Words and Pride

Every morning I wake up and am confronted with words I don't know. Being a writer and a word lover at heart, this drives me insane.  In order to effectively communicate I have taken up dynamic facial expressions and hand motions that I would never do ordinarily for any reason whatsoever. I can tell you with no doubt in my mind that there are times I look like an absolute fool.
Needless to say, my pride has gone straight out the window.
When I lived in the States I would do anything to spare myself from being wrong. I would only answer questions that I knew I knew the answer to. I would sit at the back of my class and never make eye contact with my teachers. I was quiet, pensive, some might say thoughtful. Here, I don't have that option if I want to learn.
Every day I have the chance to learn something new or to stick with what I know, and every day I have to decide which one I want to choose. Learning involves messing up. It's embarrassing, and at times, I would rather sit in my room and watch movies in English than go out and risk messing up. Most days, though, I pray for the courage to ask questions, to make a fool of myself, and to learn.
Everyone around me has become my teacher.
It's humbling to say the least.
The Lord has me in a place of complete dependence on Him and absolute humbling with each and every day. It is this call, this love, this passion that makes it all worth it. I want nothing more than to speak freely with those I am starting to love more than I ever could imagine. God has given me a heart for these people, and thus a heart for their language.
My pride is gone. I have no choice but to go for it, to mess up, and to learn so that one day I can speak, interact, and love as those surrounding me.

Grass Roots

For years my family had this tradition that on your birthday everyone in the family would go around and give you a blessing. So the younger kids would say things like "You're so funny and I love the cakes you make" and the adults would talk about what a blessing you are and how "God is going to use you" in the next year. It was a great tradition. I looked forward to it mainly because my love language is encouragement, but I'm sure there were others that dreaded it, which is probably why we don't do it anymore.

On my thirteenth birthday, I remember that one of my brothers (you know who you are) called me grass. The speech started out with loving compliments, but eventually I found myself listening to my brother tell me why I am the family lawn. In my mind I remember thinking, ".... organic? earthy? what? grass?"  I cried, not because grass isn't awesome but mainly because I am overly sensitive and as a newly thirteen year old I didn't really want to be grass. I wanted to be a rockstar or something. 

Now that I think back, though, I understand what he was saying.

When I think of any good Oklahoman grass I think of thick, lush, dark green, soft to the touch, moist grass. It's the grass you roll around in with your dog and have picnics on at the park, the kind you run through as a child when you play tag with friends, the kind that neighborhood friendships and communities are build on. Grass... it's usually overlooked. You don't think about the beauty of it, or why it's there, rather, you take advantage of it. It's not just to be looked at. Grass is to be played on, to be trampled by happy feet, to create a soft spot to land when you jump out of a tree or trip over your own feet. It's to be used. Without people walking on it and having picnics, there is no need for grass. 

A couple weeks ago we had a team come in and we went to the Ranch (our second property in Zaragoza that I'm basically in love with) and what was our task for the day? To pick grass so we could plant it at the Refuge. We picked the perfect little seedlings out of the field that surrounded us, and pulled the pieces of grass out of the weeds that were masking it.   At the end of the day, we drove back to the Refuge and transplanted our freshly picked grass in a place that it could flourish.  As we planted the grass in the drizzling rain, we knew that this small task, planting sprigs of grass three feet away from each other, isn't something that is just going to look pretty. Rather, it's going to hold the earth together so the rain can't wash it away. The roots are going to spread. The grass is going to take root. The green lush is going to spread over the whole hillside. 

I want our boys to be this grass. Right now, they are surrounded by weeds. But after years of rain and nurturing they will spread, grow, cover their land, and be the roots that hold their community together. I want them to take root in the Lord and grow. I want them to spread to all the nations. I want them to be the ones that build up their community and make it a safer, more beautiful place to live.


They all have gifts and dreams, and I don't want those to go to waste. I want the boys to feel important, to be confident, and know that they are loved and adored. I want them to feel like they have a reason to grow, that there are people who need them. They won't be overlooked anymore, because we are picking them out of the dirt, and pushing aside the weeds, and giving them a place to grow.  

Laughing with Jesus

I have to be honest: I miss laughing. My best friends in the States would leave me with a hurting belly and sore cheeks after eating dinner together or playing frisbee in the parking lot on nearly a daily basis. I laughed with my parents over the stupid TV shows we would watch. I laughed with my brother as we wrestled over our favorite blankets on the couch. We laughed all day, every day.
If any of you know me well, you know that I love deep conversation, I thrive off of it, but I also thrive off of witty humor and pure hilarity. I love making witty and sarcastic comments. I love to laugh at my own jokes. I love being tickled. I love when you get to that point when you are laughing so hard you can't breathe. I love that awkward silent moment after a joke and before everyone explodes into laughter. I love having to bend over to hold my stomach because I'm laughing so hard I can't stand up straight. I love it. All of it.
It's hard to laugh when you have no clue what is happening around you. It's hard to make jokes when you can't speak a language. I don't understand jokes. I don't understand why people laugh. So instead of having deep and heartfelt conversations and laughing so hard I can't stand up, I've found myself in constant silence. Listening. Learning. Growing closer to the Lord.
In the silence that is my life, I've found a refuge in the One who made me with this overwhelming desire to laugh. He understands, and lets me laugh at myself. He brings a joy to my life that I wouldn't have known otherwise. I've found myself talking to God as I drive home from work, walk around Antigua, and clean my little room. I make jokes to myself at the dinner table and I laugh at myself and He laughs with me. The other day some guys whistled at me as I walked down the street and I said, "Can you believe that, God? Why do they do that?" And He laughed at me. He laughed with me.
Though I miss having friends, I love have having God. I miss laughing, but I love rejoicing. I cry because I miss things, and He laughs because he has a plan.
It's wonderful to serve such and incredible loving Father, a father who knows your every thought, your every desire, your every heartache.
Last night I told my mom that I had too good of friends in the States, that I should have never made friends so I would never know that right now I am lonely. And at that, she laughed. And I laughed knowing just how stupid I really am.  The Lord gave me those friends, and gave me this time of silence so I will know what it's like to depend on Him, to make Jesus my best friend, to laugh with Him, to cry with Him, to walk down the street leaning on Him.
It's not easy, this life of silence and solitude, but it's good. It's good for me to know what it's like to let Jesus hold me and talk to me and whisper His secrets in my ear. It's good for me to have to rely on the Lord for comfort. I have no other choice but to run to him in the good times and the bad. After a day of joy, I run to Him. After a day of sorrow, I run to Him. And he holds me all the same, and reminds me that He is my comfort, my healer, my friend.

engadiministries.org

Painting Paradise

A couple weeks ago, we went with one of our teams into Paradise to paint the soccer stadium and hang out with some of the kids. As we lugged down the huge paint jugs and all of our supplies, the kids and families met us and asked us if they could help us paint. Of course we said yes. As we started to distrubute the supplies and get started painting, kids came from all over the neighborhood. (One thing I have learned quickly from spending time in Paradise is that when it comes to gringos, news travels fast when we arrive.)  After painting for a few minutes, there were more kids on the stands than there were gringos. Looking into their sweet eyes, we couldn’t help but give the kids the brushes and let them go to town, painting their stadium. It was truly a beautiful sight to look up into the stands and see the kids painting their own thing. I think the kids got more paint on each other than they got on the stands, even the dog was painted blue at the end of the day, but with each swipe of the brush and uproar of laugher as they got paint in my hair or accidentally painted a huge stipe across my legs as they walked by, I was infinitely blessed. I loved getting to know their precious faces, and asking their names over and over again, and listening to them giggle when I messed up what I was trying to say. They just smiled up at me with those big brown eyes and there was nothing I could do but hold their paint covered hands and giggle at the fact that I had no clue what I was saying. 

As we painted, we talked about what they wanted to be when they grew up and which subjects in school were their favorite. I stumbled through my broken Spanish and marveled at them as they taught me the words to say, pronouncing them slow and without accent. We ran around chasing each other with paint, and laughed as they put their hand prints on my T-shirt at the end of the day, forever making their claim on my life. 

As we painted and played and talked, I got to tell the kids that at the end of the week I wasn’t going home. That I would see them again soon, that I loved them too much to leave.  The looks on their faces were sometimes puzzled and other times full of joy as they realized that this was my home and that all of our laughs and broken words wont just stand as an incredible memory, but rather the start of relationships. 

I went home that night and played conversations and memories over and over in my head.  Josue, one of the best little painters out there, wants to be an architect. Julio wants to be a doctor. Yoselin wants to be a secretary. They all have dreams, just like I did as a kid. My dream was to be a missionary, and after years of encouragement and lots of prayer here I am. Now, my dream is to pay it forward. 

My dream is to make their dreams a reality. 

Engadiministries.org

Not so distant

I knew being a missionary in Guatemala was going to be hard, but in the last day I have been hit with the realization that it is going to be harder than I thought. Yesterday when we went to the work site to pay our workers. Don Chepe, our block mason, told us about how his wife was very sick. She has diabetes and is no longer reacting to insulin. Her blood sugar is staying at about 550. On top of the diabetes, she also has a lung infection as well as a urinary tract infection. In the last few weeks she has been having a series of strokes. She is beyond sick, and Don Chepe is still at work, making our vision come to life. We prayed for Don Chepe, his wife, and the rest of his family as a team and then we all went back to work. Just another heart breaking day in the life... but it wasn't over.
At dinner we were listening to a CD that our church had given us and one of the pastors voice came on and Juan Carlos solemnly said, that's pastor (I forgot his name, but we will call him Alberto), their pastor and close friend. At that moment the entire table became silent. I sat there quietly knowing something was wrong and soon Eric, the other intern who also lives with us, told me the story of how Alberto died. He had gone with a friend to pick up a car in one of the more dangerous neighborhoods. The gang members captured him, shot him and put him in the back of the car. They then called the Police and told them they had "left a present for them in the back of the car". This was two months ago. Everyone started crying. Sandra, my Guatemalan mom, said that they hadn't had the chance to cry about it until now. My heart continued to break.
I love these people like they are my own, and can't imagine the struggles they go through. Every day I'm here the hardships become more real. A lot of the time I think about the problems of Guatemala being so removed from me, but in all reality, they aren't at all. In that case, they are removed by two degrees. Their troubles aren't so distant anymore. I'm not so distant anymore.

That's why I'm here.

engadiministries.org

Tall White trees and cobblestone streets

In the last few days, I have been surrounded with some of my absolute favorite things. I've been surrounded by colors, bright and beautiful, people, sweet and simple, and nature that shows God's finest handiwork. Cobblestone streets, crazy drivers, and Spanish constantly surrounds me as I yearn to learn. It's funny how the language has struck me since I arrived. In the States Spanish is so easy to drown out, but here, I have no choice but to try to pick apart every piece of it, hoping that one day I can speak as they do. I'm completely overwhelmed with gratitude, peace, confusion, and information overload. I have learned more in the last 4 days than I did in the last month I spent in the States. I've been sucking information in like my life depends on it (because it does) and trying my best to live and breathe the culture as if it was my own. It's not as hard as I thought it would be. I'm not as nervous or sad as I thought. I'm just me, living in the place I like to call home.
The family I am living with is precious and absolutely wonderful, yet it is in that house that I have found my biggest frustration: not knowing the language. I feel stupid most of the time because I have an answer to the questions they ask me, and I understand full well what they are saying, but for the life of me, I can't find the words to respond and so I just smile meekly and say, "Si", "Esta bien", "Gracias", or "Okay", and most of the time a complete combination of the four.
Today was the first day I had access to the internet since I got here. It's funny how much I didn't really miss it. In the time between getting on the plane and now, I have learned to play chess, tried loads of new foods, learned to drive a standard in Guatemala, watched movies, walked around town just for fun (does that ever really happen in the States?), visited the places I have come to love the most, laughed with my dad and brother, and experienced my new life to the absolute fullest. I love it more than I may even know. Though it is my job to communicate with people in the States, I really don't want to spend my life on my computer, at least not for the first little while. I'm trying really hard to adapt to this new culture, language, people, etc, and english, and the internet isn't much help in that situation, so balance is key.
I know many of you have a million questions that you want answered about my life here, but the truth is that I don't really have the answers yet. I'm a huge jumble of emotions. I am content. I am relieved. I am thankful. I am free.

engadiministries.org

Toxic Charity Book Review.

I’m very interested in what it might look like to implement a lot of the practices that I learned from reading When Helping Hurts from the first class, so reading Toxic Charity was a great suggestion concerning community development and how churches and organizations, religions and secular, can give help to those who need it without demeaning them or making them feel lesser than the giver. The author is blunt yet sensitive in presenting the critique on our ways of giving. In the very first chapter, the author immediately presents the reader with a list of rules of how to give compassionate service in a healthy way that is beneficial to both the giver and the receiver. Lupton’s rules are simple and set a great foundation for giving of any kind. He challenges the reader to take The Oath for Compassionate Service, as he calls it, which is a follows:

1. Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
2. Limit one-way giving to emergency situations
3. Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
4. Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served
5. Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said-unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
6. Above all, do no harm.

This oath will ensure a kind of service that will be successful in creating an environment where the giver and the receiver both feel empowered through service and being served.
Paternalism is our greatest enemy when it comes to helping the poor, or as Lupton calls them, the “have lesses”. Avoiding paternalism and encouraging people to do what they can to help themselves immediately shuts down most of the service that is seen today. Our culture is very concerned with helping people and giving to the less fortunate, which is great, but it seems that though the intentions are pure, the help does more harm than good. For example, when a single mother loses her job and is evicted from her home, giving her and her children an apartment free of charge and providing her with food and clothing for the children “until she can find a job” may not be the best thing for her. In fact, it creates a dependency that is unhealthy. Soon, you may find out that this mother isn’t searching for a job as intently as you would have expected and hoped. Who can blame her? She is being given food and clothing, and a place to stay for free. Why work when you’ve already got everything you need?
Our society says that all aid is good aid, when the fact of the matter is that often times our aid falls into hands that misuse or abuse our aid, making seem that not giving aid is more helpful than actually giving aid in some regards.  For example, trillions of dollars have flooded into Africa in the last decade and still very little progress has been made due to corrupt governments and the fact that our aid actually puts people out of much needed jobs. The greatest problems with dead aid is that many have no clue what is happening with their money once it is given and relief aid is often given too long, which keeps a community down instead of encouraging it to pick itself up.  Providing emergency type aid is not usually necessary except in cases such a natural disasters. It is temporary and should quickly move to rehabilitation which over time should move to development. Rehabilitation and development are harder and take a lot of time, so often, they are pushed to the side and supplemented by quick fixes that ultimately don’t help much over and extended period of time. The sad thing is, people simply don’t know the difference. The US is extremely uneducated when it comes to aid giving. We need to find a way to figure out what to do with our money that is healthy and beneficial. I hope that after time the news will spread and rehabilitation and development will become the new goal when it comes to raising money.
I think often times the poor are forgotten when it comes to trying to help them. We have this preconceived idea that the poor need us because they can’t help themselves, which is ridiculous. People in poverty have loads of gifts and abilities that as an outsider looking in, we would never know without building relationships with these people. The poor are not completely helpless and inept, they are important, capable, gifted human beings that for some reason or another have found themselves in a place where they need some help. Those with less know their situation, their community, and their lifestyle a million times better than we do. Don’t you think we should ask them about their own ideas for changing their own situations, communities, lifestyles? Often in our attempts to do something for someone, we find ourselves doing to them instead of doing with them. It’s a top down approach. We are at the top throwing down our ideas and gifts on top of people whose own ideas and gifts are being ignored. Sounds a little brutal to me. On the other hand, when we take the approach of giving in a way that is from the same level, it is easily reciprocated, and then you have the chance to learn and give back and forth to each other. There is no fear, there is no power.  That is the beauty of giving, and serving in a way that inspires ideas, and does not create a spirit of dependence or fear, but rather a spirit of fulfillment and beautiful community. Sounds a little like a relationship to me.
I have basically taken it upon myself to tell everyone I know about these books in order to change their view on poverty alleviation and what it really means to give. These books have changed the way I view ministry, life, and service. It has helped to transform my thought processes, and the way I respond to opportunities to help out. I pray that I will use the information I have learned for the glory of God and that these wont just become a list of rules to follow, but rather a mindset and way of life. I have already had conversations with my boss in Guatemala about how we can change little things in our ministry to make sure that we are empowering the people we give to regularly. It’s been a fantastic starting point when it comes to brainstorming ideas. It feels like what I have learned from Toxic Charity is more applicable in my life than what I learned in the first twelve years of my education. It has changed my worldview, and messed up my world in a very good way. I’m inspired, and the Lord knows what happens when I get inspired. You, on the other hand, will have to wait and see.