Cook-out, Colombian style

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

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

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

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

"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

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

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?