Happy Thanksgiving everyone! My time of rest and retreat has been really good, and I'm feeling very refreshed. I'm so thankful for the support of my family and community at home, as well as from the friends and community I've found here. Most of all, I'm thankful for God's promises, to raise me up, to renew my mind, to transform me, and to give me peace that passes all understanding. He is faithful, and I will sing because He's been good to me.
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I had a really good day. I spent the morning just hanging out, and then we did some shopping (I bought myself a couple birthday presents!) and went to Applebee's! It was great to have some familiarity and enjoy Applebee's, which looks exactly the same here! However, Bob (which we affectionately named my parasite) did not so much enjoy the Applebee's food, but it was so worth it.
I'm looking forward to going back to work on Monday, and then taking another week off to enjoy a visit from my parents, who come into town next week Friday!!!!
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
retreat
The past two months of ministry, and then being sick, have taken their toll. My fatigue got to a place where I couldn't go on, and I left the pastor's house yesterday to stay with a staff member from Strategy of Transformation, the organization I'm partnering with here through World Missions. I'm using this as a chance for a retreat, to focus on healing physically, spiritually, and emotionally, and to regroup and ask God to renew my mind and my spirit so that I can be a more effective servant for Him. Thanks for your prayers as I go through this valley.
Friday, November 12, 2010
2 months down
I think I get along with and connect with teenagers so well because I have regressed to one here, or maybe I never grew up! I think the whole culture shock/language barrier thing has made me extra emotional and moody. Like, one minute I'm laughing and loose and dancing (I know, right? Me, dancing? In public? Crazy.), and the next minute I'm crying and upset about something. Hormonal teenager. And the dependence on people for everything also makes me feel like I'm 14. I feel like a child because I can't communicate and say what I want to say when I want to say it. It's so frustrating. I learned a lot at language school in Antigua and it was really beneficial, but it still takes a few seconds for me to work out what I want to say. And then if I'm excited, or upset, or scared, or emotional, it takes even longer to think in Spanish, and usually it doesn't even come out, it only comes out in English, because that's easier. So, please keep praying for language acquisition! And for my crazy emotional health. And for my teens. We had a couple of crises yesterday that kept us very busy. Nothing serious, just kids going through stuff and trying to help them get it worked out.
I've been here for 2 months now. I finally felt like I was adjusting pretty well, getting used to things, settling in. But for like the past week and a half or so I've not been feeling well again, and have been focusing a lot on all of the negative things. Having a hard time connecting with why I'm here and what God is doing in and through me. Instead, I've been longing for the comforts of home, my family and community there, and thinking about missing my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at home. I think being sick off and on hasn't helped, because that makes it harder to be engaged here. I was so upset one morning this week that I emailed a friend and said I wanted to come home, and the response I received was an encouragement to write a couple stories about how I'm seeing God in the midst of the suffering, how I'm seeing him working in and through me. In the midst of my complaints and negativity, the good stuff got lost. Andrea and Federico continue to open up to me. Federico has such a hard time showing emotion and expressing himself, but he's willing to be pushed to talk about it and has come a long way in the past two months. Another woman in the church talked with me the other day about being beaten by her husband, and she wants help to get out of this situation and her husband is willing to receive counseling. Another woman we visited on Tuesday came to church on Wednesday for the first time in months, and her children want to be involved too, and have borrowed Bibles and are so interested in reading the word of God. I've also been praying prayers I've never thought I would pray. For example, one of my teens lost one of his family's chicken, the fattest one. So I prayed last night that he would find the chicken that had crossed the road! :) LOL.
How great is our God.
I've been here for 2 months now. I finally felt like I was adjusting pretty well, getting used to things, settling in. But for like the past week and a half or so I've not been feeling well again, and have been focusing a lot on all of the negative things. Having a hard time connecting with why I'm here and what God is doing in and through me. Instead, I've been longing for the comforts of home, my family and community there, and thinking about missing my birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas at home. I think being sick off and on hasn't helped, because that makes it harder to be engaged here. I was so upset one morning this week that I emailed a friend and said I wanted to come home, and the response I received was an encouragement to write a couple stories about how I'm seeing God in the midst of the suffering, how I'm seeing him working in and through me. In the midst of my complaints and negativity, the good stuff got lost. Andrea and Federico continue to open up to me. Federico has such a hard time showing emotion and expressing himself, but he's willing to be pushed to talk about it and has come a long way in the past two months. Another woman in the church talked with me the other day about being beaten by her husband, and she wants help to get out of this situation and her husband is willing to receive counseling. Another woman we visited on Tuesday came to church on Wednesday for the first time in months, and her children want to be involved too, and have borrowed Bibles and are so interested in reading the word of God. I've also been praying prayers I've never thought I would pray. For example, one of my teens lost one of his family's chicken, the fattest one. So I prayed last night that he would find the chicken that had crossed the road! :) LOL.
How great is our God.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
the journey of sewing and life
I've been asked several times about my goals for my time here, what do I want as the end result? This question had me stumped. I have one personal goal, which is to go home speaking Spanish really well, but as far as ministry related goals or things I want for my future, I got nothin'. So when I got home from class today I was thinking about it, while listening to music and sewing. I started learning sewing because Hermana Lety teaches the sewing class at the church on Thursday mornings and I go in order to teach a little lesson to the women about parenting or relationships. I decided it would be fun to learn to sew, so I'm trying to sew a quilt, by hand, square by square. It is taking me forever. I am soooo slow. And it's frustrating. But the finished product, some day, will be really good. And in the meantime, it's all about the journey. Most times when I'm sewing, I'm really enjoying it. It doesn't matter what the end product looks like (I mean, I'll be disappointed if it looks crappy, but work with me here), what matters is the journey. It's good to have a goal, this quilt that I'm trying to make, but if I didn't take care with every stitch, every square, every part of the journey and only focused on the end goal, the end result wouldn't turn out quite as well. And to really take advantage of the analogy to the best of my ability, because I would never want to go just halfway...every knot, every time I had to take it out and start over, just made the quilt stronger, better. What I thought was a mess, a complete piece of crap because the lines weren't straight (I cán't cut a straight line to save my life, nor measure 5.5x5.5), could be corrected, renewed, fixed, with help. Throughout the whole process so far, I've had help. I don't have to do it alone. Í don't have to finish my quilt alone, I'm not on this Guatemala journey alone, we're not on this life journey alone. So even though I may not have any concrete goals for my time here beyond "I want to make a difference in people's lives," I have numerous things I can look back on and say I've accomplished along the first 1/3 of this journey. I've built beautiful relationships, had incredible adventures, am learning to rely on God for all that I need, the list goes on....
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Festival of Barriletes and a week in Antigua
Hi friends! I'm feeling much better! Thank you so much for your prayers.
There are many people here that I'm loving getting to know better, but one who is close to my heart is one of the teenagers who goes to the church. She is so precious and has so much pain in her heart from a broken past with an abusive and dysfunctional family. She is incredibly smart and talented and works so hard, but can't see her own talents and value, not because of what she is able to do or how hard she works or the grades she gets, but simply because she is made in the image of God. As a mental health professional and social worker, I can tell she's battling depression, but given the cultural context it's much more complicated, so helping this teenager work through this and open up and trust me has been very difficult. It's an awesome relationship though and I love her very much. Please keep her in your prayers.
This week, I decided to take a week and go to Antigua for an intensive week of Spanish language study. I started yesterday and will go back "home" on Friday. However, yesterday was also Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a national holiday. On this national holiday, there is a huge festival of kites in Sumpango, about a 45 minute drive from Antigua. The Spanish word for "kites" is "barriletes" which I think sounds so much cooler than kites. So a group from the school was going to the kite festival for an outing yesterday and I went along after studying for a couple hours. The kites were so amazing! They were ginormous, some as big as four stories tall, and made of tissue paper!! It was unbelievable. The biggest ones couldn't fly, but some of the medium sized ones could, which was awesome. It's a big competition for most creative, ability to fly, size, etc., and then when they try to make them fly, the crowd is all around them, and one of them almost crashed on top us!! It was wild. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow. You'll have to see this to believe it.
My week here in Antigua has been really good so far, and I'm enjoying getting away a little bit to relax. The city is beautiful, and the shopping is amazing! :) I even ate pumpkin pie today! It was delish.
There are many people here that I'm loving getting to know better, but one who is close to my heart is one of the teenagers who goes to the church. She is so precious and has so much pain in her heart from a broken past with an abusive and dysfunctional family. She is incredibly smart and talented and works so hard, but can't see her own talents and value, not because of what she is able to do or how hard she works or the grades she gets, but simply because she is made in the image of God. As a mental health professional and social worker, I can tell she's battling depression, but given the cultural context it's much more complicated, so helping this teenager work through this and open up and trust me has been very difficult. It's an awesome relationship though and I love her very much. Please keep her in your prayers.
This week, I decided to take a week and go to Antigua for an intensive week of Spanish language study. I started yesterday and will go back "home" on Friday. However, yesterday was also Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a national holiday. On this national holiday, there is a huge festival of kites in Sumpango, about a 45 minute drive from Antigua. The Spanish word for "kites" is "barriletes" which I think sounds so much cooler than kites. So a group from the school was going to the kite festival for an outing yesterday and I went along after studying for a couple hours. The kites were so amazing! They were ginormous, some as big as four stories tall, and made of tissue paper!! It was unbelievable. The biggest ones couldn't fly, but some of the medium sized ones could, which was awesome. It's a big competition for most creative, ability to fly, size, etc., and then when they try to make them fly, the crowd is all around them, and one of them almost crashed on top us!! It was wild. I'll try to post pictures tomorrow. You'll have to see this to believe it.
My week here in Antigua has been really good so far, and I'm enjoying getting away a little bit to relax. The city is beautiful, and the shopping is amazing! :) I even ate pumpkin pie today! It was delish.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)