold water to avoid poison ivy. To one side of my house, was a strip of scrubby woods. We had our "town" there, houses defined only to those who knew, a currency of black walnuts. In front of our house was the pasture with a few cows where we sledded every winter, the red barn where Ronald, who my little brother idolized, showed us that if you hold a chicken upside down and swing it gently, it falls asleep.

Now I live in a giant city. I love it- the hustle and bustle of a crowd. Being able to walk out my front door, get my hair cut, buy boots, eat a snack on the street, purchase a USB memory stick, and get back to my house in 2 hours without ever getting on a bus, much less driving a car. I love the different feel in different neighborhoods, knowing what section of the city to go to to buy textbooks, appliances, shoes, housewares. . .

But last week, I went on vacation. I went to Boyacá, an agricultural department of Colombia. And I remembered how much I love the countryside. I realized how sometimes my soul longs for empty, wild spaces. How I rest, and worship, and find peace in the stillness of God's creation. Sometimes, here in all the busyness, the never ceasing doing and action, I find it impossible to rest. I can be still. I can take a nap. I can do things to relax- read a book, watch a movie, draw a picture. But so often, I don't truly rest when doing those things. I worry that I am procrastinating. I think about what I should be doing instead.

Of course, part of the reason I could rest is I was on vacaation. There was no internet, and thus no emails I should really be responding too. No computer, so no work on Luz y Vida things that could really be accomplished. No need to house clean or grocery shop, or the myriad of other things that fill my mind at home.

But part of it is the place- the beauty of it, and God's grandeur reflected in it. In a world where you can look at this

sudenly the tyranny of the urgent is just less urgent. God speaks to me in his creation, reminds me of my smallness, his greatness, the perspective of eternity. I can look, I can listen, I can worship, I can rest.

So, now that I've realized this, how do I look for this, moments of rest for my soul and reflection, in the midst of a busy city?

Stories from a different world

2011-08-07T04:48:00.005-04:00

We picked her up along the side of the road of a picturesque village nestled in the Andes. Ana María* was headed into town for a dentist appointment and buses don't pass through very frequently. Almost as soon as she got in the car she shared started to share her story, "I got married when I was 15 years old". "Wait a minute", says Claudia, "you got married, or they married you off?" She was married off- she was caught holding hands with a boy, and her mother basically told her her reputation was ruined. "I cried, I asked them not to make me, I didn't love that boy", she told us. "when I got married, I didn't know anything about sex".

It wasn't a happy marriage either. He abused her. They had 6 children- 4 girls and 2 boys. "he wanted sons" she said, "so we kept having babies".

They're not together anymore. She moved with her kids to Bogotá, looking for a better life, for awhile, but has moved back to her quiet country town. Her kids all sound like they are doing well- studying, working as professionals. The youngest is in 7th grade. And Ana María- she's full of life, ideas for the future. "I want to run for the town coucil. I want to encourage tourism here". She tells us all about the paramo, a local high-altitude treeless habitat, about a waterfall and local legends. She has the knowledge and personality to reach her goals, I think.

*******

Don Felipe sits eating lunch with us. The talk has drifted back to improving tourism in the area, a recurring theme for the week. "And it's so much safer now, there are no guerillas in the area. 5 years ago it was different" He tells of a relative who was kidnapped by the guerilla, than it turns out he has his own story, "they didn't kidnap me. But they sent me a message once that I had to appear before them. I prayed about it, should I go, or not go? In the end, I decided to go. My whole church was praying for me. When I got there, no one was there. I waited over an hour, and then they finally showed up. They told me I had to pay them 40,000,000 pesos (about $20,000). I talked to them- told them what I owned, how my kids were in school. It jsut wasn't possible. They know, they have it all there in a computer. I told them how I agreed the government wasn't doing it's job, raising taxes and not changing the situation in the country**. In the end, they dropped the price down to 2,500,000 (about $1,250). That was really God's grace, they don't do that for everybody."

* Names have been changed in these stories to protect privacy.

**while guerilla groups use unethical means, some of the reasons behind what they're doing are supposedly to help the poor, which partially explains participation. For a great child's eye view of how people get swept into involvement with guerillas and para-military despite their desires, watch the movie Los Colores de La Montaña- The colors of the Mountain. Another good resource for understanding the complications of living in an area with active guerrilla and/or paramilitary and understanding what causes Colmbia's large number of internally displaced refugees is The Dispossesed by Alfredo Molano.

West Shore SixTen team visit

2011-07-31T14:03:00.004-04:00

A group of 7 from my fellowship group at church came down this past week. We had a lot of fun together. They put together an amazing program for the kids at Luz y Vida- from gak and tie-dying, to minute-to-win-it games, Bible teaching centered around Noah's ark, "compliment" books for everyone, and balloon games, the kids enjoyed every minute. I think the team did too.

Outside of Luz y Vida we had a lot of fun too. Tuesday was my birthday and we celebrated Colombian style- food, conversation and dancing! Despite the fact that most of the team hadn't danced salsa and merengue before, they gave it a try and we all had a lot of tun. Having friends who love to cook and are studying at cooking school guarantees amazing birthday dinners, as the pictures prove.

Wednesday the team came to my house. I was so blessed by their willingness to help out. The girls painted the second coat of paint in my garage area, and then did some deep cleaning in my kitchen and bathrooms. Things got a bit complicated for the guys when we lost all of the pieces needed to assemble the medicine cabinet I bought, but even so, they managed to hang curtain rods, fix the overhead lighting in one room, assemble and install a medicine cabinet, put a toilet seat and a towel rod in my downstairs bathroom and spend a lot of time at Home Center, learning the word for drill bit and saw in Spanish, and tracking down missing pieces. I made dinner for the team with the help from the girls. It wasn't quite the masterpiece we had on my birthday, but it was pretty tasty too.

Yesterday I think I wore the team out. We went to the jungle in the morning and enjoyed playing with over a hundred kids, helping them with crafts, and keeping them safe. As soon as we finished there, we took a driving tour through the tolerance zone and the Bronx to see some of the conditions the children we work with come from and live in. From there, we drove up to the farm, where I led the whole team up hill through the rain, bushwhacking through bushes and brambles, and up a very steep incline for the awesome view of the Andes mountains. We got back, soaking wet, freezing, and ready to enjoy the aromatica (fresh herbal tea) that Bibi and Emily made for us.

The team left this morning. They'll be missed, and remembered. They also blessed us greatly with a donation of a k-3 guided reading curriculum. I'm so excited to train teachers how to use it and see kids reading books they'll be excited about!

When loving hurts

2011-07-11T21:29:00.003-04:00

My heart hurts. B&C are bouncing from relative to relative, no one wants to or can take responsibility for them long term. I want them here, with me, with us, where we can shower them with God's love and learn as we go what it means to parent. But, due to a lot of factors, some legal, some practical, they can't come live with us again.

And I cry. Cry for the abandonment and rejection they've suffered more than once. Cry to think they may feel that we've abandoned and rejected them too. Cry for their vulnerability and my powerlessness in the face of it. Cry because it hurts to love and let go. Cry because I don't see answers and I want love and a home and stability for them. Cry for dreams that I thought I held lightly still hurting when I let them go. Cry because while I said I was painting the guest room, in my thoughts it was the boys' room, and now it's empty with nothing but the shadow of dreams.

I ask God why. Why, when I am willing, is the answer no? Why, when I don't see any other solution can't I be part of the solution? Why do children suffer for the sins of the parents? Why does it look like He isn't acting?

But God reminds me, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9).

I don't have his perspective. Joseph sat in prison for years. Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness before going back to Egypt and leading the Israelites to freedom. Dead ends. Failure. Forsaken. At least, that's how it looked. But God orchestrated it for good. He can do that for them too. Not only can he do it, I know that God's love for these boys is greater than mine is. These boys truly are fatherless. God talks a lot about his love and protection for the fatherless in his word. "He defends the cause of the fatherless. . . " (Deuteronomy 10:8) "Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close." (Psalm 27:10).

So, I cling to that. God loves them. He will hold them close. He will defend them. He's better at that than I am anyway.

But still, it's hard.

A year ago. . .

2011-07-03T22:38:00.007-04:00

2 years ago today, I arrived in Costa Rica to start my DTS.

One year ago today, I graduated from the Children at Risk school.

Tomorrow will mark the third 4th of July in a row that I've spent outside of the States.

In the past year I finished my first year of teaching in Colombia. I designed a first and second grade reading program in Spanish and taught 9 children how to read or improve their reading skills. I did a Bible study on the entire book of Matthew with a first grade class. I saw God's spirit at work in the lives of children. I rejoiced to see some kids come back for a second year, and others move on to the continuing education phase of the ministry. And I've struggled as some have dropped out of school, gone to very overcrowded and poor quality public schools and faced some tough issues.

I've had 7 different house mates, lived with a family of 5 (along with 2 of my other housemates) and had 2 boys live with us. I lived at Jordi and Ria's, the 127 house, and Torre Fuerte. I moved into a neighborhood within walking distance of where I worked and helped with the makeover of a 100 year old home. I received visits from my brother Jonathan, my sister Rebecca, my Mom and a friend from church.

I learned to say yes when invited to play soccer, volleyball, or basketball. And what's more, I've learned to enjoy it despite the fact that I still am not much help to my team (and sometimes accidently help the opposing team)

I experienced a bit what it is like to be a mom as my housemates and I took responsibility for 2 brothers in February and March. We cooked and cleaned and laughed and played together. I tried to figure out how to help them grow into the young men God desires them to be.

I moved into a new position at my school, taking the role as the academic director instead of a classroom teacher. I'm trying to learn how to be in a position of authority with adults and not just children.

This year God's been teaching me to focus more on being, not doing. I've been learning what it means to rest. I've been overwhelmed by my Father's loving attention to detail in my life, and learning bit by bit to trust him more with the big picture too.

Wow. Amazing what can happen in a year. I couldn't have imagined all of this last July. I wonder where I'll be and what will have changed by this time next July?

Faith like a mustard seed

2011-06-28T23:26:00.003-04:00

The photocopier at the school is unreliable at best. It's been known to jam 4 times when running 3 copies. For several days running I couldn't get it to work at all. So, the other day when someone asked me to run a copy, I said, "pray for a miracle". And then, I did pray, set the paper on the glass, and hit the button. And out came the copy! I was happy, handed it off to the teacher, and went back to working at my desk. Where I realized that I needed to run copies of something for the first grade class. As I set the paper down in the copier again, I found myself praying something along the lines of, "Well God, I know you already gave me one miracle copy, but I could really use another 6. I know it's a lot to ask, but, if you could . . ." As I looked up at the sky I realized what a ridiculous prayer that was. Here I was, talking to the God of the universe, the creator of everything I see, who has power to raise from the dead, and I was thinking that 6 copies was a lot to ask for. How big is my faith really, if I can doubt God's ability to intervene with an ornery copy machine?

God's grace is definitely greater than my faith. My 6 copies printed without a problem. All day long, I'd pray before hitting the button, and out would come my copies, just as if it were a normal copier that worked.

On Thursday, I squeezed what was close to the last of my hand cream out of the bottle before heading in to Luz y Vida. As I thought to myself that hand cream isn't something I really want to spend the money on right now, I said to God, "it would be nice if someone gave me some. But, seeing as it isn't my birthday and there isn't any other special occasion, I guess it isn't all that likely . . "

A few hours later in Luz y Vida, I met Rebecca who used to work here and came back for a visit. She reached into her bag. "A friend of mine from church wanted to give gifts to all the missionaries I could think of. Here, this is for you". Can you guess what one of the things she handed me was?

Each morning as I put on my hand cream, it reminds me- God sees us. He hears us. He cares about the little things. Even when we don't see the answers, when what we ask for seems too big or out of the ordinary, or just not important enough to bother God about, God is more than able to answer in ways that surprise us.

Seeing God work in the little things reminds me he is in control of the big things too. If he cares enough about me to continue to supply me with English novels, to send me hand cream the day I ask for it, to make an "impossible" copier function, than surely he cares about the more pressing things on my mind. And if he cares, he will act. Not on my timeline. But he hears me. He sees me. I am loved and I am not forgotten.

Rainbow over Monserrate

2011-06-13T18:32:00.002-04:00

Witness to the Wonder

2011-06-12T22:09:00.004-04:00

Birds flit- crimson red, bright yellow. A humming bird hovers at the edge of my vision. Something wobbles past, wings blurred in flight, too small to be a bird, I think, but the flight pattern strikes me as very un-insect like.

I drink the colors.

White clouds backed by blue sky.

Russet red showing against a green tree.

And I'm a silent witness to the wonder of it all. God's creation in its stunning variety.

What does it say about God, this lavishness, the startling colors, every beautifully contoured hill that takes my breath away, the thousands of species still being discovered? Could God not have made a perfectly functional universe devoid of beauty, of color, of exuberance? Do we need the excess of the milky way galaxy and everything beyond- millions of stars and only one small life bearing planet?

It wasn't necessary, not for us. But that's the way God created. He chose color, life, beauty. Beetles and frogs, flowers and clouds, finger prints and snow flakes, all reflecting Him. Beauty. Creativity. Uniqueness. Delight.
He made it, and then he calls us. Whispers to us, enchants us, allures us, shouts with joy. An invitation to know him, a God more beautiful, more desirable, more enticing, more mysterious, more complicated than his creation. A God that offers abundance, joy, freedom, love, life.

Stop a moment and witness the wonder. What does God whisper to you?

Sex Ed 101

2011-06-08T17:15:00.002-04:00

Today, I'm sitting around with the first graders, watching them put their number tiles in order, and not paying too close attention to the chatter all around me. Something though, jumps out at me, "and then they took their pants off in the tree and they were making love". The rest of my math lesson plan was abandoned as I tried to figure out exactly what had happened and how to deal with it.

We talked about how there are certain body parts we don't show to anyone, nor do we ask anyone to show them to us. I told them that if anyone tries to touch or look at those body parts, or they see any children doing that, then they need to tell a teacher right away. We talked about how there are some things kids can do by themselves (like playing and coloring), some things they need a grown up to help with (crossing the road and cooking) and some things they can't do at all (driving a car and well, making love) and how those limits are there to keep them safe.

That was not a lesson I had planned on teaching today. I'm still trying to figure out how to teach VERY sexually aware first graders what is and isn't appropriate behavior in a way that is age appropriate, but acknowledges they know way more than I did at their age. Any suggestions?

Progress!

2011-06-01T07:31:00.005-04:00

Two weeks ago on Monday, Abi was home and there was a knock on the door. It was the man from ETB, our internet provider. "FINALLY!" he said. Apparently he'd been trying to get into our house and check our internet the last 7 times I called. Which is ironic because each of those 7 times I told the person on the phone, "isn't it time to do an internal revision? They've already done (5, 6, 7) external revisions and nothing changes." And the person on the phone would tell me, "no, it's an external revision. No one needs to be at home". But, finally, after 2 and a half months of having internet an average of once in every 3 days, our internet has worked every single day since the internet guy was here.

When Sara and I bought paint we couldn't decide on a color, so the hall never got painted. We did decide what color we wanted one day while out together, but didn't get around to buying it. The unfinished hall was starting to drive me crazy, so I spent a week after work and 2 weekends painting. It looks so much better now.

Friday, Stephen and I went dryer shopping. Saturday, they delivered the dryer. And yesterday, the gas man came, spent two and a half hours drilling and installing a new gas hookup and hooking up our dryer. And now we have a dryer!

We're getting closer and closer to finishing off our Torre Fuerte to-do list. Though, even as I type that I realize there are still dozens of things we'd like to do. But, it is becoming more home like and comfortable week by week.

moneky man

2011-05-25T21:56:00.000-04:00

Out on the playground the other day, D climbed the jungle gym. “Wow, you’re really fast”, I told him. “You’re like a little monkey”. “That’s cause I’m half monkey” he told me. “This half of me is monkey” (he draws a line vertically down his body) “and the other half is human. I wear a costume on this side. That way people don’t know I’m a monkey and I can go to school”

work before play

2011-05-24T21:50:00.001-04:00

I have a rule for myself that I’m usually pretty good about following- Friday after work is not a time to do work. Lesson plans, house cleaning, laundry, researching publishers in Colombia… all of that can wait until Saturday. But, on Friday, the kids left, I had science and social studies lessons to plan for the first grade class since their teacher is out, I had a devotional and a staff meeting to prepare for on Monday, and I figured there’s no time like the present. So, I walked back into my office, turned on my computer, and got to work.

Or at least, that was the plan. Except, my computer wouldn’t start. The screen stayed black, the hard drive didn’t even make a whirring noise. Nothing. I tried several times. Nothing happened. So, I left, kind of glad for an excuse not to work, but mostly worried about my dead computer and the fact that the guy who helps us with tech problems wouldn’t be in until at least Wednesday.

Saturday morning I got up early, wrote my lesson plans, did my house cleaning. Everything that needed to get done got done eventually. The weekend over, I headed back in to work. I walked into my office, plugged in my computer, and turned it on.

It started. It’s been working fine ever since.

Maybe God thinks taking a break on Friday evenings is a good idea too.

Real men paint their fingernails

2011-05-13T18:06:00.001-04:00

We’re sitting around the living room, Jessica painting Edwin’s nails with clear nail varnish, as he talks to us about something serious. A few minutes go by before I realize how absurd this would look at home. But here, even my friend Peter who likes hip-hop and rap, and dresses the part, lets his little sisters paint his nails.

I get my hair cut, nothing dramatic, my Mom doesn’t even notice in our skype chat. I walk in the door to our weekly meeting and run into Alex who’s been visiting family for over a month. Greetings out of the way, the first thing he says after not seeing me for 6 weeks is ‘you got your hair cut”. Bored of always wearing my hair the same way, one day I put half of it up in a ponytail. Fabian’s first words on seeing me are “new look?”. Whoever said men aren’t detail oriented hasn’t met these men.

I’m leaving the 127 house, headed across the road to catch a bus home. Someone whistles at me from the sidewalk. I ignore it, and keep walking. There’s usually a group of students at the store and looking just encourages them. And then I pause. It could be Edwin. I risk a glance behind me, and there he is, standing at the door and smiling. Whistles, winks, flirtatious comments that aren’t meant to be taken seriously, I’m still trying to work out how to know when someone is serious.

They open the door and let me walk through first, walk on the street side of the sidewalk, (sometimes) carry heavy things without me even asking, walk me to the bus stop and wait with me when it’s dark, worry about how I’m getting home if it’s late. But they also get up and walk away from the table when they’re done eating, leaving the rest of us to hurry up and catch up. They tell lies when they don’t think it matters. They hunt me down, hold me still and dump water on me in a birthday party gone just a bit wild. Not quite knights in shining armor, or perfect gentleman, but definitely guys I’m glad to have as friends.

Settling in to the neighborhood

2011-05-10T18:32:00.007-04:00

The view from my bedroom window

Today, the man who sells almojabanas a few doors down from my house passed me over by the cemetery. "Hola vecina!" (hello neighbor), he called out.

I walked into the internet cafe across the street the other day because I needed to buy more minutes for my pay-as-you-go cell phone. "You need to recharge your phone?" the lady asked before I said anything. "Your provider is Comcel, right?"

I like feeling like I'm part of the neighborhood, I know them and they know me.

Happily ever after

2011-05-01T00:03:00.003-04:00

I walk downstairs for the morning break in our full day conference. I find the room transformed: red, white and blue bunting is strung from the ceiling. The table, decorated with flower petals, is spread with scones, tea, strawberry and cream cake, lemon drizzle cake, cucumber sandwiches. A genuine British tea. The sign on the wall makes it clear why- “Happy Wedding day William and Kate!” it declares.

We watch the three minute clip of highlights of the wedding. Of everything- the beauty of the bride in her amazing dress, the pageantry of a royal wedding in Westminster Abbey, their “first kiss” on the balcony of Buckingham palace- what stands out to me the most is the look in Prince William’s eyes as Kate joins him at the altar. They shine with joy.

Across the world we celebrate with them. I don’t know them, haven’t thought about Prince William since I was about 14 and saw his photo on the cover of a book in the library. And yet, we rejoice with them, captured by the universal joy of a wedding and the special fairy tale quality of a royal wedding.

And then, God brings back to my mind a verse I’ve been pondering all week, since it jumped out at me last Saturday, “And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you”.

That look in Prince William’s eyes as his bride came to join him, that’s the look in God’s eyes as we, as I, come to him. Joy to be mine and that I am his. Wonder that when he chose me, I chose him over anyone and anything else. Marveling at me and the beauty and uniqueness of me.

Just imagine our happiness as we celebrated a wedding of royalty we didn’t know happening across the ocean compared to how much greater it will be at the wedding feast of the Lamb. If some scones and tea and a pretty dress and the exchange of vows of a prince and his princess could make us all feel lighter and happier, imagine when the Prince of Peace takes his bride. We won’t be watching the reruns on youtube. We will be there, and not just there. We will be the bride, given to the Prince of Peace by our father, the King of Kings. That will be a party worth remembering. We will be one, sorrow over, waiting and longing past. And this is a story we know ends, “and they lived happily ever after”.

The road to hell

2011-04-20T22:06:00.007-04:00

I looked at the map doubtfully. It was the same free map they had given me the day before in the tourism office, and outside the city limits I had no idea which road was which. "Are you sure we won't get lost?", I asked Yesenia, the woman who was convincing us to take the tour. She assured me it was straight forward. "And are there a lot of hills? I'm horrible at biking up hill" The logical side of my mind told me that her answer, "it's almost all downhill and flat" couldn't quite be true since we were in the Andes mountains and we were biking a loop. But, despite my hesitation, the lovely weather and mountains called to me, so my sister Rebecca and I mounted our bikes and headed out of Villa de Leyva.

Four blocks and then left, I recited to myself, but then, avoiding potholes, I lost track. Not sure if I'd missed the turn or not, I stopped and asked some young guys working on a 4x4. "You can get there either way", they told me. "But take the unpaved road. It's nicer, there's not as much traffic, and you can't get lost."

Seeing as I'd managed to get lost within 5 blocks of setting off, I still wasn't convinced, but I figured even if we didn't find "infiernito" (little hell), the ancient Muisca obervatory we were looking for, we would still enjoy a bike through the countryside.

It was beautiful. I resisted calling out "are we on the road to hell?" to the locals we passed, but some helpful signs soon assured me that we were.

Infiernito was idyllic. The name was apparently given by the Muisca to the area to scare the Spanish conquerors away from their sacred ground. A stone observation calendar, phallic statues, and an underground tomb looked out on this scene.

Leaving infiernito, we continued down the road to the next stops on our map, hoping we were where we thought we were and turned the right direction when we got to the main road. The day was pleasantly warm, and the hill to the fossil museum was steep, so we stopped for sodas at a roadside stand.

A giant kronosaurus fossil, a tiny museum with hand lettered signs, and vendors without change waited for us at the top of the hill. We left our bikes against the wall and went inside.

It was drizzling when we left, in search of our last destination, "pozos azules". Something in the water makes this series of lakes a beautiful turquoise blue.

Tired, mud-splattered, and very content, we worked our way back up the hill to the road and down the road into Villa de Leyva. On an ever-so-slightly-uphill-you-could-almost-call-it-flat stretch of road, I biked slowly along, worn out by the day and wishing I could blame my lack of stamina on not being adjusted to the altitude. A little girl, probably about 9, zipped past me on her bike. She casually took her hands of the handle bars and then stuck them in her pockets. "show-off" I thought to myself, then realized that it didn't really matter.

We left our bikes back where we'd rented them from, headed back to our hostel for our things, and boarded the bus back to Bogota.

A rainy Sunday

2011-04-10T09:08:00.002-04:00

A rainy Sunday morning, 6am and I'm wide awake. It's a good thing though, I told a friend I'd bring dessert to a picnic Sunday afternoon, and now I have time to bake before church. Of course, the only thing I have in the house is flour which won't get me very far.

I head out into the quiet streets at 7. One lone car drives past, spraying water from the small lake that's accumulated from the night's rain. The corner store opens late on Sundays, but it doesn't matter, the bakery should sell everything I need.

I buy a stick of butter, a dozen eggs for baking and breakfast, a small bag of sugar, and chocolate bars for making hot chocolate, the closest thing to baking chocolate I've found. I buy 8 hot rolls just out of the oven, and a sweet donut-like creation with arequipe inside.

Back at home, as I mix my brownie batter, I pray they'll come out well- between a lack of real measuring cups, a gas oven with no temperature settings, and high altitude, baking is hit and miss for me here. The fact that I halved the sugar since the chocolate was pre-sweetened doesn't make me any more confident in the consistency.

The brownies are out now, cooling on the counter. They look to be a little different than normal, but nothing like my failed coffee cake from last weekend. Now I'm enjoying a quiet cup of tea before heading to a new church I'm trying out that's just around the corner.

Gone

2011-04-03T22:29:00.003-04:00

Today, the boys left. We went to church together, came home to eat together, enjoyed a lazy Sunday afternoon, they even talked us all into playing Monopoly. But there was a heaviness for all of us. The echo of the word "last" in every little moment we enjoyed.

Their mom came around 4. We didn't know what to say to her, she didn't know what to say to us. She wants them to live with her again; they love their mom and should be with her. But it was hard to see them go. They cried to say good bye. I cried too. So little of their situation has changed, I'm afraid the circumstances that brought them to our door the first time will just be repeated. Hopefully this week they'll start attending a small Christian school which will be much better spiritually and academically than the public school they were attending. That at least is one comfort to me. But my heart aches for them, so small and vulnerable. I can't be there for them every day now, showering them with love, teaching, disciplining, laughing. . . But, I can keep praying. And I could never be the answer for them, all I could ever do was point them to the answer. And Jesus goes with them. They don't need me. They do need him.

So, I pray. Pray that the seeds that have been planted in their hearts take root and bear fruit. Pray that their mom follows through with the changes she has verbally committed too. Pray that they would continue to be loved and guided as they go through these years when they really need someone to be there for them.

Being, not Doing

2011-03-25T21:17:00.000-04:00

I’ve been somewhat frustrated lately. For years I’ve had goals I was working towards: Finishing college, getting a teaching job, finishing my ESL certificate, finding a volunteer job with at-risk kids in South America.

And here I am. I reached my goal. I’m happy about that on one level, but now I’m left wondering, what next? I never made a new goal. What do I DO? Where do I go? Do I stay here longer? Do I stay in administration? Do I go back to teaching? Do I start thinking about starting a ministry?

But recently, I had a startling thought. Life is about who we are, not what we do. That is not the startling thought; I’ve been working on internalizing that one for years now. Here’s the thought that startled me: Maybe my goals should be more focused on who I am becoming, and not what I am doing. Maybe learning to truly rest is a good goal. Maybe learning to walk in grace while still doing everything “heartily as to the Lord” is a good goal. Maybe joy, contentment, and delight in Jesus is a good goal. Maybe knowing myself better is a good goal.

Part of me would love to have a concrete, action oriented goal, “I will stay here for 2 more years and leave behind a comprehensive curriculum for each grade level” Or, “I will go back to the States and get my masters in bilingual education and teach in a dual immersion classroom” Or, “I’ll travel the world for a year and visit friends and other ministries and do some research towards starting a ministry to at-risk kids of my own”

But right now, I don’t have an action-focused goal. And I think that’s ok. Whatever I do next year, and the year after and 10 years down the road and wherever God takes me I think if my goal is to delight in Him, to do my best for his glory while accepting his grace, to live the concept of Sabbath rest, to find joy in the things he has made me enjoy, then whatever it is I am doing won’t be so important. What will matter is who I am becoming, a child of God, in right relationship with him, myself, and others.

Why does it have to be so complicated?

2011-03-23T22:56:00.001-04:00

My sweater smelled like mildew yesterday when I pulled it on, not because I’d left it sitting in the washer for too long but because with the rainy, cold, damp weather and our much too dark area where clothes hang to dry, it takes so long to dry that some things just smell like mildew.

It was the last straw. Sara and Stephen and I have been talking about buying a dryer, and Sara and I decided to go after work to buy one. In Bogota, everything has it’s own section in town. Sara had just happened to run into appliances while looking for shoes the other day. So, we set off in a drizzle that soon turned into a downpour, feeling thankful that soon we would have a dryer and wouldn’t be worried about damp sweatshirts.

On 15, shop after shop of gleaming appliances waited for us. We walked in and out of stores, comparison shopping. It wasn’t until somewhere around the 7^th store that we ran into trouble. “Sure we have electric dryers”, the man said, “for 220 voltage”. We looked at each other, confused. “Is there any other kind of voltage here?” we asked. Turns out there is- 110. We had no idea what kind of voltage we have, so we called our friend Tony who’s done some electrical work for us. We have 110. Turns out they don’t make dryers for 110 voltage, and if you try to run a 220 dryer on 110 voltage you won’t get good results (I’m not really clear if it takes longer, costs twice as much, doesn’t fully dry the clothes or all of the above)

Between the 3 salesmen we talked to on our way back (as they helpfully asked if we’d found anything after all) we learned we basically have 3 options- 1. Learn to live with mildewy clothes and waiting days for dry jeans and towels. 2. Get a gas run dryer. Call the gas company to come out and give us a quote on what it would cost to put in another gas hookup, then have them do the physical labor. Or 3. Get a “trifasica” which is some sort of converter operation or something which changes your voltage.

I’m frustrated because I was hoping to have a dryer delivered today, and instead now we have to make phone calls and do research and hope that notoriously slow service here doesn’t mean we don’t actually not end up with a dryer for months. We’ll also end up spending more money since neither the trifasica nor the gas hookup sound like inexpensive options.

Oh well. Such is life.

Life

2011-03-11T15:46:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid and I played life, I always had the wrong goal. Supposedly, the goal of the game is to make the most money and retire at Millionaire acres. My goal was always to have the most kids. I usually ended up frustrated; some lucky friend would land on all the baby girl and baby boy spaces, maybe even twins. They’d fill two mini vans. Me on the other hand, I had one kid. Two if I was lucky.

Somewhere along the way, my priorities shifted a little bit. I never wanted to retire at millionaire estates and make a lot of money. But I wanted to do something big, something life changing, something “more” than staying home with my mini van full of kids. My heart ached for all the kids from broken families in broken neighborhoods, who didn’t even know what hope was. So, I started teaching.

Six years down the road, I’m realizing that that little girl’s dream of a house full of kids never really changed, it just got covered by some new dreams. My priorities are starting to shift back as I have a new perspective on motherhood and just how big it is. See, my dream, the teaching and working with kids in desperate situations, is to see some lives, which have been damaged and broken, restored. To see some children who don’t know the truth come to walk in the light. It’s not an easy dream, because kids go home to places that teach violence, promiscuity, and hopelessness. Moms though, they can dream for their kids to walk in fullness and in the light. They don’t have to contend with the brokenness, or even in circumstances where they do, home is a place where truth and love and grace can be lived out. It’s the same end goal: children walking in fullness in a right relationship with their creator. Moms just have so much more opportunity to influence their children than a teacher does.

There was a time where I wondered if I really had the commitment and dedication it takes to be a mom, or if I wanted to. And then, 2 boys walked in my door. Today, not quite 3 weeks later, B walked into my room to ask for a needle and thread to sew a hole in his pants. Two minutes later he was back with a pin through his ear. . . After I confiscated the pin, I gave him a stern admonition not to pierce his ears without permission and NOT to stick the earring that he’d found (and then was playing with in his mouth) through the hole he’d stuck in his ear or he’d end up with an infection. Whether I thought I wanted to or not, it looks like I’m parenting them. I’m still a little bit in shock over that. They’re big enough that they don’t require me to do much, but I’ve still been amazed at how big the responsibility is and how tired it leaves me. I’ve realized something through it though. It’s worth it. These little boys, who I didn’t even know 3 weeks ago, make my days more full. Full of laughter, full of joy, full of meal time conversations, and horsing around in the living room (also full of stress and questions about discipline and guiding two growing boys and a larger grocery bill). In the short time they’ve been with us, they’ve affected me more than students I had for years have. And I think I’ve had a chance to influence them more than I have my students.

I don’t know how long we’ll have the privilege and responsibility to parent B and C. But I’m happy they’re with us. I’m happy for the perspective they’ve given me on parenting. And I’m hopeful that someday not only will I have the chance to parent, but the chance to BE a parent.

Scandalous

2011-03-06T15:51:00.001-05:00

And one of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

A woman of the city who was a sinner.

Can you imagine her? I can. I walked past her on my way to take the bus to church that morning, standing in doorways, waiting, fishnet stockings and heels, a thong and a shirt so low cut the only thing you don’t see are her nipples, a mesh dress over nothing.

Imagine her, this woman of the city, showing up at your pastor’s house, causing a scene, crying and wiping her tears away with her hair.

And he said to her “Your sins are forgiven. Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Scandalous grace.

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.”

I don’t know any lepers. But I know who we treat the same way- untouchable, unclean, someone to walk away from. Here, the very word that’s used to describe them shows how they are valued, desechables, disposables. A pile of rags and a garbage bag shifts. I notice the shoe sticking out at the bottom of the pile. Not a pile of rags after all. A homeless man who has covered himself to escape the cold.

And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean”.

Scandalous love.

The other morning, I got a call from Sara. She was distressed. “There’s a little boy here. He’s sleeping on the street. There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know what to do”

She did what Jesus did. She reached out and touched him. Helped him put his shoes on. His feet were too swollen and cracked to walk so she stopped a taxi. The first 6 drove away as soon as they saw who she was with- a boy dressed in nothing but a bag. While she waited for the Other Way to open she bought him bread and hot chocolate and listened to his story. He was kicked out of his house when he was 4, he’s been living on the streets since then. He’s 12 now, addicted to drugs and hardened by 8 years of life on the streets. He was picked up and sent to a foundation once and lived there for a year, but he ran away. He wasn’t used to being told what to do. He felt closed in.

He slept on the ministry bus all day, dry and safe. But when everyone left for the day, he asked to be dropped off again where Sara picked him up. She prays for him and keeps looking for him, for another chance to show God’s scandalous love, a love that looks past the dirtiness, brokenness, and addiction and sees a little boy.

Jesus was not a model member of society. He hung out with the despised and rejected. He ate with the oppressor and the oppressed. A corrupt official who took bribes. A woman who had a string of unhealthy relationships and was living with her boyfriend. An officer from the occupying army.

Scandalous love. Scandalous grace. Scandalous mercy.

I’m not comfortable with scandalous. I like acceptance. I like to be approved. But more than that, I want to follow Jesus. I’m trying to learn to show grace, love, and mercy, even if it can sometimes be seen as scandalous.

So when Sara and I left the grocery store the other day with our 2 Colombian charges and she heard someone mutter “lesbian gringas” I just laughed (and wondered what they would have assumed about us if Sara’s husband had come along too).

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of Glory and of God rests upon you 1 Peter 4:14

Moms are awesome

2011-02-22T22:38:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, as we found out that the boys would be staying with us for at least another week, Sara and I decided grocery shopping was top of the list. We stopped home and quickly made some grilled cheese sandwiches, then took the boys to the park while we made a list.

Once we got to the grocery store, B. took off for the carts. "Can I push?" he asked. His brother started to argue, he wanted to push. "You can take turns" I told them. They agreed, and we walked into the store, where B. promptly started zigzagging through the aisles making me wonder why I thought it might be a good idea to a) take an 11 and 14 year old boy grocery shopping and b) let the 11 year old push the cart.

We made it through the grocery store without any serious incidents, just some more zigzagging, some taking of items off of shelves and needing to be reminded to put them back where they were found, and a bit of cart-riding.

After walking home with all of our purchases, Sara and I started cooking. Tacos seemed pretty simple, but put 9 people into the equation, and nothing is simple anymore. Dinner was finally on the table, there was lots of laughter and smiles as we ate, and then the kids and Stephen's parents offered to clean up (well, I think Stephen's parents offered. We asked the kids to help).

Me, Stephen, Sara, and Gonzalo went upstairs to figure out how we were going to work things out- rules, schedules, who takes B to school at 6:30, who picks him up and drops of C. at 11:45, if C could come back alone or who should pick him up, bedtime. . . Once we got things worked out, we called in the boys to let them know what this week will look like.

Finally, we sent the boys off to bed and had some time to collect ourselves. I looked at my watch. It was after 9.

These boys are good. They help cook, they wash the dishes, they are friendly and polite, they do as they're told. And, I'm not doing this alone, or even with just 1 other person. Stephen and Sara and Gonzalo all are taking responsibility. And Stephen's parents are here right now and more than willing to pitch in with cooking and cleaning.

But I'm still tired. It's a big responsibility to have 2 young people you need to be guiding, disciplining, getting to school on time, taking care of the colds they have, cooking for, encouraging, checking homework . . .

And I've only been doing this for 4 days.

I don't know how moms do it. Week after week, month after month, year after year. That awareness that what you're doing is important and you can't afford to mess up. The busyness that having children adds to a schedule.

So, to all the moms reading this post, especially my own, thank you. Thank you for shopping and cooking night after night. Thank you for letting the to-do list slide sometimes so we could talk and color and play in the park. Thank you for setting limits and encouraging and teaching and taking us to the 101 activities that we had. Thank you for being moms.

And to the dads out there- thank you too. For your love and patience and presence in your kids lives.

And to all of those out there who aren't parents- jumping into substitute parenting with pre-teen and teen-age boys just 1 week after taking a new job position with more responsibilities and while living in a house where there are still 100 things on the to-do list (you know, like fixing the cold shower, and over head lights, and enough chairs and plates for everyone in the family) is awesome. I'm loving it. Our house is more alive. Their smiles and jokes make us all happy. Cooking for a crew might be more work than just cooking for me, but sitting down as a family and enjoying a meal together and taking pleasure in other people enjoying what I made is worth it. It is also just a tad bit overwhelming. Or maybe a lot. . .

What I ought to be doing. . .

2011-02-19T10:30:00.004-05:00

There are dishes in the sink and a mouse in the cupboard. Our kittens are not yet fulfilling their purpose, but that is not their fault. Our garage door has a gap between it and the floor big enough for a kitten to escape through, so until we get it fixed and while they adjust to their new home, they're locked upstairs. But, that doesn't solve our rodent problem.

I should wash the dishes. And go buy some traps and set them. And figure out what I'm making for dinner tonight and lunch and dinner tomorrow and pick up the ingredients I need while I'm out. We have an 11 and a 14 year old staying with us this weekend, so actually planning and not just opening the cupboards and hoping inspiration strikes is probably a must.

Then I should cook dinner for tonight so I can leave it waiting for everyone when I go out. And start whatever Sunday's lunch is since by the time I get home from church we'll be too hungry to wait for food to cook.

I should probably also reorganize the kitchen for the 3rd time so that the fresh fruits and vegetables aren't out either so the rodents don't get to them. Which means somehow getting them all into our tiny and already full fridge.

I should throw the blankets we were given in the wash and wash all the towels and dust cloths and such, and maybe a load of my clothes too, but with no drier and limited clothes line, that probably won't happen.

I should clean the bathrooms and mop the downstairs.

But, it's Saturday morning. I already made pancakes for breakfast and washed most of the dishes from that, plus all the containers the mice had tried to get into. Then I put them away in a metal mouse proof cupboard.

Now there's a kitten curled up on my lap and I think I'll take a few minutes to enjoy the morning before I start on my list.

Introducing the 2 Newest Members of Torre Fuerte

2011-02-14T16:18:00.005-05:00

We bought 2 kittens today! We figured they would keep rodents from being a problem. They're also super cute. :) We haven't named them yet. Any suggestions? The top is a girl, the bottom is a boy.

She's still shy and nervous, but seems like she'll be affectionate.

He's full of energy, mischievous, and playful. As I was typing this, he jumped on top of my laptop and somehow managed to start a slideshow with music in iphoto which I couldn't even stop without force quitting iphoto (and while I was typing that sentence he again jumped on the keys and made the screen go black. . . he's going to be a handful).

Leave name suggestions in the comments!

Home Sweet Home

2011-02-10T21:40:00.005-05:00

I've lived at Torre Fuerte for almost a week now, and I'm loving it. There's still little things to do around the house: a room to paint, some trim to finish, curtains to hang, a toilet to replace, a cat to buy. . .

But the big things are done! The main living spaces are cleaned and painted, all our broken windows have been replaced, internet and phone were installed and activated today, our gas is on (and the copper tubing hopefully won't be stolen again since the repair man built a secure box and the locksmith soldered it shut), a water heater has been installed in the shower, our tampered with lock has been replaced, and as of today everyone has moved in!

Here's some pictures of our much more home-like house. We have a few finishing touches we want to do before we have our house-warming/(late) Chinese New Year party.

My room! I love my hammock chair. I sort of bought it by accident when I went to buy "necessary" items for the house. Because, you know, everyone needs a garbage can in the bathroom and the kitchen, a shower curtain, and a hammock chair. An ambulatory salesman saw me looking at it as he walked by. He told me the price was 180,000 pesos. I offered him 60,000 figuring it was low enough he would realize I wasn't really thinking of buying one. But, he said, you tell me the maximum you'll pay and I'll tell you the minimum I'll accept. I agreed, he told me 120,000, but that he would really reduce the price to 100,000. I told him 80,000. He started to complain about what a low offer that was, then started packing up the chair, I though to leave. Then, he handed it to me. I hoped I really did remember correctly and still have 80,000 pesos in my wallet. I did. 81,000 to be exact. Good thing all my necessary shopping was done for the day. :)

Our bathroom, looking slightly more colorful than before.

Making pancakes for dinner our first night in Torre Fuerte.

Our living room and dining room. It still looks pretty empty.

Though, we got some more furniture donated and that has helped.

See our china cabinet or sideboard, or whatever you call that piece of furniture? On Tuesday night, I was looking at our very empty dining room. "What we need", I said, "is a long, low table or cabinet or something". Gonzalo said, "God will provide." Wednesday, Sara called me while I was at work. "I'm over here cleaning" she told me, "and we dropped of some furniture that was donated that was at the Other Way" When I walked in after work, sitting exactly where I wanted it, was pretty much the piece of furniture I had imagined. God is good, isn't he?

The inclinato

2011-02-09T09:44:00.000-05:00

I duck into the playhouse at the jungle, and see the same group of children who were there when we opened. I wonder how it captures the children's attention for so long. Suddenly, I remember where i picked them up and I see the contrast. The playhouse is brightly lit, painted bright colors, there are curtains at the windows, a table with a tablecloth and 4 chairs around it, cupboards full of imaginary food, a sink and a stove. The children here are some of the 10 that we picked up this morning at the inclinato.

*******************

We have a contact at the inclinato, and the 3 of us who have never been there before go looking for her. "Go ahead, she's just down the hall" prompts the lady who is out washing her clothes. We walk through the open area, down a step to an area that's currently flooding, I think from the draining shower that I hear running behind the wall. As we turn the corner and are now in the hallway, we go from the brightly lit day to an almost pitch dark hallway. The second doorway is what we're looking for.

At the back of the room, the head of her bed touches one wall, the foot touches the other. What's left of the room is probably the size of the bed. On one wall there's a refrigerator and next to that a shelf with a an electric burner with a pot of rice on it. On the other side of the room is a cradle. The twins sit naked in the cradle, the newborn lies tiny and precious on the bed. The big sister plays in the hall. This family of 5 lives in this room, smaller than a walk in closet. The bathroom down the hall is communal, as is the one washing machine for the families living on all 4 floors of the building, and the outdoor patio spaces, one where women hand wash clothes, the other where they hang to dry. It's a modern day tenement house.

*******************

I live close enough to walk there now. My neighborhood has so many good things- a bakery, an internet cafe, a corner store, 3 or 4 places to get lunch, a hardware store, and a great cafe all within a block or two. If I need a window to be replaced, a locksmith, paint mixed (or I want to buy a grave stone) I know where to go and can walk there in a few minutes. But there's also a lot of pain here. Walking to the bakery in the morning, I pass a homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk. Just a few blocks east of me, prostitutes stand on street corners 24 hours a day. And then, there are the inclinatos. Tenement houses where rooms are divided by plastic, cardboard, anything to make a division and whole families live in each division.

I'm excited to be living here. I'm not really sure how I will reach out into this neighborhood. But I want to, and living here gives me the opportunity to get to know people, to see needs, to make friends.

We're getting close!

2011-02-03T20:35:00.003-05:00

It's been a long couple of weeks. After a morning and some days afternoon at Luz y Vida (no kids yet, so just prep work), I head over to Torre Fuerte to do prep work and paint. The bane of Sara's and my existence over these past few weeks has been the downstairs. It's taken sooooo long to get to the point where we could actually paint it. But, today, the day finally came.

Here's what the living room/dining room looked like this morning (well, actually, that picture is a bit old. The ceiling already had 2 coats of white paint this morning and just some touch up work to do):

Sara, Abby, Edwin, 2 girls from the continuing ed group at Luz y Vida and I spent from 11 to 6 today at Torre Fuerte.

Here's what it looked like when we left. (It was already getting dark out and we took down the overhead lights to paint the ceiling, so the picture isn't the best)

We also got the floors in my room And Doris' room waxed and polished, the beds put together and the furniture brought in. Here's my room. (I forgot to take pictures in Doris' room)

Tomorrow Doris and I move. Sara and Stephen will be there working all day and will hopefully get their room painted and finish the trim and detail work in the living room. In the evening we're going to Septimazo and Abby will spend the night. Saturday if all goes according to plan, our gas and the door should be repaired, and if things go really well, we'll get the glass we need and an appointment with our internet provider.

A pearl of great price

2011-01-30T18:19:00.004-05:00

My friend Paola works at the YWAM base in San Jose, Costa Rica. She is beginning a ministry to women and children who have been trafficked and those who work in prostitution. Recently, she shared the stories of 3 women she has gotten to know.

Let me share the excerpt of one with you:

One day after I finished working I was going home and a group of guys took me and raped me. I was only 14. After that not knowing what to do, I told my dad and he never believed me. He even told me it was my own fault. When Ana was born I decided to give her to a family because I knew that I was too young to take care of a child. . . I started working on the streets as a prostitute out of desperation, I needed money and also I felt dirty after what happened to me. . . . A couple months ago I accepted Jesus into my heart and life, and I have already seen a lot of changes. I still work in the streets but I am tired of it and ready to stop this life style. Please pray for my kids and for strength on me, and wisdom for how to make the changes I need, and for a way out of this life…

So much pain, so much despair, yet in the midst of it, hope. I'm thankful for women like Paola and the others on her team who are reaching out to people who most of the world rejects. I don't know what to do in the face of so much brokenness, but I know the One who does. So, I pray. I pray for those who already work with hurting women. I pray for myself, that God would show me what he wants me to do beyond praying. I pray for the women around the world, trapped in a world of pain and degradation. And I pray for the women who work the streets just a few blocks east of where I'll be living. I pray that if it's God's will for us to start reaching out to them, he'll show us what to do and how to do it.

Please take a few minutes to read the rest of Paola's post and pray for these women.

It gets worse before it gets better

2011-01-22T20:01:00.004-05:00

We were hoping to paint today. That didn't happen. Instead, we sanded, and took peeling paint off the walls, and ran errands, and cleaned. . . Here's a look at our house in progress, and the way things are done just a bit differently here, as evidenced by our buying paint.

There are bars in the entryway and a narrow staircase leads upstairs. The downstairs room is full of bags of powder, a giant mixer, some unidentifiable machinery and 5 gallon buckets of paint.

Sara and I go the first time. An older man leads us up the staircase, seats us in front of his desk, and shows us all the color swatches. After deliberating forever, we finally try to figure out how much we need of each color. "How about you just come back tomorrow?" he asks. "I'll send Alejo with you and he can tell you how much you need and give you some tips"

Gonzalo and I stop by the paint shop the next day after Luz y Vida. Alejandro is no where to be found. Pablo, the man we talked to the day before is at the doctors. We decide to come back later.

Tony, Gonzalo and I all head back to the paint shop in an hour or so. Alejandro has just left. We debate what to do, wait around for a bit, and then he shows up. We walk the 3 blocks back to the house with him, and he spends the next hour and a half there, helping us decide how much paint we need, and asking us things we'd never thought of- are you painting the ceiling in the kitchen too? What about this door? What color are your base boards upstairs going to be? Gonzalo mentions we are missionaries and it turns out that when Alejandro isn't working in the paint shop, he co-pastors a church.

We finally have our list of prices and sizes. "Stop by tomorrow morning" he says, then you can show me exactly what colors you want and leave a downpayment" He's in a bit of a rush he tells us, because he's preaching at the church service tonight.

Doris and I stop by in the morning. After carefully noting down all the colors and prices, eating the mandarin oranges that Pablo offers us, we make a down payment on the paints. We watch as Alejandro hand mixes the almond we chose for the baseboard in the guest room. He starts with white, dips the paint stirrer in some yellow and some black. "Let me know how dark you want it" he says to me. He slowly adds a bit more color each time until I'm satisfied. "I'll drop by the ceiling paint and the trim this morning" he says. I think I can have most of the others done by this afternoon. Is it ok if some of the colors aren't done until Monday?" We assure him that it is, and head on to the glass shop to see if they can someone out to measure our broken windows and cut glass to size.

Alejandro delivers the first batch of paints while we're out running another errand. Apparently when he arrived they were having trouble with the water tank on the roof and asked for advice, because while we were eating lunch he showed up again with the pieces we needed to fix it and an explanation.

Wrapping up towards the end of the day Alejandro showed up one last time. "Here are the paints for the bedrooms. We're just missing the green for downstairs and the purple bedroom paint. I should have them ready for you by Monday. I'll drop them by." He shows us how we should put the stucco on the walls where the paint and plaster were peeling off and there's nothing but cement block underneath. He leaves behind 2 small plastic spatulas for us to use. "I'll be by on Monday" he says, "but if you need anything, just give me a call"

Slower than a trip to Home Depot and their automatic color mixing machine? Definitely. But way more personalized. And now there's a familiar face in the neighborhood. Sometimes in the past few days as I've seen myself run what seems to be fruitless errand after fruitless errand I've found myself longing for the convenience of home. But, mostly, I love walking out of my house, walking for a few blocks. having a conversation with someone, and then finding out from them where I need to go and what I need to do to complete my next errand.

My love, my life

2011-01-21T19:40:00.002-05:00

Praying out loud has never been something I'm very comfortable with. I'm even less comfortable with it in Spanish than I am in English. Listen to a prayer sometime. We speak differently when we're praying than when we're speaking, and I still don't feel "fluent" praying in Spanish.

One difference is that when we're praying, we use God's name every other phrase. When I first really noticed that, it struck me as odd. After all, if I'm talking to my sister, I don't say, "Rebecca, I ask you my sister, to please, help me this Saturday Becca with all the painting I have to do." But just change Rebecca, my sister, and Becca to a name for God and the petition to one for healing or provision and you have a perfectly "acceptable" prayer.

When I first really noticed this, I tried to stop using a name for God in every sentence when I was praying out loud. It seemed like it was just a strange habit we've somehow communally developed.

The other night riding on the bus I overheard a conversation and I wondered if I was wrong. The man next to me was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone. The conversation went something like this. . . "Hello my love. And how was your day sweetheart? . . . Oh, I'm happy to hear that love. Yes my dear. . . But you'll be careful, right love? And call me when you get there, ok sweetheart? And so dear, are we still going tomorrow love? Can you pick me up at 9 then? All right beautiful precious one, I'll see you tomorrow. Good bye my love."

Maybe, just maybe using some form of God's name over and over stemmed from the same reason this man kept calling his girlfriend mi amor, mi vida, mi corazon, preciosa hermosa; he was delighting in her, in their relationship to each other, he was affirming her and telling her he valued her.

And I want to do that with God. I want to cut out all the "filler" phrases I use when praying out loud. I want to think, not just with my head, but with my heart. And when my heart is filled with love, praise, admiration, and joy to be in relationship, then I want to say to Him wonderful, counselor, almighty God, everlasting Father, prince of peace, my love, my life, my treasure.

A work in progress

2011-01-20T19:46:00.008-05:00

Welcome to my house, Torre Fuerte!

This is the living room. It's a bit too reminiscent of a daycare right now. We chose a green paint today which hopefully we still like when it's on the walls.

Here's our dining room with 2 of my house mates, Sara and Steven.
The kitchen! Abby (a friend) came over today and scrubbed the whole kitchen and put contact paper on all the shelves.
This is our garage area.
And here's our laundry room.

Now, on to the second floor. I love this staircase.

Here's the view from the top of the staircase.

This is the master bedroom and the bathroom.

Still the master bedroom, different angle.

This is Doris' room

And, here's our guest room. It's a bit scary at the moment.

See what was growing on the ceiling?

No worries, I took care of it. Fortunately, that part of the house is constructed from cement block, so there's no structural damage. We cleaned the gutters and will fix the leak. With a bit of new plaster and a new coat of paint it will be good as new.

The bathroom

And, here's my bedroom! Isn't the ceiling fun? And it has a lot of light from the windows.

Help spread the word

2011-01-19T21:35:00.004-05:00

My Mom let me know that "The Lowe's Charitable and Educational Foundation is donating a total of $1 million to these four charities — National Parks, Keep America Beautiful, American Forests and Water.Org. $100,000 will go to each just for participating, and the remaining $600,000 will be distributed based on your votes."

She encouraged me, and now I'm encouraging you- go online and vote for water.org

From their website:

Water.org is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization committed to providing safe drinking water and sanitation to people in developing countries

I love our national parks and forests. I want America to stay beautiful. But those aren't life and death situations. They have a lot of public funding. And, a million dollars would be swallowed up easily.

Water, on the other hand. That's a life and death issue. Thousands of people (roughly 40,000 if I did my math right) would have their lives changed if $1,000,000 was invested in water projects. With clean water health improves. Did you know 3.5 million people die each year from water-related diseases? That diarrhea is the second most common cause of death in children under 5? It doesn't need to be that way.

Did you know that for millions of women and children, collecting water can take several hours daily? When there are clean, safe, local water supplies, women can contribute in other ways economically and children (particularly girls who otherwise are likely to have the task of going for water) are more likely to attend school. A clean water source has spiraling effects.

Check out their website, and then go vote. (You can vote once a day until Jan. 21) And then, help spread the word. Blog about it. Tell your friends. Stick it on your face book page. We can help make a difference.

(And, if you're interested in the topic, this site also has some great facts about access to water)

"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward." Matthew 10:42

Moving take 2

2011-01-17T19:58:00.004-05:00

Remember this post? The one where I was so excited to be moving and finally having a place of my own?

Well, it turned out a few days or weeks later that it didn't work out. And I spent the rest of the year living with a Dutch family, who are moving to Peru later this month. And when I went home for Christmas, I had no idea where I would be living long term when I got back.

I do now. And my heart is singing again. Because I'm moving into Torre Fuerte, the same place I was going to be living before. And this time, there's a couple committed to living there, which takes care of the problem I had before of no longer having house-mates.

Better yet, they have the same dream as me. They want to make the house into a home, a place of beauty, a place of refuge. They don't want to just live in the same house together, they want to pursue community, praying together, sharing meals together. They want to get know our neighbors, reach out into the community, little by little see how God can use us to be salt and light where we are.

I'm very excited.

Stay tuned for some before and after photos as we clean and paint and decorate in the next few weeks.

Welcome to your second home

2011-01-12T17:46:00.004-05:00

As I left home at 2:30 in the morning yesterday, I felt sad. Saying good bye yet again was hard. But, by the time I was on my flight to Bogotá, I had a sense of anticipation. I was going home. Our plane landed and I looked out at the Andes mountains, marveling at their beauty. A month away had made me forget just how breathtaking they are, or perhaps just taken away their familiarity. The sky was blue, the sun shining. As I struggled to wheel my 2 giant suitcases through customs, I squinted through the glass to the waiting area, trying to spot my friends. My face broke into a smile as I saw Bibiana and Doris waiting for me. Bibiana gave me a hug and handed me the flowers she had for me. "Bienvenida a tu segundo hogar", welcome to your second home, she said. And it was so true. I had left home. But I had come home. Not really to my house (I hope to be out of where I'm living in February, it's just a temporary solution) But, as my aunt reminded me last time I was musing about the meaning of home, "home is where the heart is." And, my heart is here, with my students, with my friends and coworkers, with the unexpected adventure that life can be here. My heart is also in the States, with my parents, my siblings, my grandparents, and all the other family members and friends who make me miss "home".

I woke this morning with a sense of peace. All my big questions for this year still remained unanswered- where I'll live, what I'll be teaching, who my co-workers will be, if and when my friends are leaving. . . But I wasn't stressed, at least not then. I was content. Content to be where I believe God wants me for the moment. Content knowing that soon I'll know the answers to my questions, and living them out over the course of the year will be exciting. Content to be back, in the land of limes and traffic jams, arepas and vallenato, laughter and waiting. Content to be in my second home.

I'm home!

2010-12-13T17:40:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since I posted. Hopefully while I'm home I'll take some time to post about my brothers visit to Colombia and the last few weeks of the school year at Luz y Vida.

For now, I'm happy to be with my family again, marveling at "normal" things like apple juice and pepper jack cheese in the fridge, and trying to remember not to speak to anyone in Spanish.

I'll be around until January 11, and then I head back to Colombia.

The heart of it all

2010-11-21T16:19:00.003-05:00

I've been learning some things this year. Most of all about the importance of the unseen. For several days my students had been leaving out a student who was formerly quite well liked. In devotion one morning, she didn't want to pray, sat there with a sad face, far away from the other students, and barely joined in the singing. When I asked what was wrong, she told me nothing.

I tried to get to the root of the problem and as I asked the other students what was going on, I started to see what was wrong. Apparently her brother had hit 2 other students and then made up a story that other students from the school had come to his house to threaten him and his family. All the students from their neighborhood had divided into 2 groups- us against them. It didn't matter that she hadn't done anything, she was part of his family and therefore an enemy.

I spent the whole devotional time talking about forgiveness and love and made no headway. They were still determined to not forgive her, not include her, and not acknowledge that what they were doing did not please God.

After breakfast I gathered all the 1st and 2nd grade students together. I felt almost hopeless, their hearts seemed so hard. And yet, I couldn't just ignore the problem. It was causing such a spirit of division among all my students and reading seemed so much less important in comparison. So, I started our time together by praying. I invited the Holy Spirit to come and be present in our time, to speak directly to the students' hearts. As we started to talk, I didn't address the problem directly. I just shared about how Jesus suffered and died for us, and as he died asked God to forgive those who were torturing and killing him. Everyone was silent and thoughtful as I spoke, which is unusual for this group of students. At the end, I asked if they thought that God also wanted them to forgive the people who hurt them. They all agreed that he did. Then I asked if they were willing to forgive. That's where I really saw the Spirit of God at work. All of my formally belligerent students said they were willing to forgive. Each one of them looked their classmates in the eyes and if they felt there was something they had to forgive they said to the other student, ''I forgive you''.

Since that day, we've still had problems. They still fight, they still struggle to forgive. But I saw something that gave me the courage to keep going in spite of what sometimes looks like a hopeless situation. God spoke to them. I don't think it was my words that made the difference. I don't think it was me that caused them to listen so intently. I invited the Holy Spirit to speak to their hearts and he did. And He is the one who needs to continue to change them. I might be able to modify their outward actions (although sometimes I even doubt that), but only God can change their hearts. My job is to sow seeds and water them and trust God to bear fruit, even on days when it looks like a losing battle.

And life goes on. . .

2010-10-30T19:19:00.002-04:00

Jessica and I were chatting, sitting at Juan Valdez cafe. Suddenly, a hand reached down, grabbed my laptop by the screen, and took off running. My scream of "noooooooooo!" in anger and frustration did nothing to stop him. I took off running after him in my socks, jumping the knee high wall seconds after he did. I was hopeful that I'd catch up to him, or someone coming down the street in the other direction would stop him, but when he jumped on the back of his friend's motorcycle and took off, the anger in my voice as I shouted "no" turned to desperation. I stood there, shaking on the sidewalk in my stocking feet realizing there was absolutely nothing I could do. All the other customers started sharing their version of the events- he was wearing a grey jacket, he had bought a coffee, so he should be on the video camera inside, etc. etc. But, when I asked , "now what should I do?" the girl at the table next to us, looked at me and answered in English, "Nothing. You're in Colombia."

I reported it to the police, but just so I could say I did my part. Now, I'm getting used to borrowing laptops and writing my lesson plans on paper. And mourning the loss of 2 and a half years worth of pictures and work.

I've arrived

2010-10-19T23:03:00.002-04:00

I used to not watch movies in Spanish at night. If it was after 10 pm, forget a conversation in Spanish.

On Saturday night at 10:30, I sat down to watch a movie with Doris. It was dubbed in Spanish and there were no subtitle options. After the first few minutes, I forgot to wish for subtitles most of the time.

On Sunday night I was at a church over-night with the youth. At 1 am, I was playing taboo in Spanish, successfully.

I think I can officially say I'm bilingual. :)

(which I've determined is different than completely fluent. Believe me, if you'd understood my attempt at a conversation about clapping on the off beat in Spanish the other day, you would see that I am NOT always fluent. But, I think bilingual is being able to cope successfully in either language. And I can.)

A taste of Colombia

2010-10-16T12:07:00.004-04:00

Patacones with tuna salad

This is not an authentic Colombian recipe, but it does incorporate a lot of very traditional Colombian ingredients, and everything in it is readily available in the States. Patacones are popular here (and in a lot of Latin America, though they are known as tostones in Puerto Rico and the Dominican). I got the idea of eating them with tuna when some Venezuelan friends showed up one day when I was making patacones for dinner and they suggested it. Cilantro and lime are 2 very popular seasonings.

Slice a green plantain on the diagonal and fry in oil, turning over once. (Use one plaintain for every 1-2 people) Remove from frying pan when both sides are golden. (A friend told me the trick to this is to cook them over low heat so that the inside starts to get soft too, and it isn't just the edges that touch the pan that turn start to burn)

Place your fried plantains between 2 pieces of plastic. Using a flat oject (a cutting board works well), smash the plantain flat. Stick it back in the frying pan to cook until it is golden brown and crunchy. Set the patacones in a colander or on a papertowel to drain of some of the oil.

In a bowl, mix one can of tuna in water (drained), mayonaise, juice from 1/2 of a lime, cilantro, chopped tomato (I used 3 small tomatoes), canned corn (I used maybe 1/3 of the can), and chopped cucumber (I only used 1/2, but it would have been better with more). Onion would be good to add too, but I'm not a big fan of raw onion, so since I was just cooking for me, I didn't add any.

Top the patacones with the tuna salad. Enjoy!

Sol solecito

2010-10-07T19:42:00.005-04:00

sol, solecito, calientame un poquito

por hoy, por mañana, por toda la semana

(the beginning of a popular children's rhyme- sun, sunshine, warm me up a little bit, today, tomorrow and all week long)

Today was sunny! After work I went for a walk. I was pretty sure I had seen a "This is your park- live it!" sign somewhere on the 127, so I went in search of Parque el Country.

It was a delightful surprise in the middle of the city- wide open green space surrounded by hedges that cut out almost all the traffic sounds, a deserted old stable yard, and an amazing blue sky full of backlit clouds.

The day felt like a gift from God. On my walk to take the bus this morning, cutting through a different park, several little birds swooped low, chattering in a birdsong I'd never heard before. I stopped to watch them, delighted, realizing I didn't need to rush quite as much as I was to make it on time. A woman, coming from the opposite direction smiled at me, "they're greeting you", she said. Waiting for the bus, Peter said "if it's sunny like this in the morning, it will stay sunny all day, I promise". I prayed with my students during devotions that it would stay sunny, and then reveled in the sunshine during recess, on my walk to the bank to pay my insurance, and as I walked barefoot through the park, the thick grass squishy beneath my toes. A long anticipated ice cream cone from an ice cream parlor that I've been wanting to try for months ended my afternoon in the sun.

Rain, rain go away. . .

2010-10-06T18:25:00.004-04:00

It's raining. Again. Today, hail fell while the kids were inside watching a movie since recess doesn't work out so well in that sort of weather. It was so cold inside, I could see my breath. I've become a master at wearing layers- tank top, long sleeved shirt, cardigan, sweatshirt and a heavier sweatshirt on top. I'm tired of rain.

Rain is so de-motivating. I'm feeling frustrated about a misunderstanding with a friend, and I just want to go outside and walk it off. I'm thinking about maybe making finger paints or no-bake cookies with my kids on Friday, and I could go to the store to pick up the ingredients I need, but I don't feel like it in the rain. I'm housebound and restless with my lessons for tomorrow already set to go. I guess I'll curl up with a good book and pray that one of these afternoons, the sun will be out on my way home and I can stop in the park and enjoy the outdoors again.

10 point public bathroom rating scale

2010-09-28T20:35:00.004-04:00

It's free
Door that closes and locks
Toilet has a seat
Toilet paper is available (only half point if it's outside the stall)
Toilet paper is free
Toilet flushes (only half point if you have to manually flush by dumping a bucket of water in)
Water to wash hands (half point bonus if there's hot water too)
Soap
Something to dry hands
hook/shelf for purse or coat

I'm thinking public bathrooms here average somewhere around 7.5.

I think the most bizarre bathroom I've ever used was in the jungle in Ecuador. It was surprisingly a flush toilet, in the middle of the jungle (we hiked down a dirt road and forded a creek to get there), but there was no door on it. So, you just sat there, looking towards the path, and hoping no one appeared.

Flushing the toilet with a bucket of water from a 50 gallon barrel of water at the museum in Nicaragua was another "this would never happen in the States" experience. And, the vending machines selling toilet paper inside a public restroom I'd already paid to use here in Bogota were the most outrageous.

cupcakes

2010-09-24T23:31:00.003-04:00

Naked in Paradise

2010-09-22T21:21:00.003-04:00

I was at a Bible study last night, and we talked about God's original plan for creation, and how God's desire is for that original plan to be restored. Anyway, it got me thinking about what life was like in the garden of Eden. And I realized how far my own conception of reality differs from God's original plan.

God created a garden, a perfect place, where fruits grew easily and weeds didn't exist. The weather was perfect, or at least there was no rain. Then, he placed a couple, their marriage literally designed in heaven, in the garden. And there, they enjoyed God's creation, they enjoyed each other, they enjoyed God's presence. That's it. They were to care for the garden, be stewards of creation. But, there was no back-breaking toil. After all, with no sin in the world, no problems to fix, no weeds to kill, no people to help, what is there do do in a garden?

And then came the fall and something fundamental changed. That precious relationship between God and man was broken. Work became difficult. Trust was broken between Adam and Eve. Distractions from enjoying God and his creation arose- thorns, mosquitos, worries, fear. . .

That's the world I was born into. It's the world I know as true. But, beyond that is another truth. I live in this world, groaning to be restored. I am called, as a child of God, to be an instrument of his restoration in this world. But, God's original plan was his children, enjoying him, enjoying each other, enjoying creation.

And so often, I don't live like that. Especially lately I feel like I've forgotten how to truly rest. If I'm not working, my mind runs through what I could be doing, should be doing- creating more games for my students to practice their reading skills, writing donation request letters, cooking real food for my dinner, responding to e-mails. . . The list goes on and on and on. And so, I feel guilty for reading a book, watching a movie, going for a walk with no set destination, hanging out in the park on my way home. I'm not really resting, I'm procrastinating. The saying, "there's no rest for the wicked" comes to mind on days when I hurry from one task to another and then try to convince myself that my day was productive enough when I no longer have the energy to bite off another task.

But that's not the way God designed this world. He didn't plan to make humans work so we could solve the world's problems. His words were, "Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11:29). I sometimes see my "work" as the reason I am here. But that's not true. I am here to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever"

I don't want to neglect the work God has given me. I want to put my best into the things I do. But, I also don't want to hold myself to a standard God hasn't given me. I don't want to create tasks for myself to prove, I'm not even sure what- my worth? that what I do here is worthy of the support I receive? I want to learn to rest. To set aside the tasks that will be done later, knowing I have done what I need to for now, and to enjoy. Enjoy God. Enjoy friendships. Enjoy his creation.

Any tips for me as I try to learn what it truly means to rest?

A picnic on the floor

2010-09-19T23:36:00.004-04:00

We sit on grocery bags on the floor that's coated in dust. Doris comments that we're eating a very American lunch, and other than the quatro, a grapefuit flavored soda, she's right- tuna fish sandwiches with tomato and cheese, carrot sticks and potato chips.

My heart is singing, and soon I'm singing out loud as I finish lunch, and move to scrubbing every inch of what will be my room with floral scented disinfectant. Two and a half hours later, the baseboard and walls have been wiped clean, the floor has been swept and mopped, and every bar on the windows has been dusted. I still need to wax the floor, wipe down the closet, and wash the windows. But that can wait for another day, because the sun's going down.

I'm moving! And I'm so excited about it. I don't have a move-in date yet. The electricity still hasn't been turned back on. We have no furniture in the house except for one bed, one table, and one dresser (though I think there's another bed, 4 chairs, and 2 comfy chairs waiting to be brought over). We have nothing for the kitchen. But, I have a set of house keys. :)

For the first time, I'll be living somewhere that's "mine". Well, not really mine, it's the ministry's, but I get to take a house and turn it into a home. I'm looking forward to furniture shopping (Jordi knows a great place to buy cheap 2nd hand furniture). I'm looking forward to arranging and decorating. I'm looking forward to inviting people over for dinner and game nights and Chinese New Year parties.

I can't wait. After-school plans for this week? Cleaning 2 more bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, the kitchen, dining room, living room and all-purpose room.

(And, this week Jessica gets back. Which is exciting in of itself. But, she's also bringing the camera I ordered online with her, so I should have photos to share soon!)

When I don't need to be strong

2010-09-18T10:10:00.003-04:00

I was upstairs, doing some prep-work for my classes during my free period when I heard screams from downstairs. I went down to see if the teacher handling the situation needed an extra set of hands or someone to watch his students, but there was someone else already there. And, as I looked on as one of my students screamed in anger, struggling to get away from the teacher restraining him, and mumbling threats against another student, I broke down.

Usually, kids seem to explode in my class, and I'm the one with my arms wrapped around a little body, trying to speak calming words, reasoning words, and to stay far enough away from walls and chairs that they can't kick them. I have to be strong. I have to be calm.

But this day, someone else had it under control, and I didn't have to be strong. And seeing the rage that has a deep root that I don't even understand, my heart broke for my usually sweet little boy. There was nothing I could do, but pray. So I did. As I fought back tears, I sat half way up the stairs, praying for him and the anger that's so deep in his heart.

I don't know what to do. I don't even know how to deal with the surface issue of fighting, but the heart issues are much deeper. There's a deep hurt below the surface. So, I pray. Pray for wisdom and pray for the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts of my students. He's the only one who really knows what s going on in their hearts, and the only one who can change them from the inside out.

Innocence

2010-09-14T23:04:00.003-04:00

One of my students sat on the park bench with me during recess, playing with my scarf. "Are you gay?" she asked, but with a note of confidence in her voice, as if she knew the answer. I was a bit confused where that question had come from and she repeated it. She repeated it once more, but the last time as a statement, instead of a question, and then, in all her 8 year old wisdom, she told me how she knew: "you like men."

Hoy es.... VIERNES!

2010-09-10T21:53:00.003-04:00

Two things that brightened my day today:

Watching my students play soccer against the high school and older boys in the park. Sebas is an awesome goalie and blocked what looked like were sure to be goals. And then, my little guys scored against the big guys.

Making play-doh with the 1st and 2nd graders. Their enthusiasm to dump flour and salt in a bowl and stir, their faces when they sneaked a taste and realized just how much salt it had in it, their excitement that we used kool-aid to dye it (I haven't found food coloring here yet and kool-aid is cheap, efective, and has the added bonus of smelling good). Moments like those make me love what I do.

home. . .

2010-09-08T21:35:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking lately about going home. Home being where my parents live, where I grew up, where I'm going to spend Christmas.

But, I wonder about the whole concept of home and what that means now. Because, of course, part of going back to where you grew up is going "home". But, I live here now. Maybe not permanently, but I have bought shoe polish and floor wax and a triple pack of toothpaste here, not really things you buy if you're somewhere short-term. I have a cell phone with a local number, I have Colombian insurance, when strangers on the street ask me for directions, I can at least point them in the right direction. I teach at a school here.

I say I'm going "home" when I'm out, and then I mean where I live now, but somehow, despite the fact that I live here, it doesn't really feel like home. Maybe due to how impermanent I know it is- it's pretty likely that within the next month I'll be moving again. Maybe due to the fact that home largely has to do with who lives there, and much as I appreciate the people I live with and work with, they still aren't family.

I wonder if Colombia will ever feel like home.

A much better day

2010-08-05T22:16:00.004-04:00

Today was much better. No fights, laughter and smiles, a prize won, and my first time teaching the 3rd and 4th grade group. I loved teaching them- we're starting a once a week English class- and they loved playing Bingo with the letters of the alphabet in English.

And, tomorrow is Friday. :)

One of those days

2010-08-04T19:43:00.004-04:00

Today was one of those days. It started with a 40 minute walk with a heavy bag of dirt in my backpack. When I walked into my first class of the day and 2 children were hiding behind the door, one had climbed up behind the chalkboard, and another plugged in the piano and started to play, I knew I had my work cut out for me. I managed to get them all back on task, participating, and even having fun. I thought maybe I'd made it safely, when one child exploded because of something another child said. I spent the last 20 minutes of class in the hall, trying to calm that child down and restraining him from going back into class to beat up the kid he was mad at. He finally calmed down enough to follow directions and stayed with another teacher for awhile working until he was able to be in the same classroom as the other student without fighting.

The rest of the day was uneventful, until the last class of the day. It was beautiful and sunny, and we were planting seeds for science class, so I decided to take them outside. Everyone was happy and excited. We went back inside to stick half our plants in the dark and half our plants in the sun for a plant growth experiment, and then I sat them down to read a short book about plants. Two children wouldn't stop insulting each other from across the room while I read. When I spoke to one of them, he agreed to stay in the classroom quietly rather than leave. The other student wouldn't agree to leaving the class or to being quiet in class, so he lost the privilege of taking his plant home with him. He got mad and threw another plant across the room, leaving potting soil streaking the walls and the bulletin board that I just changed yesterday. Another teacher very kindly stayed to supervise as he cleaned the mess he made and I took the other kids to the park for the last 15 minutes of the day until the bus came.

As I walked back home today, I felt so weary and discouraged. The thought of going back tomorrow to work with the same students and quite possibly face the same sort of behavior problems was overwhelming.

And then, I opened my e-mail and saw this

It doesn't matter how bad your day was,

just keep walking with your head up like nothing happened.

Tomorrow's a new day!

And then, talking to a friend, she reminded me that, "you don't have to be ready, just willing and God can use that and prosper that. His grace is enough and he brings new mercies each day!"

Good thing tomorrow is a new day and that God's mercy is new every morning. Hopefully tomorrow will be a different sort of day, but even if it isn't, God will give me the strength I need to get through it, and three months from now, when things are overwhelming and I look back on this day, I'll realize how far I've come, and how far my students have come. Because, the truth is, it's the first time in months that my students have hidden before class, and it used to be an almost daily occurrence. That, despite the fact that I wasn't in the room with my students while I was in the hall working with my angry kiddo , they still did as I asked them too and played a phonics game. That, even when one student's plant was thrown against the wall, he didn't react in anger. That I received apologies today from 3 students whose behavior was not what it should have been. So, even when I'm overwhelmed, I can look and see progress. And I know they will continue to progress.

Well that explains it. . .

2010-07-30T20:37:00.004-04:00

I was looking back over some old blog posts. It's encouraging sometimes to do that. I came across this April 2008 post.

Which brings me back to me. I do not see the fruit of the Spirit displayed as fully in my life as it should be. I am not surrendered completely to the will of God. In living my life ruled more by selfishness and fear than by love and obedience, I am losing the greatest gift I ever could gain, apart from my salvation. I am losing the opportunity to see God glorified completely in my life. I am wasting some of the precious moments of life given to me. That’s not what I want. I long to hear the Father say to me, “well done, my good and faithful servant”. So pray for me, as I work to die to self and live for the one who died for me. Pray for the Church, particularly in America, where comfort often speaks louder to Christians than God’s word does. Pray that we would truly obey his commands, no matter what the earthly consequences.

“May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering”

And then I found this post from November 2007

My prayer is that Jesus' call to "take up the cross and follow me" will ring louder and clearer than all the Christian self-help books promising "Your Best life Now" and the fulfillment of your desires if you just, pray the prayer of Jabez, or do x, y, z. My prayer is that I will take up my cross daily. That I will die to self. That I will truly follow Jesus call, even if it does mean a life of loneliness and suffering and fruits that aren't seen until I am gone. Will you join me in praying for the Christians of our country? Particularly for young people who are still figuring out what life has in store for them. Pray that they would be captured by Jesus' call and seek to follow Him first rather than making a career their priority. Pray that we- all of us who call ourselves followers of Christ- would be unsatisfied by anything less than fully dying to ourselves and knowing the fulfillment that comes of being Christ's hands and feet and mouth here on earth now.

You know what I realized? Right now, the spiritual and emotional conflict I have going on internally are really the path to these prayers being answered. And that gives me hope. I definitely have not arrived yet at the place of "knowing the fulfillment that comes of being Christ's hands and feet an mouth here on earth now". But, I am learning to take up my cross. I am finding great joy in many things. And, more importantly, it gives me some perspective. Seriously, did I expect that prayer to be answered without some pain? But re-reading this prayer helps me see the Father's hand even plainer in my life right now.

Just a word of warning though, before you pray "That I will truly follow Jesus call, even if it does mean a life of loneliness and suffering and fruits that aren't seen until I am gone," decide if you really mean it, because I'm pretty sure God delights in answering out prayers to follow more closely.

The trouble with vowels

2010-07-28T19:08:00.003-04:00

If the language we learned first doesn't discriminate between 2 vowels that exist separately in another language, it can lead to some awkward mispronunciations. The difference between the long e sound and the short i sound is hard for a lot of non-native English speakers. I have more than one latino friend who has told me about their weekend at the bitch. And my proper and well-educated professor from Korea always made me giggle inside each time she told us to take out a shit of paper.

For me, there's very little difference in sound between e and ei in Spanish. So these 2 words, for example, sound almost identical to me: peine=comb pene=penis

The other day, I was reading aloud a story to my first and second graders. In the story, the man brings home a comb to give to his wife as a gift. When I read that, I got some startled looks. "A WHAT?!" asked one little girl. "One of these" I answered, chagrined, pointing to the picture. After that, any time the word comb appeared in the story, I substituted the word brush.

Did I really say what I think I did? Guess what word I'm cutting out of my vocabulary in Spanish.

Today, I'm thankful

2010-07-26T22:27:00.007-04:00

I'm thankful for the friends here and around the world who made my birthday a special one.

My birthday cake from my party on Saturday night.

At least no eggs and flour were thrown.

My roommate Doris surprised me with this cake when I got home tonight!

Talking on skype with family and virtually blowing out the candles on "my" birthday cake

Colombia's Bicentennial!

2010-07-21T20:36:00.007-04:00

As we got closer to the entrance to Plaza de Simon Bolivar, where the fireworks were supposed to begin in 2 hours, the crowd got thicker and thicker. A line of police blocked the entrance. "Sorry, we're full" they told us, so we headed down a few blocks to the next entrance. The police were turning people away there too. But, a bicentennial celebration only happens once every 200 years, and we weren't the only ones who were hoping there was some way we could make it to the plaza for the fireworks. Cheers kept breaking out, and the crowd would momentarily surge forward, but from our vantage point, we couldn't see what was going on. A loud blast startled us, and everyone moved backwards. People with little kids started to leave the area. We decided to climb a tree to find out what was going on. It looked like people were actually getting into the plaza, and Fabian wanted to give it a try, so we headed back into the thickest part of the crowd, the three of us holding hands so we didn't lose each other.

As we got closer to the entrance, the crowd got thicker and people started to push harder. Several people pushed between Linda and I, despite the fact that we were holding hands. It started to sink in that Fabian didn't just want to check things out, if the police barrier broke, we were going through, like it or not, because the hundreds of people behind me were making any other option impossible. My grip on Linda's hand slipped, and suddenly Linda and Fabian disappeared from view, and I was pushed with the crowd to the barrier.

To my surprise, I realized the police had actually reopened the entrance, it was just narrow enough for one person to go through at a time, and, since instead of a line they had a pushing, shoving mob, it looked awfully close to a riot from a distance. It felt pretty close to one from the center too. People shoved around me, in front of me, but now that I realized it was really open, I was determined to get to my friends on the other side, so I made it through too, surprised by the laughter of the police as they shouted out comments, "come through, keep walking, head down, don't run".

Caught in the river of people who had come through, I looked around for Fabian and Linda, but they were nowhere to be seen. I walked up to the security check point, and hovered outside, sure that they would show up soon. They didn't. I walked back towards the entrance, hoping to spot them looking for me. No such luck.

I was starting to panic. I was an obvious gringa, and obviously lost. But, I knew my friends were inside, so I didn't want to leave, and I didn't want to miss the fireworks. I decided to call Fabian's cell phone and find out where they were. 2 minor complications- I didn't have a cell phone, and I didn't know Fabian's number.

I had written down some other people's numbers and had them with me, so I decided to ask around and see if someone would lend me their cell to make a few calls. First I asked a security guard if there was anyone selling minutes in the plaza (in Colombia, everywhere you go there are people standing on the street with cell phones on chains and you can make a call for about 10 cents a minute). He told me there wasn't anyone. Being shy about talking to strangers, especially if I'm going to ask a favor, I just wandered for a few minutes, looking lost. Of course, I wasn't the only one. Almost everyone seemed to be looking for someone from their group. I finally got up the nerve to ask an old lady who smiled at me, but she didn't have a cell phone. Neither did the next lady I asked, but she helpfully suggested that one of the shops outside security but inside the barrier might sell minutes. I went off to see.

The first store I went into didn't, but the next did. And about 4 people were waiting before me, all with the same question, "where are you!" I called the first person on my list. No answer. Second person. Straight to voicemail. With not many options left, I dialed Bibi. She answered! And she had Fabian's number! Praying that he would answer, especially knowing how loud it was in the crowd, I called Fabian. I was never so relieved to hear a voice on the phone. "We're in front of the statue of Simon Bolivar" he told me, "about 15 feet to the north".

I headed back to the plaza, which was now so crowded I wasn't sure I'd make it to the statue, let alone find them. As I finally found myself facing the statue, I tried to replay exactly what Fabian had said. North, right? I thought I was to the north of the statue, but I figured I should ask. So, I asked another lady who smiled at me. "North? hmmm" her friend chimed in, "yes, north is this way", pointing ahead. "Oh good, then my friends should be around here" I said. When they heard that, everyone in their entire group decided to help me in the search.

Who are you looking for? Two friends, a Colombian guy, and a blonde gringa. When I said I was looking for a Colombian guy, they laughed, because it only described roughly 50% of the people there. So, one of them started shouting out, "Mona buscando Colombiano" (blond girl seeks Colombian guy" Unfortunately, the Colombian guy I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. "What's his name?" someone asked. And then, they all started shouting, "Fabian! Fabian!" No response. "Why don't you call him?" one of them asked, and when I said I didn't have a cell phone, suddenly about 6 cell phones were whipped out. I don't know if all the AV equipment was messing with the cell phone signals, or if Fabian just didn't here his cell ring in the crowd, but he must have had a dozen missed calls by the time he saw his phone later that night. Giving up on the whole idea of calling, one of the girls suggested I sit on one of the guys shoulders. At first it seemed like a crazy idea, but then I realized it would give me a better view, so suddenly, I was sitting on a strangers shoulders, waving an umbrella in the air that someone else handed me, as about 15 people all shouted, "Fabian! Fabian!" (they'd already vetoed shouting for Linda, because linda in Spanish means pretty, so it's a bit odd to be shouting. Especially in conjunction with Fabian.)

But, all that shouting accomplished nothing. Neither Fabian nor Linda were anywhere to be seen. But, the group I was with was friendly and funny, and invited me to stay and watch the show with them. So, seeing as I wasn't real likely to just run into Fabian and Linda in that crowd, and I seemed safe where I was at, I hung out with them.

The show was spectacular. They had live music and dancers and a spectacular digital display that played across the whole front of the congress (I think) building. And a wonderful fireworks display. The very end of the fireworks display, they played "La Tierra" by Juanes, and standing in that crowded plaza, singing along with thousands of Colombians while watching the whole sky light up with fireworks was a great end to the show.

As people headed out and the crowd thinned, I thought maybe there was a chance I could find Fabian and Linda so I didn't have to head back home alone. My new friends helped me look, and even convinced the police to let me onto the platform beneath the statue so I could see better. (When they went over to explain that I was looking for my friends, the one police officer said, "Oh, Fabian?" I guess some people heard us, even if Fabian and Linda didn't) I still couldn't find them, so they offered to walk me to where I catch the bus, and we walked off, arm in arm through the crowds, so no one would get lost again. As we headed down toward Septima, one of the girls came running up- "he got Fabian on the phone!" Apparently, one of the guys had kept trying to reach him, and Fabian had answered and not lost the connection. In a minute they'd figured out a rendevous point, and we headed down to the corner of Septima. Where Fabian and Linda were still nowhere to be seen. "What's he look like?" one of the guys asked me. "Well, he's a little taller than me, but not much. He has dark hair, his skin is pretty dark. . ." The other guy interrupted me. "latino" he said. Yup. Him and 7 million other people in Bogota. "Look for the blond girl" I said, just as Fabian and Linda rounded the corner.

So, safely back with Fabian and Linda, I said good-bye to the group I'd spent the evening with and headed home. And you know what? I think I'm glad I got lost. It was much more of an adventure that way. :)

(This was so much cooler in real life, where you could actually see the whole building this was projected on. But, check out the bit starting at 2:17)

A very Bogota day

2010-07-16T21:34:00.003-04:00

The short version

Bikes

Waiting in line

Rain

Buses

Almuerzo Executivo

Museo de Oro

Juan Valdez Cafe

Septimazo

Transmilenio

The long version

Ever since I got to Bogota, I've been saying I never want to drive here. Today, I decided that riding a bike might be worse. Edwin and Alex left their bikes at our house the other day, so we decided to ride over in the morning and leave them at their house. Bikes have no rear view mirrors. They have no side view mirrors. Nothing separates you from the cars that pass too close. I suddenly realized how full Bogota is of potholes. And, we didn't even have helmets. We mostly took residential roads with very little traffic, but it was still a harrowing experience.

On our way back to the 127 house, we stopped at the bank so I could pay my insurance bill. Here, to pay bills, rather than sending checks or paying automatically online, you go to a bank, fill out a form that identifies the institution you are paying your bill to, and then stand in line with all the other people paying their phone, water, insurance, gas, electric and who knows what other bills. We waited for 40 minutes. When I finally got to the front of the line, I realized I'd written my cedula (Colombian issued id) number on the line, instead of my passport number which is the number I'd used to register for my insurance. I had to go back and fill out all my forms again, but fortunately then I could jump to the head of the line.

While we were in the bank, it started to rain. Fortunately, we were on bikes so the trip to the 127 house didn't take 40 minutes. Unfortunately, rain makes riding a bike even scarier and harder. We showed up, soaking wet and cold. We hung out til we were hungry and realized if we were going to do any site seeing it was now or never.

We caught a bus to the center and, guided by our stomachs, walked into a place serving "almuerzo ejecutivo". These set lunches are served all over in Colombia. They usually start with soup, then you have rice, beans, a small salad and your choice from 2 or 3 different kinds of meat. They're tasty, more food than I can finish, and usually cost around $2 or $3. The 3 of us split 2 lunches and then wandered through the drizzle until we found the Gold Museum. They have, I believe, the world's best collection of pre-Colombian gold artifacts. It's a nice museum with incredible exhibits and a lot of great information on gold and metal-work, the culture of the indigenous groups who lived here before the conquistadors arrived, and the significance of the different gold ornaments.

We followed up our visit to the Gold Museum by going to Juan Valdez Cafe. Think the Colombian version of Starbucks, complete with comfy chairs and tempting pastries.

By the time we left Juan Valdez, Septimazo had already started and Anna wanted an arepa, so we walked along Septima in the drizzle. Tuesday is Independence day, so there were stages set up with school kids' performances and someone rapping, as well as a parade complete with people on stilts and a small army of Simon Bolivars with giant heads.

When we were chilled to the bone and had seen all there was to see, we headed back home on the Transmilenio. On our way back, we stopped at the grocery store for 30 eggs (it's a whole lot cheaper to buy them that way than to buy them by the dozen) so we could make pancakes for dinner. Pancakes and home fries rounded off our very Bogota day with an American ending.

Retail therapy, or how I spent 86,100 pesos

2010-07-13T21:12:00.009-04:00

I'm really not much of a shopper, but my favorite pair of jeans got a hole in the knee and the only pair of half-way decent shoes I have for walking in I bought here for $7 four months ago and they're falling apart, so it was time to go shopping. Doris suggested Anna and I go with her to a neighborhood maybe 15 minutes north of us where prices are cheaper.

I left the first store I went into smiling, a bag with new shoes swinging in my hand. When we walked in and saw a sign advertising "2 for 5000" I knew I liked the place (5000 pesos is roughly $2.50- chop off 3 zeros and divide by 2) The shoes in the 2 for 5000 bin weren't quite what I was looking for, but when I got to the bin for 25,000, I found pair after pair that I liked. Actually, that's a misstatement. I found shoe after shoe I liked. The only problem was, they didn't seem to have mates. Turns out they keep the other shoe upstairs so they don't grow legs and walk away. Once you try on one, they'll bring you the other to see what you think. I was tempted to buy 2 pairs of shoes at that price, but I don't really need 2, so I stuck with one.

Then, walking down the street, I found something that made my day- the Colombian equivalent of the dollar store! Except, it was even better because everything was 1000 pesos, which is more like 50 cents. I've been really wishing I could find one, because my students can earn prizes based on good behavior and I was mostly finding things in the 3,000 peso range at other stores. Now I'm stocked up on rubik's cubes, squishy balls, hair ties and more. And, when I run out of pens, pencils, and markers, I know where to buy more.

We walked in and out of stores, up and down several streets. I found a pair of jeans I liked, we bought arepas for an early dinner and pastel de pollo for a late lunch (our gas was turned off this morning after the safety inspection person showed up, determined we didn't have enough ventilation, and told us we need to add another ventilation pipe before it will be turned back on. We can't cook or take hot showers until then. Fortunately, the repair man is supposed to show up tomorrow morning.) Finally, with just enough money left in my pocket for my bus fair home and some coins left over, we headed back to the house.

I moved!

2010-07-13T10:53:00.003-04:00

Now I have my own room!

I'm farther away from everything, which isn't as convenient, but it is nice to have my own space. The house belongs to a Dutch couple who are home visiting family for 2 months. I'm sharing the house with a Colombian girl named Doris and a Jamaican woman named Donna.

Broken

2010-07-12T19:22:00.004-04:00

Years ago, I heard a sermon called "turkey vultures and china plates". I honestly don't remember most of it, but I do remember one illustration. The illustration of a china plate, broken into pieces, and those pieces being re-formed into the image of Christ. The smaller the pieces, the more like him the plate could become.

I feel broken. Emotionally fragile. I think for the first time in my life I'm really "counting the cost" because for the first time in my life there's something I really, really wanted but I lost it because I followed God here. And that hasn't been easy. We sing so many songs: "you're all I want, you're all I need, you're everything" "All of you is more than enough for all of me, for every thirst and every need. You satisfy me with your love, and all I have in you is more than enough" And I find myself questioning that. God is more than enough. He is everything. But he is not ALL I want. Right now I'm finding this quote by St. Teresa of Avila much more true in my life, “I don’t love You. I don’t want to love You. But I want to want to love You.” Except, I think I would say, "I don't trust you with my life. I don't want to trust you with my life. But I want to want to trust you with my life"

You see, there are no guarantees to following Jesus. Actually, there are. Here are the guarantees we have, "Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also." (John 15:20) and "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

So, in saying yes to following Jesus, I'm saying yes to trouble and persecution. Maybe there will also be marriage, children, a fruitful ministry, close friends, a church I love. But, maybe there will be loneliness, failure, cancer, disappointment. Moses lived in exile for 40 years, then spent another 40 years wandering the wilderness, leading people who were rebellious, stubborn, ungrateful, and whining. He never entered the promised land. And yet, God "would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to a friend" (Ex. 31:11). Moses was a humble man, who followed God faithfully, much more so than I do, and his personal life was definitely far from desirable.

Of course, Moses saw God work powerfully and miraculously. He witnessed things I can only dream of. And of course, once we're in heaven, there will be no sorrow, no tears. We will rejoice with our Savior. And, every sacrifice, every struggle, every tear will be worth it. But right now, in the midst of struggles and tears, it's hard to feel motivated by heaven, a concept that is still that- a concept- to me. Streets of gold, gates of pearls, it all sounds very nice, and if Jesus promised it is, it must be, but it is beyond my understanding. Heaven deals with the infinite, and in my finiteness, it's impossible for me to grasp.

And so, I'm left, standing at a cross-roads. My heart is shattered on the ground at my feet. Ahead, Jesus beckons. And I'm scared to follow, because I don't know what lies ahead. I know he promises to go with me. To never forsake me. To give me joy and abundant life. But maybe the way leads through the valley of the shadow of death. Maybe I will learn joy in the midst of sorrow. Maybe I will learn to feel his hand when circumstances make me feel forsaken.

I once read the biography of a Chinese house church leader. Imprisoned, beaten so badly he couldn't walk for years, and kept in solitary confinement, his reflection when he finally miraculously escaped was that his time in prison had been so sweet because of the intimacy of his relationship with Jesus. When I read that, my soul longed for that sort of intimacy with God. And yet, at the same time, I told Him, I don't want to go through the pain and suffering he went through. But, something tells me that it is the furnace that refines us, trouble that drives us in desperation into God's arms.

I can't even claim to be suffering anything truly unique or devastating. And still, I hesitate, this little bit of pain making me question full surrender my Savior. But also making me question myself. Making me question how much I truly love Him, how committed I am. Because, if something as small as this makes me question Him, how would I respond if I were thrown into solitary confinement, if I lost a child, if I suddenly found out I had a form of aggressive cancer? Would I cling to Jesus? Would I trust in His love, in His ability to use even the most horrible of circumstances for good? Or would I doubt Him, and walk away?

But the other road? Jesus isn't on it. And as scary as the thought of following Jesus wherever he leads might be, going without him is even more terrifying. There's no meaning without him. No light without him. No one to hold my hand in the valley of the shadow of death. There are no guarantees on this road either. Sure, I might make my own choices, but those choices could lead to failure, to heart break, to all the things I fear.

And so, I find myself, stalling at the cross-roads. I know I won't, I can't follow the road without Jesus. I don't want to. There's only emptiness there. And I know that with Jesus, I have the best companion for my journey and an incredible destination at the end. I'm just wishing there were some guarantees that along the way some of the things I'm hoping for would happen. But there aren't. And I need to step down that road, following my savior, regardless of the circumstances, knowing that He will go with me, He will provide for me, His love for me is greater than I can understand, and no matter what the road looks like, He will provide strength and joy.

Luke 14 25-33 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? . . . In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple."

Tierra Caliente!

2010-07-06T19:32:00.004-04:00

By 4:45 am, with all the girls brushing their hair and teeth, I still hadn't heard a noise from the boys' room, and I didn't see a light from under the door. I knocked, "rise and shine!" I was greeted by a grunt from the other side of the door. Twenty minutes later, the 6 of us walked out the door into the cold, drizzly Bogota morning. We waited at the bus stop for half an hour, wondering why every bus that went by went to the center, and not a single one went where we wanted to go. Finally, we caught a bus, and splashing through the puddles, headed in the direction of the main bus terminal. With our hoods and umbrellas up, shivering in the rain as we walked the last few blocks to the terminal, we wondered if we were crazy to think we were going to go swimming.

The bus terminal's motto claims that it will be a "pleasant experience", but when you're anticipating a 3 hour bus ride on a bus without a bathroom, and bathrooms in the terminal charge 700 pesos just to use them, with a 200 peso additional charge for toilet paper, it's a little hard to agree with that. An additional 3000 pesos for sweet bread to share on the bus and 15,000 pesos each for our tickets, and we were on our way to Melgar in Tierra Caliente by 7:30.

Melgar is a popular tourist destination for Bogotanos, who, despite the fact that they live very close to the equator, never have a day hot enough for swimming because of the high altitude. Just hours downhill though, the climate changes, and swimming pools and resorts abound. Since pretty much everyone on the bus was off to do exactly what we were- spending a day at the pool- there was a festive atmosphere on the bus. We stopped to pick up more passengers along the way, and between the salsa, merengue, ballenato and reggaeton playing on the speakers, the laughter in the aisles at Fabian's constant monlouge, gorgeous views of the mountains, and frequent jokes about our need for a bathroom break, the time went by quickly. We did stop once, and one of the girls who went in search of a bathroom also found a mango tree and brought back a bag of green mangos to share with everyone. Green mangos are not my favorite, but eating them gives you something to do on a longish bus ride.

Our final destination was a water park, Piscilago, just a bit outside of Melgar. Most of the people on the bus, and maybe half the population of Bogota seemed to have the same destination that day. After avoiding the vendors outside the gate selling hats, swimsuits, and "mandatory" swim caps, we finally made it inside. As we walked through the park, past the various pools and water slides, we started looking around. Maybe swim caps really WERE mandatory. Everyone seemed to be wearing one. We broke down and bought them, because we though the 4 blonde girls in the pool without swim caps would be VERY noticeable. Fortunately for us, the Colombians haven't quite perfected the art of ripping of a captive audience and even though lunch we twice the price we could have found it for outside the park, the swim caps cost the same inside and outside the gates- roughly 50 cents.

We spent the day swimming, standing in really long lines (that's what happens on the Sunday of a 3 day weekend when kids are on a 2 week vacation from school), going down giant water slides, eating jelly belly jelly beans, and alternately trying to tan or trying not to get burnt depending on our original skin color. (I was trying not to burn. I do not get tan in one day. I get lobster red. I was amazingly successful at not getting at all burnt).

We stopped in Melgar on our way back for dinner. We had rotisserie chicken. Here it comes already cut in pieces with baked potatoes that have been rolled in salt, mini arepas, and if you are lucky, fried plantains (we weren't lucky this time). It's also served without silverware, and "chupando huesos", or eating all the meat off the bones, is an art.

The bus ride back was uneventful. I talked poor Edwin's ear off because I talk too much when I haven't gotten enough sleep. We caught a bus without problem when we left the terminal, but it only took us part way home. We got off at Carrera 57. We live on Carrera 7. We walked. And walked. And walked. And walked. For blocks and blocks and blocks. No buses passed, except for one, and when Fabian asked if it went to 7th the bus driver said it only went to the 15th. After he drove off, I realized the 15 would be a whole lot better than 40 something, but it was too late. 2 taxi drivers stopped for us, but refused to take all 6 of us, and since expenses had run a little higher than estimated, we weren't sure we had enough money left to pay for 2 taxis. Finally, the 3rd taxi that stopped took us. We laughingly said we were going to go to Alex's when we got back to ask for the ice cream he'd promised us the night before, but we decided midnight was a bit late for that.

As we drove up we noticed Alex's light was still on. Inside the house, the door to his side was open and everyone was up watching a movie, so we went in to ask for ice cream. He gave us ice cream, and then leftover soup, and potatoes with guacamole. It was a delicious end to a wonderful day!

1 year

2010-07-03T19:10:00.002-04:00

1 year ago today, I arrived in Costa Rica to start my DTS.

Today, I'm graduating from the Children at Risk school.

In the past year, I've been to four countries, three for the first time: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Colombia. I lived for 5 months in both Costa Rica and Colombia. I visited friends in Ecuador that I hadn't seen in years. I made friends with people from all over the world. I shared my testimony and spoke from the pulpit in Spanish during church services. I started teaching at Luz y Vida. I fell in love. I had my heart broken. I had 4 places I considered "home", places I looked forward to coming back to when I was away, places where my photos stayed on the wall, my bed stayed made, my extra clothes were stored, and there were loved ones to eat dinner with. I sold my car. I learned dozens of songs in Spanish. I learned to cook gallo pinto and make arepas. I visited more churches than I can remember.

It's been a year full of changes. I wonder what the next year will bring?

Day 1 of "vacation"

2010-06-29T17:40:00.003-04:00

At Luz y Vida, we're having 2 weeks of in-school "vacation", fieldtrips, games, crafts, and other fun activities. Today was the first day.

I got off the bus and Andy handed me 40,000 pesos. "Do you know how to make pancakes?", he asked. The store, he said, was just around the corner, and I should plan on breakfast for 60.

I recruited Linda to go with me, but when we walked around the corner, the only store we saw was closed. We kept walking until we found a bakery which looked like they were selling flour, but it turned out to be arepa mix. They gave us directions to what turned out to be the same store that was still closed. As we were walking out, we ran into some more of the staff who were stopping in for breakfast. We left, when I realized they could probably give us directions to another store, plus, I found money of my own in my pocket and really wanted some bread. So, back we went, and bread bought and directions obtained, found a little store that sold milk in bags and individual eggs with everything behind the counter.

While I made pancakes, our normally rambunctious dining room became chaotic. All the children from the Other Way, plus the continuing education students are spending these 2 weeks with us as well, so we have more than double the usual amount of students.

After breakfast, I shepherded all the children 8 and under into the first grade classroom for a devotional. A visiting team of YWAMers on their outreach from New Zealand led while I translated.

Afterwards, we split the kids up into groups for stations. I spent my day helping kids stuff bean bag frogs with cotton and toilet paper (we just didn't have enough cotton to go around. . .)

When we finished with that, we painted animal cutouts with glue and shook them up in a bag full of paper scraps (an idea I got from my friend Leslie).

The day ended with a mad scramble into the bus (which technically seats 22), as we stopped by the Other Way to drop off 10 or more kids there, then went on to Paraiso to drop off 11 more kids, and then headed back to the 127 house with 23 people still in the bus.

I think these "vacation" days are going to leave me more tired than regular days, but it's fun to see the kids enjoying themselves and doing new things.

The little things that make it all worth it

2010-06-23T21:44:00.003-04:00

I almost cried this morning, riding on the bus with my kiddos. We stopped at a light and one of my second graders started to read the street sign out loud "entrada" Another pointed out another sign that said "centro de . . ."

They're reading! On their own! And, what's even more beautiful, the fact that they are doing that means they see themselves as readers.

Septimazo

2010-06-13T21:33:00.003-04:00

Bus- 1,350 pesos

Shish-kebab- 1,000 pesos

Aromatica (herbal tea made with fresh herbs)- 800 pesos

A night at Septimazo- Priceless

Every Friday in Bogota, they shut down several blocks of Septima, one of the main roads. There are street vendors selling everything from handmade jewelry, to art made out of melted plastic cups, to collapsible laundry hampers. There's also food for sale. Arepas with cheese, corn on the cob, hamburgers, fresh sliced pineapple and mango, grilled meat, potatoes. . . There are street artists too. Groups that dance salsa, others that dance hip-hop. There are people who wear elaborate costumes and paint themselves and pose like statues until someone puts a coin in their collection box, and then they come to life. There are comedy acts and jugglers.

I went this weekend with some of the girls from the school and Doris. We had a great time bargaining with the vendors, people watching, and laughing at Doris as she took over the aromatica stand when the vendor went to get change and almost sold a man a cup of tea for half price.

Dumplings in Colombia

2010-06-02T19:44:00.003-04:00

As I walked out of the 2nd store where I'd failed to find ground pork (after stopping by a roadside stand to pick up cabbage, garlic, and green onions), I contemplated my options- take the 20 minute walk to Exito and hope they had it there, or give up and make beef dumplings. I wasn't sure I had time to walk to Exito and back and still get my dumplings made by 7, but I didn't want to give up either, so I walked toward ninth, trying to make up my mind.

Somewhere along the way I remembered the butcher shop which was practically on my way home. Once someone appeared from the back, I told her what I wanted and waited as she took it to the back and ground it for me.

Everyone was busy in the kitchen, so I took over the dining room. I mixed my dough and started chopping cabbage, glancing every once and awhile at our family blog where I posted the recipe the first time I made dumplings. J (she's a 12 year old Colombian-American) came over to see what I was doing and saw the power point I had open which I hadn't had time to start. She offered to help, so while I made Chinese dumplings and we listened to salsa, she worked on a slide show about the United States.

KT (a 5 year old) came over to watch too, and she wanted to help. So, while I rolled out dumpling wrappers, I showed her how to put a spoonful in each one and seal them. She's a careful little worker, and loves to help. She did a great job, though at times she liked to be silly and ask me if she should put in about 3 times the amount of filling I showed her.

After we'd been working awhile, everyone from the farm arrived. E (3) and T (not quite 2) wanted to help too. So, we pulled up chairs to the table and I gave everyone a ball of dough to roll out.

Everyone who walked by wondered what we were making until they saw the ready-to-be cooked dumplings. Then, to a Colombian, the answer was obvious. "Oh, you're making empanadas!" Well, sort of. I told them they were a Chinese version of empanadas.

Culture night was pretty awesome. We had food from Colombia, Venezuela, the US, New Zealand, Holland, and, of course, my dumplings. And, once the food was eaten and the presentations over, we cleared away the chairs, and danced. I love that social dancing is a part of life here.

The rest of the story

2010-05-15T20:38:00.005-04:00

Sometimes, my theology gets messed up. Lately, I've been finding myself fearing that my whole life will be one of dreary obedience, one difficult struggle after another that molds me more and more into Christ's likeness (so therefore, ultimately for my own good). But that kind of good (the kind of good that says to eat oatmeal because it's healthy for you or makes you get your MMR booster shot) doesn't make me excited about following Jesus.

Of course, God does use difficult circumstances to mold us. But that's not the whole picture. It's also true that God is a God who wants to bless his children with good gifts.

I knew that in my mind, but I wasn't living by that in my heart. So, I started to pray that God would show himself to me in a way that revealed that not only was He my provider, not only was He in control of my future, but that He wanted to bless me with good things.

Remember my post from a few nights ago? The post where I shared how hungry I was for a novel? Well, today, I walked past a shelf I have walked past hundreds of times before. Suddenly, I noticed something new. The top shelf now has a row of books on it. Novels. In English. There are more than 20 of them. Everyone agrees that they weren't there a few days ago. I'm not sure who put them there, or when exactly they showed up. But I do know this. God loves me. Not just in a distant, "I'm doing this for your own good" sort of way. God cares about my desires, not just my needs. He won't always fulfill all my desires. But he will bless me with good gifts. A life of following Jesus won't be one of dreary obedience. There will be joy in the journey and surprises and good things along the way.

"If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" Matthew 7:11