Ginna's YAV Year in Peru

Reflections from the Family v 2.0

2010-06-22T19:39:00.002-04:00

At the end of May my fellow YAVs and I (with the exception of Sara Alta, sad!) finally made our way toCuzco and hiked the 4 days of the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. It was undoubtedly the hardest physical challenge I have ever faced. But the exciting thing is that my Mom, Dad, and brother Jim (Jack sadly couldn´t come) came to hike with me! They came a few days early to see my life in Peru and my work with the IEP Collique and the Fair Trade Program Bridge of Hope at the Red Uniendo Manos.

So this time, instead of me telling you about vacation (I´m getting tired of my own voice at this point!), I´ve asked each of my family members to reflect on their time in Peru. Below you´ll find reflections from each of them on their time in Lima and hiking the Inca Trail. Each is a little different and offers a wonderful, fresh perspective on my life and work here in Peru.

I must give my warning -- THIS IS A LONG POST! But I really do encourage you to read each reflection because each is different and examines a different facet of the Peruvian experience. Plus, I saved my brother Jim´s for last, and he´s a really good writer (so are my parents, not trying to choose favorites!) :) Enjoy!

Sandy Irby (aka Mom)

Dear Ginna,

I think because our trip to Peru was such a 'first' for me...my first foray into a third-world country...that I still am processing it all and am having a hard time speaking coherently about it all...I tend to ramble...too many thoughts (and, often not very well-formulated ones!!) pushing to the surface at the same time...so, in answer to your request for Peruvian thoughts for your blog, I think I'll do best to do bullet-points...right now, it's the only way I can think about it all. What I'd really like to do is just put a big DITTO on Jim's thoughtful and wonderfully eloquent epistle (below) he sent you before he left for Morocco!! So, besides what I say below, also 'what he said' !!

**My favorite day in Peru: the first one...when we got to meet your 'family' and see how accepted and loved you are by them...when you took us on a typical 'day in your life'--all those wild bus rides !!--getting to see Collique...and all the adorable children you work with...It was so heart-warming and heart-breaking all at the same time...It was amazing to see how much those kids love you, and how much you love them...to see how needy they are, in so many ways, and yet how happy they are in just as many ways...The visit to Angie's house, and then the trek up the mountain amidst the hovels that serve as houses, is one that I will never forget...Angie's mother's elegance and genuine hospitality (even if it was that danged 'Inca Cola'!!) in the midst of poverty touched me on a level deeper than I can express...All around, where I would have expected to see despair, I was touched by unimaginable vitality and celebration of life...truly inspirational!!

Me with a group of Collique kids

**My second favorite day: the second one...going to the 'office'...meeting your co-workers at the fair trade organization...getting a fuller appreciation of what your work there entails and what it means for the Peruvian artisans...I can see why you find that work so fulfilling...How wonderful to be a part of helping the local artisans use their artistic skills and talents in a fair, productive, and hopefully self-sustaining way...an opportunity that we take for granted in the western world!!

**The hardest four days of my life (even beyond childbirth (!!)...and yet, like childbirth, yielding memories that become less painful and more miraculous with each passing day!!): Hiking the Inca Trail!! Having always strived toward physical fitness, I have never been one who enjoys pushing the limit...and the Inca Trail did indeed push me beyond my limits!! It wasn't just the hike itself, but that combined with the whole camping adventure (for me, that means little, if any sleep...which, sadly, is something that I tend to need a lot of!!)...I hate to be such a sissy, but at the same time, I have never been shy about admitting that camping to me is staying in a hotel that doesn't put chocolate on my pillow!! So, yes, this was quite a stretch for me!! All that said, now I must admit what a sense of accomplishment and exhilaration there was in finally making it through and seeing 'Pikachu' (what my mom called Machu Picchu before coming here) in the mist before us!! Would I have ever done this if you hadn't wanted us to do it? No. Am I glad that I did it? You bet!! It really is wonderful to get to a point in life with your children where the tables turn and They are teaching YOU valuable lessons about life...I thank you for that!!

"Pikachu"

**The best part about the trip: SEEING YOU!! We have missed you so much!! It was sheer joy to be able to see you looking so happy, so comfortable, and so at-home in Lima...I can see that you have developed a sense of solidarity with the people and the area...It was heart-warming to see you so proud and so excited about showing us all the aspects of your life there...it was amazing to see you so adept at the language, at the bus system, and all the other cultural nuances of life 'on the streets' there...I pity the first taxi driver that you encounter once you get back to the States...he won't stand a chance if he expects you to pay anything over 8 soles!!

**The next best part of the trip: Getting to meet all your new friends...both the Peruvian ones and the YAV's...what amazing people they are!! I can why you are so attached to them!! The world is indeed a better place with Anna, 'Putapon', Baja, Alta, Joe, Debbie and Harry, and of course YOU in it!! You all are true inspirations to us all!! And, besides that, you are all just plain fun!! I do so hope that you all continue to maintain your friendships with one another once you return to whatever lives are in store for you after Peru...I have not doubt that you will...those ties are too strong not to last!!

View from my new home in Mirones Bajo

**The BEST-EST part of the trip: Seeing how strong and independent a young woman you have become!! You handled the immensely difficult and oftentimes tedious job of being tour guide and translator for us...all the while trying to enjoy time with your fellow YAV's on what was supposed to be a vacation for you all...what a difficult juggling job that must have been!! And you handled it with such grace and poise...and, we thank you for that!! All through the trip, I reveled in seeing your strong sense of moral integrity, your keen intellect, your fabulous sense of humor, and your genuine love for people shine through...from the highest mountains in the far reaches of the Inca Trail to the boardwalk in the heart of Lima to your home here in Richmond, you are a bright light in the lives of all you meet...and, it is an honor and a privilege to be your mother and to watch as you continue to grow into your potential and begin to share your amazing gifts with the world!!

Jim “The Older One” Irby (aka Dad)

Progress! Reflecting back on my two weeks in Peru, my mind keeps coming back to "progress" and how we define it. Living all but about 4 weeks of my 50+ years in a "developed county", I had formulated my definition of Progress by means of a very narrowly focused lens. Order, convenience, efficiency, manipulating the wild, advanced learning all would all be terms that I might use to define progress as I have typically understood it. And when I think of developing countries (or third world countries), my mind typically anticipates that these places "Lack Progress" or "fall behind in progress". It is easy to allow this frame of mind to set in when I keep an arm's length from setting foot in "the Third World."

Two weeks ago, I entered the Third World, (thanks to my daughter who is dedicating a year of her life to live among the Peruvians as a Peruvian) and I had the brief opportunity to experience life and progress through the Peruvian lens. It all became very obvious to me that Progress as we see it in the West cannot be applied or transplanted to developing countries. Progress has been ongoing for just as long inPeru as in the West, if not longer.

One of the paved streets in Collique

Our time exploring the ancient Incan culture along the Incan trail and visiting some of the ruins, quickly showed me that these people had a better grasp of living with the land and it's resources than most cultures that have followed. Ingenuity, working with nature's forms, sculpting the land to preserve it and not to rob it of it resources were very apparent. An ordered and systematic form of community, communications, and supporting one another as a peaceful nation was the way of life for the Incan people. Progress Incan style was productive, calm and beautiful.

Then Incan Progress met Spanish Progress and the latter forced its way on the former in the name of progress. The result was a lost Civilization and a Culture that was dismantled and rebuilt to the Spanish idea of progress. One has to wonder what the Incan empire would look like today if it was left alone to progress in the direction of it own choosing. This idea fascinates me.

Fast forward 500 years, and this land goes through several cycles of outsiders pushing their will and their idea of progress on the people of Peru. The result has its tragedies, its inequalities, and a few surprising victories. In spite of it all, its people are very strong, proud, accepting and gracious. I always felt honored to be in the presence of every Peruvian I met. The city, though very different from the urban fabric that I am accustom to, had its order, efficiencies and ingenuity disguised in well worn structures and brightly painted stucco. The Peruvian progress as I see it is a hybrid of many outsiders who have left their mark on this land and its people.

But, back to my point on progress. It has become clear to me that a culture that knows its environment, its land, and its heritage will more than likely Progress to its highest and best potential if allowed to, and not to be overcome by the will of the outsider. The outsider (even though they may have good intentions) will never be able to fully grasp the best path of progress of an indigenous people, unless he/she chooses to live within them and to become one of them. Only then can true shared progress be made, and the full potential be achieved.

I guess what I am try to say is, we as the developed world really cannot expect to transplant our way of life, our advancements, our progress on other cultures unless we are ready to invest our time and our lives in spending some time living with others to fully understand and appreciate the challenges they face.It is all about "walking that mile in the other man' shoes". In a world that grows smaller each day, I feel we need not to strive for a world that looks all the same, rather a world that embraces, respects and enjoys its differences.

Walking through the Sacred Valley of the Incas

My highest admiration goes out to the Yavs and the other that I met in Peru (Debbie, Harry, Rusty, Wendy and many others) who are doing just this. Hopefully, many more will follow, and through this, we can all progress together in our own individual and best way.

Jim “The Younger One” Irby (aka Brother Jim)

When I was in Peru, one of the kids that Ginna took care of in her church’s after school program asked me (knowing that I’d been to Tanzania) how I felt about Africa. I hesitated. How could I explain my ambivalence—my anger at the gross inequalities of a financial lottery that I had won by being born, but through which, by no fault of their own, the people I met had been relegated to extreme poverty; my bitterness at the stagnation of global policy, at the international lip service paid to helping the poor, but the general unwillingness to enact the policies necessary to improve global living conditions and provide for the general human welfare rather than the general national welfare; my love for the people I met; my (perhaps romanticized) view of their freedom from rampant consumerism; and my desire to meet them on a purely human level, to transcend the bounds of skin pigmentation and wealth and background, but my fear that these differences would always stand in the way? How could I explain this to a 13-year-old, especially one who was in a situation not so different than the children I met in Tanzania, and towards whom I felt this same ambivalence? Playing off my inability to answer the question as a result of my rusty Spanish skills, Ginna, thankfully, fielded the question for me.

But now, two weeks later, my sister refuses to let me off the hook. How do you feel about Peru? she asks. And the answer is no simpler. On one hand I loved Peru. Truly, I expected it to be great to see my sister after so long and to finally experience what she had been living for the past 9 months, but I did not expect to love Lima as much as I did. A huge, sprawling city, home to around 9 million, I felt an odd sense of security walking along the crowded city streets, standing in the aisles of the overcrowded buses, or making my way down the winding mountain roads in one of Lima’s poorest barrios. I liked the fact that as long as we were in Lima, we were very rarely ‘inside’—sure we went through doors sometimes, and there were often roofs above our heads, but almost always, buildings were open to the outside air, a property I found freeing in contrast to the enclosed boxes in which we spend most of our time on the northern half of the Americas. There was a sense of warmth and hospitality almost incomprehensible to my northern mind when the mother of Angie, one of Ginna’s poorest kids, invited us to climb down the ladder into her home (quite literally a two-room metal carton), where she was not concerned with impressing us, but only with making us feel at home. Despite not knowing us, despite the language barrier, despite receiving no benefit from our (with the exception of Ginna’s) presence in Peru, she went out of her way to take us in and give us something to drink (which she had to run down the street to buy).

The hill where Angie and most of my kids live

And of course there was the Inca trail. Imagine the most beautiful southwestern American landscape you’ve seen (I think of New Mexico), make the mountains twice as big and three times as steep, throw in an occasional rainforest and some Inca ruins, and let the mountains extend for miles beyond as far as the eye can see. Truly, it was breathtaking…

And if my feelings stopped there, my view of Peru would be simple. But beneath the beauty, the extreme and widespread poverty remains. Before I ever set foot in the low income parts of a low income country, I thought our goal as wealthy Americans should be to ‘fix’ the poor countries: we had the resources, the education, the ‘enlightened’ ideals, the business models that had generated success within our borders…if only we could get the rest of the world to see eye to eye with us… But as I spend more and more time in areas of poverty, I realize that the people I meet are far from broken, and while many aspects of life are indisputably better in the United States, a wholesale exportation of Americanized life is not the solution. To my knowledge no perfect system yet exists, and until one does, the solution will always require a creative mix of that which has existed in the past and that which we are newly bringing into existence. Taking the current system as it is, what then should be changed?

There was something wrong that led to the years of violence between Fujimori’s soldiers and the militias of the Shining Path; there’s something wrong when an American-owned mining company creates one of the world’s most polluted cities in La Oroya, and the Peruvian government is complicit because it needs the mines as a source of taxable income; there’s something wrong when people have to choose between theft and starvation, between thirst and drinking water that could make them sick, when health facilities are described as places where people go to die. The list goes on. And it’s easy to point fingers: at the exploitive nature of the global monetary economy, where I can only become richer if someone else becomes poorer, and the foundations of one country’s wealth are often the foundations of another country’s poverty; at the terrorist tactics of leftists, rightists, governments, and opportunists; at the poor themselves (it’s comforting to believe that people somehow deserve the conditions they were born into). It’s easy to get angry.

I’ve always been discomforted by the belief that charity starts at home. The most extreme poverty is pretty far away from us—in Africa, Asia, Latin America—and it is in these places that our dollar goes the furthest. But as I spend more time in these places, I realize that the people who say this may be on to something—only I’m realizing charity starts closer to home than I think they had originally meant. Charity starts in our ability to understand, and our understanding can only reach as far as we are willing to question. Travelling to the least developed countries always leaves me with more questions than answers: Why does Angie live in a box? Why don’t I? Why is there so much trash in the streets? Where does all our trash go? Why does America restrict imports on harmless goods? Why does Peru support industries that poison its people? Why is no one willing to clean it up? How many lead-poisoned children does it take to make a bar of gold? Is it worth it? Why did the leftist groups resort to violence? Why did Fujimori resort to violence? Why did the United States take sides? What policies and practices stand in the way of improved well being? Why haven’t they been changed? How am I complicit?

Climbing "Angie's hill" with the carton houses and one of my kids running up to meet us

I hate asking these questions because I hate guilt. I think to the extent that what’s done is done, it’s counterproductive to focus on blame and rekindling old grudges. But we can’t address problems until we understand them, and thus these questions must be asked. For now, and probably forever, I’m still working on the answers.

So how do I feel about Peru? I loved experiencing a way of life and a culture different from my habitual existence. I loved seeing human compassion that reached across wealth and race. I loved witnessing the work that is being done by religious and secular organizations to bridge the gap between the flawed world we live in and their idea of perfection. I’m unsettled that their goal seems so far away. I’m hopeful that in our efforts to connect through the good and to understand the flaws in both ourselves and in each other this goal may be closer than it appears.

Jim and me at Machu Picchu

Buy Buy Buy Buy, Sell Sell Sell Sell

2010-05-19T22:38:00.006-04:00

Comercio Justo. Fair Trade. It has potentially been my saving grace in Peru.

That is not to say, of course, that I haven’t had many saving graces in Peru. There are undoubtedly too many to count, and most of them have faces and stories (with the exception of the saving grace of finding The Office on DVD – believe me, it’s a lifesaver!). But today I want to talk about my work with Bridge of Hope, the fair trade program of the Red Uniendo Manos.

I started my work with fair trade in January, when I was looking for a break in my home and work life from the more theologically conservative Peruvian church. I began to spend one day a week day working in our small store in Miraflores and helping with odds and ends around the office. However small my work was, it was really rewarding because it was serving a cause I really believed in and giving me experience working directly with an NGO, which I’ve never done before. In March, when Debbie and I decided to make a few changes with my placement, I added another day to my fair trade schedule, officially making it one of my two part-time placements. And from there, things have gone uphill in a truly exponential way.

Let me first explain a little bit about what fair trade is and what it means in my current context in Peru. Fair trade is surprisingly hard to define, but as I have come to understand it, it is a movement in both consuming countries (Northern Hemisphere) and producing countries (Southern Hemisphere) that aims to assure that producers receive not only a fair price for their work but also are able to live and work in a dignified manner. Fair trade aims to achieve social and environmental justice, both on the side of the producer and of the consumer. It’s about challenging our current efficiency-based and more often than not exploitative market system and creating a space in which the value of the products comes second to the value of the lives of the human beings behind them.

Before coming to Peru, I had always thought of Fair trade in regards to coffee, chocolate, and sometimes clothing. With the exception of the latter, these objects have nothing to do with my work this year in fair trade. While the Fair trade coffee and chocolate markets are wonderful, important, and have recently become very popular, “the cool thing to do,” in the US, I am working this year with the Fair trade market of artisan handcrafts. Artisan products are all over the place in Peru – this is a country of brightly-colored fabrics, exotic-looking patterns, and hats, scarves, and gloves made from delightfully soft alpaca wool. And in the midst of the thousands upon thousands of artisan groups, my program, Bridge of Hope, works with 14 artisan groups from Lima, Huancayo, Huancavelica, and La Oroya. We strive to help them develop products not only for the souvenir market but also for the competitive export market to the US and Europe while still preserving the integrity of their handmade products. We facilitate the formation of groups and exportation of their products to Northern countries and search for ways to help meet their needs both in and out of work. It’s a beautiful, sacred process to be a part of.

And what is my role in this whole operation? Some days it’s more glamorous than others. Sometimes I translate documents and communication between our Spanish-speaking staff and our English-speaking clients. Sometimes I help sell products at fairs. Sometimes I brainstorm with artisan groups about ideas for new products that would find their place in the international market. Sometimes I clean and reorganize the store. Sometimes I put price tags on hundreds of hats, socks, and stuffed llamas when a big order comes in. Sometimes I sit in meetings. Sometimes I march in parades. During the month of April, I had the incredible opportunity to serve as a translator for a seamstress and designer from the US who came to work with three different artisan groups on new techniques. It’s a job that feeds me and gives me a real sense of purpose for why I am here in Peru.

Visiting groups and meeting with artisans as they come into the office, I’ve begun to hear stories that show me what it means for fair trade to be about dignity in the lives of the artisans. Yes, as a fair trade organization, we help our artisans set prices that are based on the cost of their materials and the amount of hours spent working, a fair price, in contrast to simply trying to beat out the competition by offering the lowest prices. (Just for the record, the prices still remain incredibly reasonable. A winter beanie or skiing hat costs between $5 and $10.) But this technically “professional” relationship does so much more. A lady from one group told us the story of how Bridge of Hope helped her buy herself a home, where the 5 women in the group have now set up their workshop. Another lady shared how she had met a member of the Bridge of Hope team through a Compassion International program in which her daughter participated. Knowing that she desperately needed work, the member of the Bridge of Hope team helped her assemble a group, purchase the necessary equipment, and found a friend who could teach these women how to sew, something they’d never done before but that would soon become their profession. When the rains this year flooded Huancavelica and several of our artisans lost their homes and possessions to uncontrollable mudslides, other artisan groups in Lima organized a clothing drive so that these women and their families would have something to wear and keep them warm as the rain and cold continued.

Bridge of Hope is so much more than just a business, a marketing program, an operation based on competition and sales. It gives me hope and reminds me that commerce does not have to be an exploitative and dehumanizing process. We can buy and sell and participate in the international market with love and respect for the real people behind the products we consume. It’s not always easy and it’s not always cheap, but it is, I think, the only not to mistakenly give to Caesar what belongs to God.

To find out more about our artisan groups and products, visit www.fairtradeperu.com. However, know that this website is old and has a great update coming very soon. I will notify you all when the site is updated!

Wake Up, Dead Man

2010-04-30T20:24:00.012-04:00

I spent Holy Week on a retreat with Debbie and the YAVs in Huanta and Ayacucho. Alissa works and lives at a radio station there. It was an incredible cultural experience on many levels, but there’s one bit in particular that I want to share with you.

In past blogs, I’m sure I’ve alluded to the “Years of Violence” in Peru, from 1980 to 2000. It is, sadly enough, a pretty typical Latin American story. The Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path”), a violent leftist group started by a professor at University in Ayacucho, began an insurgency fighting for a new leftist government that would end the extreme poverty that ravished the country and bring about financial equality. Good intentions, I think so, but they really just became a violent terrorist group. The military retaliated with violence and also carried out an inquisition, if you will, in search of leftist sympathizers that makes the McCarthy years in the US look laughable. Once again, I want to hope that good intentions were there at the start, but in the end the military killed more civilians than did the Sendero terrorist group. People today are still waiting to find out what happened to their loved ones as their bodies are uncovered in mass graves from when entire villages were killed because of rumors of terrorist connections.

The violence was felt in all corners of Peru – my host family has told me stories of walking over dead bodies in the streets of Lima – but the province of Ayacucho undoubtedly suffered the most. Alissa has told us that literally everyone in her community knew someone who was killed either by the Sendero or the military. These people have experienced violence, pain, and deaths in a way that I cannot even imagine.

Our first day in Huanta, Alissa’s family took us up to the “Mirador” (“look-out-point” from which you can see the entire city…these seem to be pretty popular in the mountain cities of Peru) where we, along with a HUGE white Jesus statue (think Jesus from the movie Saved times 10!) watched the town of Huanta in the valley below, a beautifully peaceful landscape. Gazing at the beauty before us, it was hard to imagine this area torn apart by violence only 10 or 15 years before.

On the way down from the Mirador, we stopped at a quaint, but fairly non-descript church on the side of the road. Alissa’s host-dad told us that during the Violence, a service at this church was interrupted by army officials bearing orders to detain and interrogate six young men. While the “terrorist suspects” were escorted out, the rest of the congregation refused to acknowledge the army’s presence and continued singing their hymns in an act of protest. After the service, the bodies of these young men were found not far from the church itself. It was evident that they had been brutally tortured before they were murdered.

This is just one story of many. One tragedy suffered by one community. But similar stories abound all over Peru. Last weekend I visited fellow YAV Anna in Huancayo, another “red zone” during the years of violence. In a conversation comparing the general behavior of people in Huancayo versus in my home of Lima, Anna commented that people in Huancayo tended to be more socially reserved and hesitant, more independent and inclined to fend for themselves. She attributed these behaviors to the effects of the Violence, when no one knew whom to trust and survival often entailed looking out for oneself and one’s family only. I forget too easily, I think, the immense impact that the Years of Violence still has on the lives and actions of my friends in Peru.

A few days later, we found ourselves in Ayacucho watching and waiting for the famous Good Friday procession over the alfombras, carpets made of colored sawdust and natural materials created solely to be trampled on in the holy procession, over which residents had slaved all day. We ate homemade ice cream, we browsed artisan markets, and we waited for the ceremony to begin. A fun day in a beautiful city.

But as the procession began and I watched the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, accompanied by hundreds upon hundreds of devotees, walk solemnly around the Central Plaza, I was struck by the juxtaposition of Holy Week and the deaths of so many innocent campesinos at the hands of terrorists and government authorities. Because if we strip away all of the fancy theological trappings in which we have dressed him, who is Jesus but a political revolutionary killed by the Roman government? Martyred for his social ideals of justice, love, and equality that by their very nature threatened the concept of empire. Jesus, the one that we as Christians call Lord and Savior, the one in whose honor this procession was taking place, was just like those young men tortured and killed on the hill by the church. And in turn, those men, and the countless other men and women who suffered at the hands of the government without cause are just like Jesus. To blatantly steal imagery from the liberation theologians (I’m allowed to do that, I dedicated last year to researching and writing a thesis on the current state and theological validity of liberation theology), in the suffering, the deaths, the hunger, the poverty, the exploitation, the unjust detainment of each of these men and women, Christ was crucified again and again. And it continues today, in the Peru, in the US, in every part of the world. People are killed and exploited, poverty and dependence are the ever-enforced norm, and in each of these moments, Christ is crucified de nuevo.

My Peruvian friends understand Good Friday in a way that I may never be able to. But I leave you (and myself) with this question: Have they seen resurrection? Have we seen resurrection? What does resurrection in this situation look like? Is it the recovery of the remains of loved ones “disappeared,” a final answer to the question that have been lingering for so many years? Is it the conviction and imprisonment of Fujimori for the human rights abuses he committed? Is in the restoration of, at least relatively speaking, “peace?” Renewed relationships? Or is it, perhaps, an end to the social situation that fostered the violence in the first place? Liberation from poverty? An end to the imperialist policies of nations like our own that keep countries like Peru in an interminable state of dependence? Have we seen and taken part in this resurrection, or are we still crouched outside the tomb, waiting? Is it possible that this time, we’re going to have to work together to roll away the stone?

Just An Ordinary Day (And It´s All Your State of Mind)

2010-03-27T16:33:00.009-04:00

So I’ve written about highs and lows, anecdotes and full-blown stories, the theological and the political, vacations and retreats, but I realized recently I’ve never just given you all an idea of what I do on a normal day. Now granted, I have a lot of different versions of “normal days” seeing as I’m currently working in three different places, but I’ll do my best to describe “just an ordinary day” link (last Thursday, actually) working in the Compassion Program at the IEP Collique.

My alarm goes off at 7:00 AM. I snooze it, wrestle with it, and eventually manage to turn it off – consequently I oversleep until 8:00. My roommate and next-door-neighbors from last year (Hi Bizz, Sarah, and Abby!), who probably still have nightmares about my alarm going off every 5 minutes in college, may note that there are some things about me that just never change.

I reluctantly get out of bed and try to motivate myself to do some sort of devotional. I’ve tried several different strategies for personal devotionals since I arrived in Peru and have had a hard time finding one that clicks. I’ve tried reading through the Book of Acts (felt irrelevant to what I’m doing here), daily journaling (kept falling asleep), selecting random passages from Scripture (felt aimless and unfocused), an Advent journaling devotional from the PCUSA(was awesome, but ran out at the end of Advent), reading from a book of John Bell sermons (excellent devotional material, but book only lasted me 12 days), following devotional tracks in The Green Bible that Andy gave me for Christmas (wonderful material that I will definitely use for devotionals in the future, but didn’t provide the personal comfort and encouragement I’ve been needing recently), etc. My most recent attempt is re-reading Henri Nouwen’s link travel journal from his time in Peru and Bolivia, Gracias, and reflecting on what he has to say in light of my experience in living here nearly 7 months. It seems to be working pretty well…relevant, lots of material…I’ve got a good feeling about this one!

I make my way to the bathroom for my bi-weekly shower before work. As the heat of summer set in, I abandoned my old bucket shower using boiled water and now just take a straight-up cold shower. I still haven’t gotten used to it, but it’s much quicker and helps me face the heat of the day.

I make myself a quick breakfast - a roll of bread that is standard breakfast food here, sometimes with some cheese or jam. Eduardo has already left for work, but Flor hears me awake and comes out to talk with me for a few minutes over breakfast before going back to take care of Fabián. I brush my teeth, gather my things, and head out the door to work.

To get to work I first catch a colectivo, a taxi that goes to a specific location and fills up with as many people as possible, who only have to each pay part of the fare. I get out, cross the street and take a little blue combi, a variation on the Volkswagen-hippie-van that my brother wants to drive one day, the rest of the way to the church where I am greeted by shouts of “Hermana Ginna” (Sister Ginna), the title used for pretty much everyone within the churches here. It originally made me feel like I was either a nun or part of some cult, but I’ve gotten used to it by this point. It also makes life TREMENDOUSLY easier when you can’t remember someone’s name…you can just greet them as Hermana (sister) or Hermano (brother). I can’t tell you how many times that has rescued me in an awkward church situation!

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I alternate between all different ages and levels, but on Thursdays like today only the youngest level, the 3-to-6-year-olds, come in for the whole day, so I’m always with them. This makes Thursday the most cuteness-filled and also the most exhausting day of work. There are about 10 to 15 kids in the morning and then a different group of about the same number in the afternoon!

Walking into the room of kids is always one of my favorite parts. They all stop what they’re doing, yell “Hermana Ginna!” and run as fast as they can to hug and kiss me. I honestly don’t know what I’ve done to warrant that kind of love…is it just because I look different? Talk funny? Am only with them on certain days? I don’t deserve their affection nearly as much as the other teachers there who run the classes and work so much harder than I do. But it’s love, and I’ll gladly receive it, especially in a culture where hugs are rare and showing emotion can be taboo. There’s something incredibly beautiful and refreshing about kids this age.

They start the day playing among themselves, and then eventually the teacher rounds them up for some singing (I feebly try to help with this part), a little bit of Jesus-talk (considering the great differences between my theology and that of the teacher, I try to keep quiet for the most part in this, not wanting to confuse the kids by arguing theology and ethics with the other teacher. It’s hard…as most of you know, I’m not very good at keeping quiet!) and some sort of education time – today it’s reviewing different symptoms of different sicknesses, how to take care of ourselves, and when we should ask our parents to take us to the doctor. I can always get excited about some good public health education. And the pictures they use to demonstrate the sicknesses are straight up hilarious!

Diarrhea. In case you couldn´t figure that out...

After this we join hands and walk to the park several blocks away. It’s a pretty humble park – a slide, some monkey-bars, and a set of seesaws, only one of which actually works the way it was intended – but the kids love it! Today I’ve got monkey-bar-duty: I hold the kids up as one by one they make their way across the monkey bars…I can only hope it’s a good arm workout!

When we get back from the park, it’s time for lunch, so we get the kids seated, say a prayer, and I start passing out the food while the other teacher leads them in a resounding chorus of a song called “Los Alimentos”, basically explaining how we eat. It’s become out of my favorites.

The kids eat (and so do we, between some combination of refilling cups, cleaning up spilled drinks, feeding the kids when they’re being picky eaters, and dolling out toothpaste when they’re done) A flurry of cheek kisses and they’re gone, leaving us with a little peace and quiet and time to clean everything up before the afternoon group arrives.

Often the afternoon group has the same activities as the morning group, but not today. After a LONG lunch (these kids don’t want to eat today…I think I end up having to feed at least 5 of them their lunches. However, it is canned tuna…so can I really blame them?), the kids play among themselves for a bit and the teacher informs me she’s leaving to go talk with one of the parents but will be back in a few minutes. This sentence always puts a little dread in my heart as 1.) It’s hard to control 15 kids period, especially when I’m operating in my second language and 2.) “A few minutes” or “A little bit” in Peru usually means anywhere from half an hour to an hour.

So we carry on for awhile, until Pierro, who I love and adore but has some anger issues, gets upset about something and starts throwing chairs around the room (honestly, this is really a weekly occurrence with him). I finally get to him and wrestle him into a chair (one of the ones he was throwing, ironically enough) and tell him that we’re just going to sit there for 5 minutes until he calms down and has had some time to think about what he’s doing. Time out is not used her as a punishment, but the kids have learned to expect it from me…it’s really one of the only ways I know how to discipline these kids. I am not comfortable administering physical punishment, they don’t take me very seriously when I talk to them because I will inevitably make some language mistake that discredits me in their mind (at this age they don’t really understand the concept that I speak another language and had to learn Spanish, they just think I’m stupid), so time out it is. Pierro’s pretty resistant today, continues trying to struggle out of the chair, and eventually bites me, but gives up on that when I don’t react. My pain tolerance has definitely increased since coming here. While I’m still trying to sit with Pierro, the other teacher comes back, I explain what’s going on, and she takes him over to talk with her. After literally one minute, he comes over in tears and apologizes. She’s got a magic touch with those kids that I can only admire and try to learn from.

Pierro, pretending to be a lion, about an hour before he bit me. I should have seen it coming...

A little later, we turn on some music and a few of the girls who were in a “choreography” (can’t use the word “dancing”) workshop over the summer do their dances to the music. They’re super cute, and honestly at the age of 5 are better dancers than I will ever be. We dance until they finally get tired, when the teacher rounds them up and sends them over to the tables to finish the day with a craft.

To my surprise, even though the class is both boys and girls, we’re making bracelets. But the boys don’t seem at all phased by this – they’ve got soccer balls and Indian beads for their bracelets, so all is well. Much to my relief, no chairs are thrown this time.

The kids finish their bracelets, their parents come to pick them up, and after another round of clean-up, the teacher and I are free to go. I take the combi most of the way home, but stop at an internet café to check emails (mostly copy and paste them to my USB drive so I can read them when I get home!) and, inevitably, g-chat with the other YAVs. As much as we laugh about it, it really is good for us to be able to be there to support one another and share crazy stories of the day (today I am super excited to share the story of getting bitten!).

The afternoon girls doing their dance

I leave the cabina and walk about 20 blocks or so to my house. I always love this walk – it gives me some time to clear my head, get some exercise, people watch, etc. When I get home, Flor and Fabián are there, but Eduardo still hasn’t made it back from work (his new job with the Presbytery has him working pretty far way), so I greet them and then head to my room to actually read those emails I picked up at the internet café and relax by myself for a little bit. Later, when Eduardo gets home, Flor calls us in to dinner where we chat some and watch “Al Fondo Hay Sitio”, the hit Peruvian prime-time soap opera (and INCREDIBLY popular song of the same name), on the small kitchen TV.

After dinner I wash the dishes (this has become my dinner chore since we all know me cooking is a bad idea…), kick the soccer ball around in the living room with Fabián for a little bit (not sure that’s really a good idea either), and we head to our separate rooms. I listen to music, read, do more emails, and sometimes watch a movie before falling into an exhausted sleep, often still dressed and with the light on.

I’m startled out of my sleep by the alarm going off at 7 AM. I immediately reach to snooze it, and we start all over again!

Wanderin´ Around

2010-02-24T16:23:00.007-05:00

Finally, my friends, after much waiting, catching up on old blogs, and a lovely bout with the Giardia bacteria, I’m excited to bring you some stories and pictures from my December/January vacation! I, along with the other YAVs (in shifts…oh and also Anna’s mom!) gave ourselves a little “coastal tour of Peru,” if you will, that included visits to Arequipa, Paracas, Lima, Trujillo, Huanchaco, and Huaraz. The trip was a wonderful break from my regular routine and a great chance to get to know more of Peru (before our vacation, I had only been in Lima, where I live, and in Huánuco for a long-weekend retreat…remember climbing the waterfalls?). I was very excited to get out of town! There’s no way I’ll be able to describe all of our adventures or post all of my photos (though I am going to try to post at least some of them to facebook…I’ll make sure I make a link on a blog so that you guys can see them even if you aren’t on facebook!), so I’d like to give you a quick look at each place we visited: the good, the bad, and the absurd.

Arequipa

Plaza de Armas in Trujillo

The Good: Arequipa is a beautiful mountain city in the South of Peru. It’s the second most populated after Lima, but is considerably cleaner and has a nice little coast-meets-mountains charm about it. It’s also situated around some beautiful dormant (we hope…) volcanoes and has beautiful hiking nearby. We had the opportunity to go to the very old and famous Monastery de Santa Catalina that’s a full city block full of historical relics and vivid colors! We also went to the museum where they keep “Juanita” the Ice Princess, the frozen mummy of a girl sacrificed in the mountains near Arequipa!

The Bad: Because we only had two days to stay, we didn’t get to hike into the famous and beautiful Colca Canyon. Looking at pictures from Joe and Alissa, who did, we really missed out on some pretty incredible views!

The Absurd: We couldn’t find typical Arequipeña food! Here we were smack dab in the center of a big city famous for its unique spicy cuisine, and all we could find was fried calamari! Oh well, I guess I’ll have to save my cravings for ocopa or ricotta rellena for the occasional special days at the corner restaurants in Lima!

Paracas

The Good: A beautiful beach town a few hours south of Lima in the region called Ica, where you can also find the famous Nazca lines. Very close to Pisco, a town where the famous Peruvian liquor of the same name originated, best known for its use in the Pisco sour (think a small, strong margarita made with whisky instead of tequila and with a touch of cinnamon!). Paracas itself is famous for the Ballestas Islands that you can tour early in the morning and see all sorts of beautiful wildlife, including beautiful tropical birds (according to Brian I should be looking out for “incredible birding” down here), manatees (which I ate for breakfast the other day without knowing it! I feel like a terrible person!) and of course, Andy’s favorite, SEALS!

The Bad: Well, we never actually made it to Paracas. We had everything lined up and reserved, but when we got to the bus station in Arequipa, the lady at the desk calmly informed us that the bus had never shown up in Arequipa and therefore would not be leaving for Paracas. We’d have to wait til the next night (not really much of an option, since we only had one day scheduled in Paracas!), so after some serious spur of the moment rebooking, we were refunded our money (with a fake S./200 bill…good thing yours truly has become an expert at spotting the fakes!) and got on another bus line taking us directly to Lima, our mid-trip destination. Bummer! I guess the seals will have to wait!

The Absurd: News abounds about the terrifying, fatal Peruvian bus crashes, and while in Arequipa, our site coordinator Debbie sent us an article about some particularly bad crashes that had just occurred with a not-so-subtle reminder to only take the best and most secure bus lines, since these crashes happen more often on the cheaper bus lines. But of course, in line with the absurdity of our vacation, while on the nicest, fancy-schmanciest, gringo-flooded Cruz del Sur bus line, we experienced our first (and hopefully last!) Peruvian bus crash! Well, Anna and Sarah Alta did, at least. Baja and I slept through the whole thing! It was pretty minor and only held us up for about an hour or so, but Baja and I were pretty bummed to wake up the next morning and find out we’d missed the adventure!

Lima

Parque de Amor in Miraflores

The Good: Delicious food, an exciting night-life, and lots of restaurants that give you a free pisco sour with your meal! We spent New Years’ (and the day before, since we didn’t end up in Paracas!) in Lima so that we could switch off Baja, who’d been travelling with us for the first half of the trip, for Alissa, who would join us for the second half. We stayed in a really fun (maybe a little too fun…) hostal in Miraflores within walking distance from the beach, the Parque de Amor (a free park by the water of beautiful mosaics intertwined with quotes about love), the “Central Park” area of Miraflores, and an incredible, fair-trade organic coffee shop with the only Chai Latte I’ve found in Peru!

The Bad: While we were in a different part of Lima (Miraflores…about a two hour bus-ride from Carabayllo, where I live) from my usual neck of the woods, it was still a bit of a bummer to spend more of our vacation time than intended in Lima, my home turf. We certainly had a good time, but nothing was new and exciting, it was all stuff that I, at least, had seen and done before.

The Absurd: On the way to the airport to meet her parents, Baja and I had a super-talkative taxi driver (always the most fun!) who was very interested in our lives, what we were doing in Peru, and what kind of men appealed to Baja, particularly if she had a thing for midgets (important note…this man was not a midget! He just legitimately wanted to know if Baja was into them). In the end, he told her that she was going to end up marrying a midget but losing him on her honeymoon because he’d be so small she wouldn’t be able to find him. I’m telling you, absurd.

Trujillo

Ruins from Huaca de la Luna

The Good: Famous Northern coastal city with lots and lots of ancient Incan and pre-Incan ruins. Of all the ones we visited, my favorite was certainly Huaca de La Luna, which means Temple of the Moon, a lesser-known temple than the more famous Chan-Chan, that in some places has up to 7 or 8 layers of excavation exposed! It was pretty amazing to see different layers/different epochs of old murals displayed right next to each other...really gave me a sense of the complexity of the history of this country!

The Bad: Trujillo is actually not that interesting of a city. A Peruvian friend advised us that it would be much better if we spent one night there instead of our intended two and spent the extra night in Huanchaco, a beach town about 15 minutes from Trujillo. Trusting our vast knowledge of Peruvian tourism and guidebooks over native advice, we spent two nights in Trujillo and did end up regretting that use of our time. The ruins were fabulous, but could have been done in one day. Lesson: Always trust the locals!

The Absurd: Trujillo is where I began to show the symptoms of what, I would find out a month later, was Giardiasis. In the mist of this, we came home from touring one day and I found myself wanting nothing more than a serious butt massage. When I said this outloud (not sure I really intended to), Anna’s mom immediately offered, and minutes later, I found myself receiving a butt massage from my friend’s mom that I had met, under rather strange circumstances, less than a week ago. Oh geez.

Huanchaco

Sunset in Huanchaco

The Good: Absolutely gorgeous beach town with a really fun hostal! We ended up staying two nights after all (and just cutting one night from our Huaraz stay) and enjoyed the relaxing pace of sleeping in the morning, heading to the beach for the afternoon, eating a delicious dinner (especially at an amazing vegetarian restaurant with $3 piña coladas and a wonderful view of the sunset over the water (that’s right kids, we’re at the Pacific ocean where the sun SETS over the water! Crazy!), and staying up late at night playing cards on the hostal porch. Great seafood and just a relaxing visit.

The Bad: The second morning, while everyone else was still in bed, Anna and I decided to be brave, get ourselves out of bed before 10 AM, and go read and talk on the beach. Which we did, and it was wonderful. And we even put on copious amounts of sunscreen. Or so we thought…that afternoon with both found ourselves painfully sunburned, me in a strange pattern on my legs where I must have missed several pretty large spots. That sunburn didn’t even begin to fade for about a week! Bring on the aloe!!

Just a little glimpse of my sunburn...

The Absurd: Our hostal had a turtle for a pet just chillin’ in the main lobby area, along with tables and hammocks. Best hostal mascot EVER!

Huaraz

My first glacier!

The Good: I saw my first (and hopefully not last, but you just never know at the rate we´re going…) glacier! It really was an amazing sight! You know if you’d asked me before I came here if there were glaciers in Peru, I’m not sure how I would have answered. But it turns out yes, there are in fact glaciers in Peru, and I had the privilege to “hike”/walk around the glacial silt and lake of one. It really was a wonder of nature….and HUGE! We walked in for over an hour, hoping to have the opportunity to touch some of the actual glacial ice, but no matter how much we walked, the glacier itself seemed just as far away! We did get some great pictures, though, and the opportunity to dip our toes in the ice-cold (literally!) glacial lake.

The Bad: Altitude sickness: apparently it’s a real thing. Huaraz in the Andes at an altitude of 10,000 ft, and the point where we went to start our glacial walk was considerably higher than the city itself. Anna and Alissa live in Huancayo and Huanta, respectively, both mountain towns of high elevation in the Andes. Alta had sent the last 4 months living in Huancavelica, another mountain town high enough that, I believe, you can actually just walk onto the moon. And then of course there was me, who has lived in the swamp that is William & Mary and am now living in Lima, a costal desert, whose altitude is más o menos the same height as Baja’s future midget husband. I found myself very easily tired/out of breath, dizzy, and basically just feeling like I was constantly drunk. This was particularly hard on our walk, as I felt bad for being so weak and slow and didn’t want to hold anyone up. However, every time I mentioned that I felt bad for being the “weakest link,” Anna reminded me that 1.) It was really ok, they were acclimated to the altitude from their living situations and I simply wasn’t, and 2.) I needed to suck it up and let them know when I was getting lightheaded so I could sit down our I was going to pass out, fall down one of the ledges we were walking along, die, and then be, excuse the terrible pun, but “dead weight” to carry back instead of just the “weakest link.” I found this argument rather convincing.

The Absurd: We left Huaraz on an overnight bus ride back to Lima, our fifth one in the course of two weeks. Speaking as someone who’s never been very good at sleeping in moving vehicles, those bus rides will take their toll on you! Fortunately, I’d had some success in the past popping a Dramamine pill (thank you Alissa!) that, even though I don’t get motion sickness, does a pretty good job of helping me get at least a few hours of sleep. However, the night of this bus ride, I found out that you can actually take two Dramamine pills at a time, and I figured hey, it’ll just make it an even better sleep! I could not have been more wrong. I became a crazy, half-asleep zombie of sorts. Well, a cuddly zombie. Anna, who had the great misfortune of sitting next to me during this bus ride, swears that at some point in the night I confused her for Andy link and kept cuddling up to her and just throwing myself across her seat. While the possibility that I had Andy on the brain is certainly very high, I’m sure my high school and college friends can attest to the fact that, especially when I’m already at least somewhat asleep, I can be rather indiscriminate in my cuddling attacks and am pretty horrible at sleeping in a small, confined space.

But that’s only the beginning. Along with becoming the cuddling zombie, I began to do absolutely absurd things in my sleep. Sleep talking is pretty normal, but when I started to sleep direct an orchestra, with my arms flailing everywhere, Anna became a bit more concerned. Then at some point I ended up leaning forward in my sleep and, every time the bus moved, banging my head rather hard into the food tray on the back of the seat in front of me. I’m sure whoever was sitting there was thrilled. I’d say, though, that it all culminated when I woke up with Anna staring at me, very concerned, and my seatbelt in my mouth (apparently I was hungry?).

So two lessons were learned from that trip. 1.) I will never take more than 1 Dramamine pill at a time, and 2.) Anna will never, as long as she lives, sit next to me on a bus again.

So there you have it – my Christmas vacation! These stories here can’t even begin to describe all of our adventures, but let’s just say it was pretty hard to get back into settle back into my daily routine in Carabayllo after such a great little “Tour de Peru”, if you will.

Now there is, I’m sure, at least one of you, who is very concerned that I did not go see Cuzco and Machu Picchu during this vacation, especially since the news has probably reached you about the mudslides that have wreaked so much havoc on the area. Rest assured, the other YAVs (minus Sarah Alta…sad!) and I will be going in May to hike the Inca Trail as part of our May vacation. And the most exciting part of this: my parents and brother Jim are coming! (We will greatly miss brother Jack, but it’s his final Freeman Jazz Band Concert and, as the only bari sax, he really couldn’t miss it.) So don’t worry, I will not spend a year in Peru without seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World. But for now, I’m off to work and will soon head to a beach retreat in Máncora, a city in the north of Peru. When I get back, expect news on that, my new job working with Fair Trade link, some thought-provoking conversations, and a whole lot of bugs. So for now, my friends, chau, cuíadensen mucho!

I Wasn't Home for Christmas

2010-02-09T12:48:00.004-05:00

I Wasn’t Home for Christmas

It’s as simple as that. I wake up January 19, look at the calendar, wonder where Christmas went and how it got to be 2010, and then I remember.

Oh yeah. I spent Christmas in Peru. Crazy.

This was the first Christmas of my life that I’ve spent away from my family, my house, my bed, my church, my dinner table, my tree – whatever sign of homeliness and familiarity we decide to use, this was the first time I was far from any of it. I missed it, for sure, but mostly in the days leading up to Christmas, in Advent (my favorite season of all, liturgical or otherwise), the season of expectation. A certain excitement and warmth builds within us as we wait for…something. What exactly we don’t know. The coming of the Christ child? Getting to light the big white candle? (Personally the pink candle was always my favorite.) Finally getting to find out what’s inside that present? The Monroe/Block Christmas Party? The Christmas pageant? The Christmas pig? The infamous “Christmas Stew” that you eat for weeks after Christmas and basically consists of everything you ate for Christmas dinner thrown together in a pot? The day when your kids finally let you change the radio station form Lite 98? We don’t really know. But it’s somewhere in the waiting that the Christmas spirit always finds me.

So this year, as I was waiting, I had the very disconcerting realization that I had no idea, really, what I was waiting for. None of the things listed above were going to happen for me this year. Except for the coming of the Christ child, I guess, but who really knows what that means anyway. I wasn’t in much of a mood for divine mysteries.

So I was excited, I was sad, I had new learning experiences, I spent an inordinate amount of time with Sarah Alta at Megaplaza because in some strange way, the lights and banter of the mall were the closest thing I could find to my experiences of US Christmases. (As a side note, I actually don’t mind commercialized Christmas. Sure, it’s very easy to miss the point and important to remind ourselves that we are really celebrating the humble birth of a man who lived a life of revolutionary love and was to change history forever, but for me, there’s something exciting, sentimental, and romantic about the lights, the music, the excited kids…it just does it for me.) I ate too much, exchanged gifts, cried on the phone with my family (sorry about that, guys…), watched Love Actually and had myself a Peruvian Christmas. I’m still processing what it was to spend Christmas away from home and experience it in a completely different cultural context – I may not finish processing that until next Christmas. But for now, I’ll try to describe for you, as best I can, my Peruvian Christmas.

First of all, as many of you know, working in the church makes for a crazy Christmas season. And it certainly was busy and crazy, but not as much as I expected. You see, for a culture in which church and religious practice are often treated as the most essential and core part of one’s life, Christmas is surprisingly…unchurchly. Christmas itself is really about family here. Each of the two churches I work for had a Christmas service, but one was December 20^th and the other the 23^rd. Christmas Eve services don’t happen in the IEP (though I’m willing to bet something like that exists in the Catholic church…).

In the IEP Ingeniería, the service was a little bit like a big Christmas talent show with interspersed songs (though most weren’t Christmas songs), a mini Christmas story reenactment, and a sermon. And then when everything was done, we drank hot chocolate (even though it’s summer here) and ate Paneton, the traditional Peruvian Christmas food which is best described as a lighter, fluffier, and much more delicious version of fruitcake. Each of the children present received a present bought by the church especially for him or her and everyone was happy and full of Christmas spirit. Not the same feeling I get at the Christmas Eve service at home, but still, the presence of a spirit of joy.

The service at the IEP Collique was less remarkable and less interesting, but along the same lines…talent show-esque with a sermon worked in there and Paneton and hot chocolate afterward.

Another interesting note –at both churches, where secular music, stories, really secular anything is often frowned-upon, the altars and front of the sanctuaries were decorated with what we call “tacky-Christmas-lights”, Christmas trees, and basically things you would never find in the sanctuary of a typical PCUSA church in the states. Like I said it’s interesting to see the differences across culture of what we to be sacred.

As I said earlier, there’s no Christmas Eve service. In fact, Christmas itself is celebrated on the 24^th, our Christmas Eve, at midnight. It’s much like our conception of New Years (or Michael Scott’s conception of marriage, if you’ve seen the episode of The Office where Jim and Pam get married). The whole extended family gathers at the home of some relative and waits anxiously for midnight, when they can officially begin Christmas dinner, a great feast in the middle of the night (quite a surprise for the stomach, since in Peru lunch is the biggest meal of the day and you don’t usually go to bed with a lot of food on your stomach). Christmas dinner consists of turkey, rice prepared with Coca-Cola (not kidding!), lots of other delicious dishes, and ends with (you guessed it!) Paneton!

Another exciting and totally new thing for me about Christmas is that at midnight, when it officially becomes “Christmas Day,” EVERYONE sets off fireworks. I mean everyone. I’m not sure about the legality of fireworks in Peru, but as my host family once reminded me, “prohibido” doesn’t really mean that much here. It’s bigger than any Fourth of July show I’ve ever seen, really an amazing sight. And such a contrast to the “Silent Night” that I think of when I think of Christmas night. It was a sight to be seen. I can honestly say I have never and probably never will again celebrate Christmas in such a loud, festive, boisterous way!

The 25^th, the big Christmas Day for us, is more of a day of rest in Peru. As you can imagine, if you started dinner in your relatives’ house across town at midnight the night before, you’re not much for waking up early on Christmas Morning. I think Alta and I got out of bed around noon. We went to Flor’s family’s house for Christmas lunch (we’d been with Eduardo’s family the night before) but before, as we were wrapping presents, made sure to listen to the Messiah (typical Christmas music at my house), Amy Grant Christmas songs (Typical Terpstra fam Christmas music), and Mannheim Steamroller, which feels like home to both of us. We also spent much of the time that she was here with me sitting on my bed harmonizing to Christmas Carols, mostly minor, of course!

At Flor’s family’s house we had another delicious turkey meal and did a Secret Santa gift exchange among the adults (all the kids got some sort of tricycle). Then we came back, crashed, I called my family and cried, Sarah talked with her host family from Huancavelica…and we ate some more Paneton. Not kidding. And that was it. That was Christmas. We left the next day for vacation (which will be my next blog post, coming soon, I promise). Very surreal, and looking back, it doesn’t feel like Christmas actually happened. It was just all so different. Like I said, I’m still very much processing it. If I come to any great insights about the interconnectedness of the whole world in the birth of the one poor child who changed the world (and there’s 10 million more who probably could…), I’ll be sure to let y’all know. But who knows. Come Christmas next year, maybe I’ll find myself feeling a little homesick for fireworks, summer weather, and of course Paneton!

Share the Well

2010-01-31T17:53:00.001-05:00

News Year’s greetings, and my apologies for having gone a month between posts! Between Christmas, vacation, getting back into work, trying to plan for hiking the Inca Trail when my family comes in May (!!!), starting some new things at work (will write more about that another day) and sermon writing, I haven’t had much down time to dedicate to blogging about Christmas or traveling, though those will certainly be coming soon! But for now, I’ve got this long-overdue post to share with you!

As I sat on my bed last night, just having finished writing my third sermon, I realized that I hadn’t yet translated and posted my second sermon for you all to read! Which is a shame, really, because I preached it back at the end of November and actually liked what I wrote better than my first sermon.

(Notice I said what I wrote. I don’t think the delivery of this one was as good. That was probably a combination of many things, including too much caffeine, nerves from having all my fellow YAVs sitting in the congregation, and just having come off of our Thanksgiving retreat. But I am going to go ahead and blame it all on having played the card game “Nerts” for 2 hours before worship. If you have never played, it is THE MOST STRESSFUL card game in the world. Yet addicting. Curse you, Anna, why did you get me hooked on that darn game?)

Anyway, the sermon’s pretty self-explanatory (and fortunately delivery doesn’t count here because you’re reading it…hooray!), but I wanted to point out one item of interest. At the beginning of December, right after I’d preached this sermon and when I ought to have posted it on my blog, Andy put up an interesting blog post based on this exact same text. Check it out here. Our interpretations of the text are pretty similar (not really a surprise, if you know us), but he used the analogy of stone soup to explain this story to a Sunday school class, and apparently it really clicked with them. (If you don’t know what stone soup is, you should click on the words “stone soup” above…it’s a lot of fun, and it really is a great comparison!) So that’s all to say great minds think alike. Or crazy ones. Remains to be seen.

Sermon at la Ingeniería, 11/29/09

Mark 6:30-44

“The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest for a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, Jesus saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.

When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.’ But he answered them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ They said to him, ‘Are we to go and buy two hundred dinarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘How many loaves have you? Go and see.’ When they had found out, they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’

Then Jesus ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.”

There’s nothing like a great feast. This Thursday, my friends from the United States and I celebrated Thanksgiving, a holiday in which family and friends gather together and share a meal, giving thanks to God for all of God’s blessings. It can be anywhere between a small, intimate gathering and a grand, extravagant party. In my house, Thanksgiving usually includes my parents, grandparents, brothers, and me. But for my college roommate (hi Bizz!), every year there are more than 50 people! I think she told me once there were three turkeys. Talk about a family reunion!

This year was the first Thanksgiving that I did not celebrate with my family. And yes, it was hard to be so far from so many of the most important people in my life. But I was with good people, a new family of sorts. And, like always, we shared a meal. We ate turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and some of the best stuffing I’ve ever had (thanks Alissa!), continuously giving thanks go God. There is something special, something sacred, about sharing food in this manner.

Jesus also loved sharing meals with others. In the Gospels, he is always breaking bread with whoever, whatever type of person is around, and using food in his parables. For example, “The Kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.” Or, “Therefore, every good tree will bear good fruit, but the bad tree will bear bad fruit.” Or how about, “Truly I tell you, the harvest is plenty, but the workers few.” “I am the bread of life, anyone who comes to me will never be hungry…” I could go on and on.

Our text today is an example of Jesus sharing a huge meal, one of 5,000 men and, as Matthew reminds us in his Gospel, this number doesn’t even include women and children! Now my roommate’s 50-person-Thanksgiving doesn’t seem so big anymore…

There are many ways in which we can interpret and learn from this text. I am going to use one of these to explain and preach this text tonight, and for some of you all, it might be a very different interpretation than the way in which you usually read this text. That is completely fine. In using my interpretation, I am not trying to negate other valid, educated attempts to read and understand this text. On the contrary, I want to affirm that within the many dimensions Mark has included in this story, there is a message that speaks directly to our economic, social, and ecological responsibility as Christians. And tonight, it is on this level that are going to encounter the Word of God.

That said, let’s look at the text:

At the beginning of the story, Jesus’s disciples have returned from their time of mission, and they are on their way to rest and, of course, eat with Jesus in a deserted place, far from civilization and the crowds seeking out Jesus to heal their sick and preach to them. But, as always, word spreads, and the crowds find Jesus. And, in his great compassion, Jesus accepts them and teaches them.

But afternoon turns into evening, and the disciples start to get worried – What are these people going to eat? The disciples know they’ve brought enough for their own dinner, but what’s going to happen to the crowds? They ask Jesus to dismiss them, to send them off to buy their own food.

And how does Jesus respond? “You give them something to eat.” Excuse me? The disciples? Provide food for more than 5,000 people? Jesus’s disciples were not rich men, or if they had been, they weren’t anymore, having left everything to follow him. We can understand their surprise, their frustration. 200 denarii, a very conservative estimate of what it would cost to buy enough food, was equivalent to eight months’ salary! They do not have this kind of money. Feeding all these people seems like a project far beyond what they are capable of.

But Jesus responds, “How many loaves do you have?” And in the end, between the loaves and fishes brought by the disciples and the crowd, Jesus feeds them all. And all ate and were satisfied.

It’s a miracle, is it not? All ate and were satisfied. The power and love of God are revealed in the parting, the sharing of bread. **Note – this is a play on words in Spanish. Parting is partiendo and sharing is compartiendo…so this line is a bit cleverer than it appears…**

If I understand the text, Jesus is trying to teach us that there is enough. He didn’t call down bread from Heaven, bring it in from somewhere else – the food was already there. Jesus shared what they had, and it was enough.

There is enough. This is a bold declaration, isn’t it? In a world of hunger, how can we say there is enough food? In a world of pollution and waste, how can we say there is enough water? In a world where we exploit nature and destroy the environment, in a world of Global Warming, how can we say there is enough space, enough natural resources, enough life, even, for everyone? It is in fact a very bold proclamation. But it is the proclamation of Jesus, and as Christians, it is our joy and our responsibility to live this reality and this proclamation.

I encountered this reality last month, in the jungle of Tingo María. I was on a retreat with my fellow YAVs in Huánuco, and we went to Tingo María for a day to climb waterfalls. It was my first time in a jungle – there is no jungle in my country. And I can say with completely sincerity, that I have never seen anything like the nature in the jungle. One of the other YAVs said it better than I can: “This is a place where life just wants to live.” It’s abundance. It’s harmony. It’s the creation of God. And in this creation, there is enough.

But if there is enough, what happened? Well, we know what happened, right? It’s what would have happened if Jesus had not been with the people that day in the desert. Those who had food would have eaten well and those who didn’t have food would have gone home hungry. This is how it is in our world today. With food, with water, with all of our natural resources. A few have too much and others, the majority, don’t have enough. Many don’t have any at all. We have forgotten Jesus’s miracle, the miracle of sharing. Instead of abundance, we have greed. Instead of harmony, we have selfishness. We waste and squander God’s creation. We distribute resources unjustly, and if we don’t change our ways right now, we are going to destroy the world that God has created and has called good.

Understanding this grave truth, we hear the good news of Jesus that, if we can learn to share, there will be enough for everyone. It is important for us to notice that this text doesn’t say that when, because of our sins and greed, there isn’t enough, God will intervene and will provide what we need. This is very dangerous theology. Very dangerous because it gives us permission to consume freely, to waste our natural resources, our gifts from God, and to justify ourselves saying, “The Lord will provide.” It’s dangerous. It’s harmful.

I’m not saying that the Lord doesn’t provide. God already has provided. And it is now our responsibility to care for and share that with which God has provided us.

Jesus looked for what bread the people already had, he blessed it, and he broke it. And all ate and were satisfied. The miracle of this story is not that food was provided but that food was shared. In the presence of Jesus, we can share what we have and there is enough.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us share in every moment. Let us remember that justice for God’s people and care for the future of God’s creation are our responsibilities. Let us not squander that which God has given us.

There is enough. Living in simplicity, let us share with one another. Only then will we truly live in the abundance of God. Amen.

The Birth of the Rebel Jesus (Reconsidering Ronald Reagan)

2009-12-23T16:26:00.004-05:00

´´When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.´´ -Archbishop Dom Hélder Camara

First of all, merry Christmas! As I celebrate Christmas in an entirely new way (expect a post on how Christmas is celebrated here in the next month…but I want to wait to write that until I’ve actually celebrated it!), know that I am thinking of and praying for each of you and hoping that you have a joyful holiday season.

This Christmas post has an admittedly strange subject (Ronald Reagan and the effect of U.S. neoliberal economic policies on Latin America), but it’s inspired by and structured around Jackson Browne’s beautiful, tongue-in-cheek, and profoundly challenging ballad “The Rebel Jesus.” Stanzas of the song will be included in italics. I recommend taking the time to listen to the song itself in this video.

Before proceeding any farther, I want to admit up front that this post is going to be honest and strongly opinionated. I recognize that, and I know that many of you will disagree with me. I know that many of you (including my dear parents – Hi Mom, Hi Dad) voted for Ronald Reagan. Many agree that his ideas of capitalism and neoliberal economics are in fact the best way to govern our country and our world. At least one of you (hello James, if you’re reading this) sleeps with a framed picture of the man next to your bed! Forgive me then, friends, if I speak too strongly. My purpose is not to offend you but to offer a different perspective, one widely held in Peru and as far as I know among the majority of the Latin American world (not including the proportionally miniscule rich aristocracy), on policies that we often take for granted as “necessary to defend democracy and freedom.” I want to offer you the perspective, as far as I understand it, of those who have lived through the negative effects of these policies and who know better than any of us ever could that in the economic and foreign policy decisions of the United States, there are Lives in the Balance.

All that said, let us begin:

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season,
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children.
And the families hurrying to their homes,
As the sky darkens and freezes,
Will be gathering around their hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God’s graces
And the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

Many of you know that I tend to identify myself more with the left end of the political/theological/economic spectrum (Understatement? Yes.) And because of that, I have encountered many difficulties working with the more theologically and socially conservative Protestant church here in Peru. However, something very interesting I’ve noticed is that regardless of how conservative the people I’ve met are in their religious beliefs or understanding of personal moral conduct (no dancing, no drinking, etc.), none of them are economically conservative as we define it in the United States. And they all have their fair share of complaints about the policies of good ole’ George W. Bush.

But then again, that’s not really that remarkable. Most people in the States have their fair share of complaints about W. Bush-bashing is the cool thing to do. Heck, even the Dixie Chicks are doing it. What may come as more of a surprise to my readers is the virtually unanimous criticism of Ronald Reagan.

The United States loves to glorify Ronald Reagan. Reaganomics. Military strength. The Fall of Communism. Reviving our investment-centered economy. Though of course the inherent goodness of any of these things is certainly debatable (and I would be willing to talk about any of them with you, if you would like), the fact of the matter is that our national history generally remembers Reagan as a president who, in the face of any struggle, did all he could to serve the interests of the United States of America.

Well they call him by the Prince of Peace
And they call him by the Savior,
And they pray to him upon the sea
And in every bold endeavor,
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worship him
From a temple to a robber’s den,
In the words of the Rebel Jesus.

And you know, despite what I or anyone else might say about the long-term effects of his policies on our country, the above is true: Ronald Reagan consistently did all he could to protect and serve the United States. But in the eyes of the people I’ve talked to here in Peru, that’s exactly the problem. Reagan was always looking out for the United States. And whether we like it or not, he lived then and we live today in a global community. The president of the world’s greatest superpower (or one of the world’s two greatest superpowers, in Reagan’s time) cannot justifiably look out for the interests of his or her country alone.

Some of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy blunders are well-known, such as the Iran-Contra scandal, where the administration, likely with Reagan’s blessing, used money that it had illegally gained from selling arms to Iran to, also illegally, support a right-wing, essentially terrorist group in Nicaragua working to overthrow the democratically-elected leftist Sandinista government. Other similar but lesser-known stories arise all over Latin America (Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama) with the same pattern: US aids right-wing, military overthrow of a popular government that we perceive as a “potential Communist threat.”

However, undoubtedly, when we think about the foreign policy of Reagan, the major even that comes to mind is the end of the Cold War. A milestone in history that any history book I’ve ever read regards as one of the greatest accomplishments in 20th-century history. And certainly there were good things that came from it; the Soviet Union didn’t have a great human rights record either, to say the least, and there are ways in which its demise contributed to human freedom, health, and dignity. However, one has to ask, was Reagan really “assuring the safety of the world in the face of a Communist threat” by building up our nuclear arms program? Was his ideal of neoliberal capitalism really the way to protect individual rights and liberties? After all, what about the rights to life, food, water, shelter, and health that the poor, in the US and abroad, were effectively denied by these policies? Why did the “great and legendary” president of a country that was to be the “beacon of light and freedom in the world” increase funds to the military but decrease healthcare spending? Where these policies really about the good of the world, or were they to protect our own interests?

We guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year, when Christmas comes,
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They’d get the same as the Rebel Jesus.

But the point of this post isn’t just to criticize the attitude and actions of Ronald Reagan and the policies of his administration. Because the fact of the matter is that Ronald Reagan, or George Bush, or Joseph Stalin, or Adolph Hitler, or any other well known historical figure who has played a role in serious human rights abuses, did not do it on his/her own. The blame extends even outside the circle of their administrations and direct supporters. The self-centered political and economic rhetoric so evident in the foreign policy of the Reagan administration existed in our country long before Reagan was born. George W. Bush did not detain Muslim-Americans after 9/11 without our fearful assertion that this was in fact the best way to detect Homeland Security, nor did his father send political refugees from Haiti to the inhumane, concentration-camp-esque living conditions of Guantanamo Bay without our xenophobia to support him. Stalin and Hitler would not have been able to commit the atrocities they did without the masses of people who believed in what they preached and without powerful countries like the US and Great Britain initially turning a blind eye to what was going on in Germany and Russia. The responsibility for what happens to our brothers and sisters living in other countries does not lie solely with our heads of state and elected officials. It belongs to you and to me.

I’m currently reading a book called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer, the doctor and human rights activist about whom Mountains Beyond Mountains is written. Writing about his experience working as a doctor of the poor in Haiti, Peru, Cuba, Russia, and the United States, Farmer focuses on the root problem of the diseases he treats, which he calls structural violence. While he chooses to spend less time defining it and more time demonstrating it through patients’ life stories and real life situations, some of us (like myself) like more concrete definitions. So for those other Meyers-Briggs J’s out there, structural violence is, as I understand it, the existence of political and economic systems that, while they may not directly wage war against people (as the US did with the Contras in Nicaragua), perpetuate inequalities and lead to the inescapable suffering and death of the poor and oppressed.

This is hard stuff – harder still when we hear Farmer’s diagnosis that a great deal of the structural violence in the world is caused by the neoliberal economic policies of our dear old US of A. Whether we want to admit it or not, the lives of many of the world’s destitute are affected by our daily decisions. Where does the food we eat come form, the clothes we wear, the oil we use? I challenge you to start asking that question, and if you don’t know the answers, to do some research. I warn you, the answers you find will probably disturb you. This is not a fun exercise. But it is, I believe, the only way to begin to construct a truly peaceful world, free of the overt and covert violence that plague our world today. The only way to begin to construct the Kingdom of God.

But pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to compete with
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There’s a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure, and I bid you cheer,
From the heathen and the pagan
On the side of the Rebel Jesus.

And this, perhaps, is why this Christmas season, I ask you to reconsider Ronald Reagan. I ask you to look at a president that the we the rich of America have idolized (and sometimes the poor too, for that matter) and remember those whose lives and families were torn apart by the violence, actual and structural, that his policies created in the Latin American world.

And here I return to the quote by Dom Helder Camara with which I began. Here in Peru, I have the opportunity to “serve the poor.” But what good is it for us to serve the poor if we don’t work to change the systems and situations that have cursed some people to be poor in the first place? And what good am I really doing offering my time and assistance if I continue to live my life according to the oppressive and violent structures that give me a nice free T-shirt but don’t pay the Haitians who made my shirt a fair wage with which to feed their families? (Just for the record, I chose Haiti for that example by looking at the tag of the T-shirt I’m currently wearing. What’s worse – it’s a shirt from a church event! I’m telling you, friends, this structural violence has just become an ingrained and acceptable part of our culture.)

So friends and family, merry Christmas. Know that on this special day, it is hard for me to be far from you. But I take comfort in the knowledge that December 25th, we will be united in a celebration of joy, peace, giving, love, and perhaps even the overturning of structural violence. Feliz Navidad a todos. Let us celebrate the birth of the Rebel Jesus.

This is the Air I Breathe...

2009-12-10T16:08:00.002-05:00

Those of you who have similar tastes in music to me or who actually click on the hyperlinks I put in here know that very often my titles or just random lines in my blog are quotes from songs that really speak to me. Those of you who know me well, then, should be confused and perhaps a little bit concerned to see that the title of this post is a quote from a cheesy contemporary Christian song by one of the MANY Christian pop divas (Let’s call her Rachel Nicole St. Knapp, shall we?) who, in my oh-so-humble opinion, all sound exactly the same. Have 3 months away from home really changed my tastes in music that much? Has the theological conservatism of the churches I’m working with gotten to me?

The answer, of course, is no, which will undoubtedly relieve some of you and disappoint others. I just thought the title would be an interesting and ironic segue into what I want to talk about. For the record, the song is called “Breathe” and is by Rebecca St. James. The first verse goes:

“This is the air I breathe
This is the air I breathe
Your holy presence living in me.”

It goes on and on, and you know, it’s sweet, but musically rather boring and not at all lyrically profound. But what I want to share with you today is about the actual air I breathe. And while I certainly believe in the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit, this air is not “God’s holy presence living in me.”

The air that I, along with everyone else in Carabayllo and northern Comas, breathe smells like shit. I apologize for the language, but there’s really no other way to describe the foul odor that has permeated every bit of my being for the last several weeks. The smell comes from outside but since every Peruvian home has some sort of open air courtyard inside, it’s everywhere. I wake up with it in the morning and go to bed with it at night. I’ve gotten to the point where I sometimes have to walk with my shirt over my nose, looking like some bad imitation of a bank robber. It’s foul. It’s nauseating. Disgusting. There’s no other way to describe it. The air I breathe smells like shit.

I guess the next logical question is why does it smell this way? Well you see, there’s a nearby lake or some sort of body of water into which much of our district’s sewage is dumped. On hot summer days (which is at least 5 days a week, and yes, I live in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s summer here), the sewage-infused lake water evaporates, and the wind brings this delightful evaporated-sewage-water into the city. The beautiful mountains that I enjoy every day and through which we took our caminata in September trap this air, the sun gets hotter, the smell gets worse…you get the picture.

Living and working in one of the poorest sections of a big city is teaching me a lot about pollution and environmental abuse. Things that I never could have experienced in Richmond’s West End Suburbia, or the beautiful and idyllic campus of William and Mary, where it’s still 1693, just with wireless internet everywhere. The grass and trees I’ve always take for granted struggle to survive here. In their place are dust and trash. Often burning trash, which doesn’t really help with the smell.

I don’t say these things to paint a picture of Peru as a dirty, ecologically irresponsible country. On the contrary, I want to share with you the reality in which many people, myself now one of them, live, and ask each of you to reflect for a minute on your place in the big picture of environmental destruction. I know I’ve done my fair share of damage. It’s so easy for us to do in our comfortable Northern lives. Though we will soon enough, right now we don’t experience the direct impact of our actions. Sure, the summers are warmer, but we can fix that with just a little more AC. We hear about glaciers melting, the water supply diminishing, but our sinks still work, and when thirsty, it’s not hard to find a glass of cold water. Most places will give it to you for free!

Things are different in the barrios of Carabayllo and Comas. You see, people in Peru, as in many countries around the world, don’t have the “luxury” to sit around debate whether Global Warming “exists.” It’s a part of their daily reality. The days are hotter, the sun is brighter. Summer comes and winter ends, both a month earlier than they used to. It rains when it shouldn’t, but the expected rains don’t come. Glaciers in the Andes that are essential water sources for the mountain provinces like Huacavelica are disappearing faster than anyone imagined. Water towers here in Lima read “Water is Life, Be Careful with Every Drop.”

The shortage of water is what I personally notice the most. The water for our neighborhood is shut off nearly every night, and Eduardo explained to me that this has become necessary in recent years to ensure that the supply of clean water is able to last all summer. The water at the IEP Collique where I work with the Compassion Program, is shut off every day after about 2. Large buckets of water sit in the bathrooms for the afternoon kids to wash their hands and fill their toilet bowls. It’s all just expected at this point. Like Eduardo said, it’s the only way there will ever be enough water to last the summer.

We just finished a short environmental unit with the 9 to 12-year-olds at Collique. We talked with them about the environmental problems that Peruvians face in their daily lives. Global warming and the shortage of water, contaminated food and water, and the toxic wastes produced by mining companies like American-owned Doe Run in La Oroya (please click here to read Joe´s latest blog on the subject...also watch the video he has included) and watch the video, by the way), the list goes on. Then we did a unit with them on the good ol’ 3Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. I was really struck by the way the teacher of the class explained reusing, once again on the theme of water. She challenged the kids to find less-traditional ways to reuse water in their households. Use the water you used to wash the rice to bathe. Then take that water and throw it on the floor before you sweep (floors lie somewhere on the spectrum between dirt and concrete, and it’s necessary to wet the floor before sweeping so you don’t generate a ton of dust). It was a truly humbling experience for me to hear these kids, most of whom live in one-room, dirt-floor houses without personal access to water, talking about resource preservation. Honestly, it made even my bi-weekly bucket showers here seem a little extravagant and luxurious. While the wealthy like myself take running-water showers daily and literally play with water as if it were a toy, the poorest people that I have met are bathing themselves in the bucket of water they used to wash the rice. The inconsistency bothers me, as I hope it does you.

Those of you who follow the liturgical calendar (or some, like Laura, who take it upon themselves to ENFORCE the liturgical calendar!) know that we are now in the season of Advent, preparing ourselves for the coming of Christmas and re-opening ourselves every year to the coming of the Kingdom of God to earth in the form of one of “the least of these.” I challenge you all, as I challenge myself this Christmas season, to ask yourselves if the coming of Christ has more to do with lights, trees, and nativity scenes, or with a pail of water, carefully and lovingly siphoned out so as to take only what is necessary and share faithfully with others.

You Took the Word and Made it Heard

2009-11-23T17:09:00.004-05:00

The title of this post comes from the Ben Folds song Not the Same. (For those of you who don’t know, click on the song title and the link will take you to a YouTube video of it.) The entire quote is as follows:

You took the Word and made it heard
And eased the people’s pain, and for that
You were idolized, immortalized,
And you were not the same after that.

I use this as my post title mostly because this post is about my first preaching experience here in Peru (which we in the PCUSA call Preaching the Word, one half of ministry, the other being the 2 sacraments.) However, I challenge you all to think for a minute about what this song has to say to us if you understand the “you” to be Jesus of Nazareth. (I recognize that has some controversial implications – if you have anything to say, please, post a comment! That’s a big part of why I do this whole blog thing…to get your feedback so that you can share in this adventure with me.) I don’t think this interpretation of the song is too far-fetched, by the way, as Ben has already sung in the first verse about a friend who, after a drug trip at the top of a tree, gave his life to Jesus (those of you who know Ben Folds know this really isn’t that strange compared to some of his lyrics!). So stew on that for awhile and let me know what you think.

Oh, and I am by no means trying to sound pompous or make messianic claims about myself by using the same words to refer to myself and to Jesus Christ. I just thought it would make a catchy post title about “the Word.”

Speaking of the Word, have you heard the Word is love? Whether you have or not, you should check out this video of Common Ground, my college a cappella group singing “The Word” by the Beatles at their Homecoming Concert. I’m so proud of them! And of course let me give credit where credit’s due: Thanks to Meredith Rutledge for suggesting this song for us to sing, Stefanie Higgins for an incredible arrangement, Joy Dudley for a beautiful solo, Cathy “Shmoo” Reber for some amazing percussion, and Liz MacMurry, Stacy Yi, Kristen Pantazes, Elizabeth Smith, Ethyl Yap, and Lizzy Jensen for this performance, and all members of Common Ground, past and present, for being awesome. Watch it, I swear, it’s incredible.

Ok, ok, on to the actual subject of this post – my first preaching experience in Peru (which, incidentally, was my first “real” preaching experience ever!). I preached Sunday night, October 18, for maybe 15 or 20 people at the IEP Ingeniería as part of the month’s theme of “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” While the IEP still doesn’t ordain women to ministry, me preaching as a woman was not incredibly radical for this church – laypeople preach every Sunday night, and while the majority are men, I know that at least one other woman member has preached since I’ve been part of the church and it seemed to be accepted fairly well, with the understanding that she was a layperson, not an ordained minister. Still, 2 (myself included) out of 8 or so is nowhere near equality, and the church is very divided about the ordination of women. During my first month here, I helped lead a church-wide workshop/discussion on the ordination of women and saw that even in one of the more progressive churches of the denomination, there is still plenty of resistance. Preaching in this context, knowing that I was participating in a potentially revolutionary movement of holy subversion, was both very humbling and very empowering for me, and I hope it was the same for the men and women who graciously received my sermon.

Below is an English translation of what I preached that night. To hear clips of the sermon in my weak-but-improving Spanish, check out the Red Uniendo Manos’s Podcast Kuzka, created by fellow YAV Joe Tobiason. He’s put a lot of work into publishing information about the Red Uniendo Manos, the organization here that I’m working for, on the internet where anyone can access it. Also check out the English translation of the Red’s monthly newsletter, the Retama? I’m being serious, click on these links, it’s a much more comprehensive explanation of what we are doing in Peru than my blogs, since Joe’s official job is to publish this stuff, while mine is to chase screaming children around a church (that is of course not my whole job…but some days I think I spend more time doing that than anything else! Oh the joy of 5-year-olds!).

Anyway, the sermon:

Scripture: Micah 6:6-8: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Our theme this month is “The Significance of the Reformation in the History of the Church.” We’ve talked about the Reformation itself with Martin Luther in the 17th century, and we’ve also discussed the motto, the slogan of the Reformation: A Reformed Church, Always Reforming. I want to talk a little bit more about this theme tonight. The Reformation was a very important and climactic moment for the Church as a whole and particularly for our respective traditions, the PCUSA and the IEP. But I believe that the most important role of the Reformation for us, for the Church today, is to remind us that in every century, every age, we need to be open to the continual reformation of our thoughts, our hearts, and our lives in accordance with the Will of God. And for this, we go to the prophet Micah of the 8th century BCE.

Honestly, we don’t know much for sure about the life of the prophet Micah. As I said, he lived and prophetized in the 8th century BCE, when the nation we casually refer to as “Israel” was divided into Israel in the north and Judah in the south. This century was a time of fear for both kingdoms because they consistently felt the threat of Assyria, the daunting political superpower to the north.

As Martin Luther denounced the sins of the Catholic Church in the 18th century, Micah, in his own context, prophetized against two great sins that he saw in the people of Israel and Judah: the worship of Gods other than Yahweh and the creation and maintenance of unjust social structures that exploited the poor at the expense of the rich. Micah proclaimed that the people needed to repent of their actions and change their ways of live. But how? What is acceptable before the eyes of God?

And this is where we enter with tonight’s text. The text begins with a series of questions. This should be fairly obvious, but it’s important that we know that the implied answer to each question is “no.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?”

No.

“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?”

No.

“Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

No, not even this.

Micah renounces these appeals to sacrifice. In our modern, Christian context, this doesn’t seem that strange or radical. Of course we don’t offer burnt sacrifices to God. It’s not part of our religious practices. Truthfully, when we think about sacrifices in this sense, we often think of paganism, of things that have no relation to “our Christianity.” But such a reading misses the point because that’s not how it was for the communities of Israel and Judah. Burnt offerings were their way to worship, to pray, to communicate with God. To ask and receive pardon. All of the very specific and sacred rules and instructions are written in the Old Testament. Burnt sacrifices were to them like worship services, prayers, and Bible study are to us.

It’s easy for us to forget this, but it’s the essential element to understand the text. Micah is not simply offering his people new ways to praise the Lord and follow God’s will. Micah is telling them that their current established practices are worthless if they don’t behave, in both a personal and social context, like followers of God. I believe this point comes across more clearly in a passage from Isaiah, the most famous prophet of Micah’s time. It is Isaiah 1:11, 15-17, if you want to look for it. In this passage, Isaiah, speaking as the voice of God, asks:

“The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?...I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams an the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

If I understand these texts, Micah and Isaiah are telling the eighth-century Hebrews and us, modern-day readers, that our religious practices are empty if we are not living in accordance with the Will of God. Just like Martin Luther told the 18th-century Catholic Church. Just like Jesus told the Pharisees in his time on earth. And just like the Word of God tells us today. If we say that we are “Reformed Church,” we need to remain always open to the possibility of new reforms.

And finally, in verse 8, Micah gives us his answer.

“He has showed you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

This is how we live as followers of God. In every age and century, this is how we make certain that our religious practices are not empty but are in fact full, full of the love of God. This is how we know we are following the Will of God.

But how do we do this? Here it’s more complicated, isn’t it? Because although the Word of God doesn’t change, contexts and situations do. And it is for this that God has given us the Holy Spirit, manifested in our minds and hearts. With this Word and this Spirit, we, the people of God, can make our humble attempts at discerning the Will of God in our own contexts.

Let us return now to “the answer” in Micah 6:8, where Micah tells us what God has called “good.” Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God. These three simple things are what God requires of us.

But still, what does this mean in our present context? I don’t have the final answer; no one does. But I can offer you ideas from my own life and my own experiences. They are not comprehensive: this is only my humble understanding of part of the Will of God. But, if I may, I would like to offer these thoughts to you.

Do justice. Here we see our relationships with the world. We must treat every other person, every part of Creation with justice. But what is “justice”, really? Often, when we think of justice, we think of a severe judge handing out punishments. But I want to propose another definition because this first understanding is our human distortion of the word. In the Kingdom of God, justice is simply that which serves love. Love for God, love for all people, love for Creation.

In this manner, when we conserve our natural resources, we do justice. When we denounce poverty and the structures that cause it, we do justice. When he help our brothers and sisters, when we help people we don’t know, when we help people we don’t even like, we do justice. Justice is that which serves love. And with this definition, justice and mercy are not the opposites that we often make them – they are two complementary parts of the Reign and Will of God.

Which brings us to the second part: Love mercy. This has to do with our relationships with others. And notice that it’s not “act with mercy” or “behave mercifully,” it says love mercy. Loving mercy has to do not just with our actions, but with our hearts and the thoughts and feelings behind our actions. When we respect the humanity of every person, we love mercy. When we care for those whom society has rejected, we love mercy. When we forgive our friends and our enemies not seven times but, as Jesus tells us, seventy times seven times, we love mercy. It is an act of profound humility.

And this brings us to the third part: Walk humbly with your God. Here we are talking about our relationship with God and with ourselves. The Church in every age has committed the sin of triumphalism, of pridefully thinking that we have the final answer and understand fully the mystery of God. Of acting as if we are God. This was the sin of the priests in Micah’s time, of the Pharisees in that of Jesus, of the Catholic Church in that of Martin Luther, and sometimes, it is our own sin.

Admitting that, how do we walk humbly with our God? We put the Will of God, which desires the well-being of the whole world, before our own wills. We admit that we are not always right and do not always know the truth, or what we ought to do. We accept help from God and from others. We make ourselves the servants of all. Each time we behave in this way, we walk humbly with our God.

We are the people of God. God has created us to do God’s work. But we are also humans, sinners. Yes, God has shown us what is good, but we are going to fail, both as individuals and as a Church. But we can be and we must be open to the new reforms of each day. The reforms that bring us closer to the will of God. And what is God’s Will?

Do justice. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God.

Now I Walk in Beauty

2009-11-05T16:24:00.006-05:00

Hello again, friends and loved ones.

I’m writing this from my bed in Peru, home “sick” with some odd sort of rash that I’m hoping is not my third case of chicken pox (I thought you were only supposed to get it once, but I got it twice as a kid, so maybe third time is the charm?) or some sort of Amazonian equivalent. But just in case, I figured it would be better for me not to go to work and risk infecting the 250 or so kids at Collique. That may qualify as a pandemic.

But in all fairness, it’s nice to get a chance to rest. I’m working pretty much all the time, and usually spend my one day off tying up all my loose ends and talking to the boy I love , so I’m very grateful for this chance to take a little time for myself and share a little more about my experience in Peru. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and write shorter blogs more often, so we’ll see how this goes!

Today I want to share with you a little bit about our first YAV retreat, which was two weeks ago (William and Mary Homecoming) in Huánaco, a province where Sarah Baja is working with an organization called Paz y Esperanza (Literally “Peace and Hope”) to help provide shelter and nurture for sexually abused young girls. We stayed at an organic farm where several of the girls live and enjoyed a time of fellowship with each other and others on the Granja (farm).

One of the many highlights of the retreat was the day we traveled to the Selva (“jungle”…yes, friends, that would be the Amazon Rainforest we’re talking about!) for a day-long “hike.” I put hike in quotes because this was different than any hike I’d ever participated in – we climbed waterfalls! I’m talking literally reverse-repelling straight up 7 or so pretty substantial waterfalls and climbing on hands and knees up another 5 or so smaller ones. Try as I might, I cannot find the right words to describe this experience. Part of it was the sheer immensity (pardon my language, but “badass factor”) of what I was doing – climbing waterfalls in the Amazon Rainforest. Part of it was the joy of being again in community with my fellow YAVs and sharing this once-in-a-lifetime experience with them. Part of it was the thrill of pulling myself up the waterfall with my own hands and feet. Part of it was the wonderful sensation of the water pouring over me (remember, I take bucket showers in Peru…this was the closest I’ve been to our American idea of “shower” in a long time!), or of jumping into the deep parts where we had the opportunity to swim.

More than anything, though, I think I was greatly affected by the experience of being truly present in the natural world. There’s something very humbling about being only one of millions (probably more than that!) of forms of life present in one place. Something powerful about aligning yourself parallel with a waterfall and feeling that, for the moments you are climbing, you are a part of that natural wonder. Something very simple and natural about drinking the fresh, pure water pouring forth from one of the rocks along the way. By immersing myself in nature, I think I somehow learned a little bit more about what it really means to be human.

After climbing all 12 waterfalls we headed down the rock-and-mud path to where we had begun. The way down was slippery (see earlier comment about mud), but less treacherous (except for the part where I almost slid off the mountain…thank you Sarah Baja for saving my life!), so the group spread out a bit, and I found myself walking most of the way down alone, soaking wet and muddy, just taking in the immensity of life that was all around me. I paused for a moment to marvel at the mountains surrounding me. I ducked under a overhang of leaves. A bright blue butterfly landed on my water bottle, letting me admire it for a full 30 seconds before flying away. I slipped in the mud. I closed my eyes, listened to the singing of the birds and bugs, and breathed in the fresh air.

As I continued to walk, an old American Indian spiritual song came into my heart: “Now I walk in beauty, beauty is before me, beauty is behind me, above and below me.” (Sidenote: Check out how the amazing sample of this song in the Indigo Girls’ song “Jonas and Ezekiel.” Gives me chills every time!) With every step, with every breath, this song became my being and my prayer. I truly was surrounded by beauty, by life, by all that is divine. Before me, behind me, above me, below me. I felt the sudden urge, like Moses at the burning bush, to take off my shoes, for I was truly walking on holy ground. (I didn’t actually take off my shoes…see earlier comment about the mud.) I was participating in nature. Participating in God. Call it panentheism, if you will, but even after 2 months of spending 6 days a week working in the church, this simple walk down the mountain was undoubtedly the most spiritual experience I’ve had in Peru.

Needless to say, it was hard to return to the city at the end of the retreat. Don’t get me wrong – Lima certainly has its charm, and I know that the work I’m called to do this year is in the trash-covered, dirt roads of the shantytowns, not in the rivers of the jungle. But it’s hard to return to the city after seeing nature at its finest, as it was created and as it was intended to be. Go outside for a little bit – really! Maybe you’ll experience the same thing.

Runnin’ to the edge of the earth
Swimmin’ to the edge of the sea
Laughin’ under a starry sky:
This world was meant for me.

This world was meant for all of us, and us for the natural world. So go outside. Take some time. Listen. And walk in beauty.

Trying to fit the world inside a picture frame

2009-10-21T14:11:00.032-04:00

Hello all!

I’ve been meaning to share pictures with you all for awhile, but due to a series of unfortunate and fortunate events (my camera broke my second day in Peru, I was able to steal pictures from other YAVs, I bought a new camera a week and a half ago, it got stolen 6 days later from one of the churches where I’m working, the very gracious people at the church insisted on buying me a new one yesterday…that’s the short version). But here are some sights and faces from my life in Peru…

Meet the Cast

(Photo: Sarah T.)

Anna Gray, fellow YAV working with fair trade and agriculture development in Huancayo. Originally from Alaska, which means she does in fact talk a little bit like Sarah Palin but is infinitely smarter and a better person. Also, I think she’s part polar bear

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Alissa King, fellow YAV working with a public radio station in Huanta (near Ayacucho). From Texas, so she, Meredith, and Stefanie are slowly redeeming the state for me. She is deceptively sassy. And yes, this was us in the airport, all the YAVs toasting Presbyterian mission work! Don’t worry, supporters, I paid for that beer with my own money, not yours. :)

(Photo: Anna)

Sarah “Alta” Terpstra, fellow YAV working with an environmental organization in Huancavelica. She’s from Tennessee, was a park ranger this summer, and takes pictures of literally everything. But they’re pretty incredible and artistic. She also has a beautiful voice. And only exists in grayscale and green.

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Sarah “Baja” Chancellor, fellow YAV from Oklahoma working with a battered women’s shelter in Huánaco. She is full of sunshine and understands my obsession with The Office. Wherever she is, no matter what night it is, it is ALWAYS Ladies’ Night.

(Photo: Joe)

Joe Tobiason, fellow YAV from Washington living in Lima (but still about an hour away from me) and working at the office of the Red Uniendos Manos with publicity and at another environmental organization. He suffers from the age-old problem of hot-arms-cold-torso and is therefore very grateful for the invention of the polar fleece vest.

(Photo: Joe)

…Aaaand yours truly. This was during the day-long hike (see post 4). I was FILTHY!

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Debbie, our site coordinator and “Mama Pata” (Mother Duck), with Conrado, president of the Red, and Koky, a member of the Fair Trade Team. She is laughing in this picture because she is literally always laughing. Seriously. I have determined that I want to laugh that much when I “grow up.” But I think her secret is she never really grew up…

(Photo: Me! My third camera in Peru…)

Eduardo and Flor Arboccó, my host parents. Eduardo is the pastor of the IEP Ingeniería (link), where I work Fridays through Sundays, and the president of the Fraternidad Cristiana Vida, an organization of 12ish (I think?) churches in the IEP that is a partner of the Red Uniendo Manos and includes both of the churches with which I am working. Flor teaches the youngest Sunday School class, cooks some delicious Peruvian food, and is a pretty excellent dancer. Maybe by the end of the year I’ll have learned a little bit...?

(Photo: Me)

Me with Fabián, my host brother. He’s two years old and loves Barney, Chabo (link), and his cousin Diego, better known as “Pelau” (a nickname from when he was younger that means ´´baldy.´´ apparently he was bald as a baby?) As an only child, he’s not so sure how he feels about having me around and sharing his parents. He still informs us daily that he does not like Ginna. But I think I’m starting to win him over – he’s been spending a lot more time with me in my room recently…

My Peruvian Home…

(Photo: Me)

My house!

(Photo: Me)

My room (cleaner than it usually is, trust me)

(Photo: Me)

Courtyard where we dry clothes. Yes, those are my underwear. Figured it was better to take pics of my own ropa interior than the family’s. So enjoy!

(Photo: Me)

“Peruvian Shower”

(Photo: Me)

My Neighborhood

A Glimpse into my Peruvian Life…

(Photo: Alexandra)

These are some pictures from the affectionately termed “hike of death.” Alexandra, in the pink, is a 3-year mission worker from the PCUSA working specifically with Fair Trade in the Red. José, on the far left, is a member of la Ingeniería and the funniest person in all of Peru.

(Photo: Alexandra)

Yes, it was that steep. The district below, Comas, is where I work with the IEP Collique.

(Photo: Sarah T.)

Our path. And yes, we hiked far beyond that hazy mountain in the background…trust me.

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Obligatory photo with a llama

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Perro Peruano. Very ugly hairless dog that is native to Peru.

(Photo: Anna)

Some things cannot be explained…

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Us with some fair trade jewelry artisans in Lima

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Me getting very wet at the Parque de Agua. You must remember, it was winter here when this happened, so it was pretty cold. But oh it was so worth it!

(Photo: Sarah C.)

Learning to make Pisco Sour, a typical Peruvian beverage that tastes like a Margarita with Whisky and is super strong!

(Photo: Sarah C)

Our last night with our orientation host family (right to left: María Fernanda, María Jesús, Damaris)

(Photo: Eduardo)

My host aunt Marienela with Fabián and host-cousin Diego/“Pelau” (left)

(Photo: Me)

Youth that I work with at the IEP Collique (link)

(Photo: Me)

The hill next to the church where the majority of my kids live. These are the shantytowns I mentioned in my last post.

(Photo: Eduardo)

Me preaching at la Ingeniería. My first “real sermon,” and it was in Spanish! Apparently it’s going on YouTube? If so, I’ll post the video and an English translation.

This by no means covers my life and experiences here, but I hope it at least gives you a little look at what things are like here and some faces to put with names. I’ve never been the greatest photo-taker, but I’ll try hard to keep a picture or two coming with my posts in the future.
Or maybe I’ll just tell you all about it when I’m in the mood to lose my way with words.

"You Can Hear the Whistle Blow 100 Miles..."

2009-10-03T18:53:00.010-04:00

First of all, I apologize for going so long between posts! When I got online a few days ago, I was a little embarrassed to realize that I am the last of the Peru YAVs to post since arriving in my placement. (You should really check out their blogs on the left, by the way. They’ve written some really wonderful things that I would love to tell you about, though there’s no way to fit everything I want to say into these blog posts. Also they have functioning cameras, though I am going to try to steal a few pics for this post.) In all fairness, I don’t have internet at home and don’t really get the opportunity to use it at work since I’m not working in an office setting, but so much has happened, and I want to be able to share it with you all! So forgive my lateness, and for now, let’s just say my blog is operating on “la hora peruana” (Basically, absolutely nothing is ever anywhere near on time. I am living in Laura Wagstaff’s personal hell. :))

As of yesterday, I’ve been in Peru for a month. After 2 weeks of orientation with my wonderful fellow YAVs, I moved in with my “official” host family in a northern district of Lima, Carabayllo, and started work at the two churches I’m serving. Tuesday through Thursday I work at a church in Comas called the IEP Collique with their branch of Compassion International, and Friday through Sunday I work at the IEP Ingeniería teaching English and music and assisting with worship, Sunday school (which, consequently, is on Saturday), and other programmatic events of the church. In typical Presbyterian fashion, I’d like to share some of my initial impressions and experiences (WOWs and POWs, if you will) of my new life in Peru…

WOWs (aka Things I Like about my Experience Thus Far)

1.) The Challenge to Live Simply

One of the commitments that each YAV makes, even those not working in what the United States likes to call “Third World countries,” is to live as simply and sustainably as possible for the year. So far, this is a challenge that I’ve found enjoyable and fulfilling (except for limited access to internet, but for more on that, see the POW section). As I continue to read Jim Merkel’s book Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth, I am reminded that as an upper-middle class citizen of the United States, my personal carbon footprint/ecological impact on this earth is enormous! That said, I am enjoying living in what for me is a step back, though I am greatly aware that it is an unavoidable reality for the majority of Peruvians, which is an incredible injustice when you look at the way much of the Northern world lives. However, I think there is a great deal to be said for the humble and sustainable lifestyle that my host family lives, and our persecuted planet would benefit greatly if we in the United States could learn to live in a similar fashion. Things like eating locally grown food (“locally” is a relative term, since I live in Lima, but most of our food, bought at the local markets, is from the surrounding areas), using a clothesline instead of a dryer, not having heat or air-conditioning (now granted, it’s winter/spring now, I’ll let you know how I feel about the lack of air-conditioning come summer…), using public transportation, never throwing away food, etc. But my personal favorite is the Peruvian shower.

First of all, let me say that I’ve pretty much gotten into the routine of one shower a week. Those who knew me in college may not be too surprised by this, though you’re still probably all gagging. But really, friends, we don’t need to shower every day. We’re accustomed to it and like the way our hair looks afterwards, but our bodies don’t actually need it, and think of all the water that is used unnecessarily. I’m not advocating bad hygiene here, but it wouldn’t hurt if we gave ourselves a day or two.

When I do take my weekly or bi-weekly shower, it’s from a bucket. We have a functioning shower in our house, but the water is frigid, and after one go with the running water, I decided the bucket was a much better option. Yes, it’s a bit uncomfortable, yes, it’s cold, and yes, it’s a far cry from the gentle, warm, wake-you-up-in-the-morning showers I liked to enjoy at home, but after my shower, I feel like I’ve done something for the world (aside from rid myself of B.O….which is arguably doing something for the world in and of itself) in using so little water. So I challenge you all to give the Peruvian shower a try. Here’s what you do:

Get a big bucket (ours is 5 gallons, but really, 3 would do), and fill it half full with cold water. Then boil a big pot of cold water (very few people here have the hot water that we take for granted) and pour that into the bucket with the cold water. What you get is something between lukewarm and warm, but believe me, it’ll do. Now all you have to do is take a cup of some sort and use it to pour the water over yourself. Shampoo, soap, shaving, all the same, but you don’t have that constant stream of unnecessary running water. So friends, supporters, partners in ministry, this is my challenge to you. Give it a try and comment on this blog entry to let me know how it goes!

(For more on simple living and the things we take for granted, check out fellow Peru YAV Sarah Terpstra’s post on Invisible Luxuries. Though her simple lifestyle is more drastic than mine, I can identify with the majority of her examples, especially the toilet seats. Friends, toilet bowls are, in fact, very cold!)

2.) Serving “The Least of These”

I recognize that this may sound cliché and condescending, and I apologize. I certainly don’t mean for it to. It’s just that that’s the whole reason I’m here – to serve those in need, particularly those who often don’t have the basic necessities for life. I experience this most in my work with the kids from Compassion International in Collique. I don’t yet fully understand the realities that these children live with, but I’ll share with you some of what I know. Nearly all of them live in the Pueblos Jóvenes (shantytowns) of Comas in the foothills of the mountains. Most of the people in these communities have migrated from the mountains during the 20 years of Violence or times of economic difficulty. (See pictures below, but of course, as I still don’t have a camera, I have to give all credit to Joe and Alexandra, one of the long-term mission personnel working at the Red Uniendo Manos.)

What you see here doesn’t even begin to capture how these families live. Families with five or six children live in crudely-constructed, one-room homes with none of the “necessities” that we as Americans tend to assume (electricity, running water, heat). In one community that I visited, potable water is available once every three days, and even that can’t be counted on. The walkways are littered with trash and feces. Children usually stay home by themselves (both parents have to work to sustain the family), or work in the fields and shops alongside their parents. It is a cruel and unfair reality. And to top it all off, they’re hundreds of miles away from their extended families, which here in Peru are as important as our immediate families are to us in the US. It’s hard to be far from home…but I’ll get to that in a minute. For now, what I’m trying to say is that serving the children of these Pueblos Jóvenes alongside church-members from the same area just feels right.

Compassion International provides a holistic program of education and care, with everything from games and music to school-esque cognitive activities to spiritual development to public health education. One of the most meaningful parts of the day for me is serving the kids their warm drinks at lunch time. It makes me thing of Mark 9:41: “I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his/her reward.” And as I hand my kids their drinks, I begin to feel that there could be no greater reward than knowing that they might be able to go home to a safe and healthy home with adequate food and water, free of the structural injustice that keeps them and their families living in poverty.

POWs (aka Things I’m Struggling With)

1.) Loneliness

This goes without saying, but it’s hard to be so far away from home. I always knew conceptually that this transition would be tough, but emotionally, I just had no idea what it would entail. There’s the language barrier, of course, which makes it hard to express my thoughts and feelings to friends, family, and coworkers, and the cultural differences that remind me constantly that I come from a very different walk of life than the people with whom I live and work. My feelings of loneliness are perpetuated by the fact that I have no internet access at home and only very occasionally at work, which makes me feel estranged and cut off from loved ones back home as well. It’s just not an easy transition.

During our two weeks of in-country orientation, Sarah shared the song 500 Miles with me. It’s a beautiful song that I turn to when I’m feeling lonely. I encourage you to listen to it, but know that neither this recording nor any other can sound as beautiful as Sarah singing it in perfect harmony with her family on her last Sunday at church before leaving for Peru. The words are simple, the music beautiful. I like this song because it doesn’t try to cheer me up or tell me everything’s going to be ok – it simply meets me where I am and offers itself to me.

As I try to feel at home in my new community, I find myself thinking of the words of one of my fellow YAVs, Anna. When I expressed to her one day my loneliness and worries about spending the entire day with extended family that I hadn’t yet met, she sent me this message: “Remember, you’ll be surrounded by people who love you without even knowing you, and that’s a very comforting love.” She was right – I spent that day and many others with people who have decided to love me before they knew who I was. This love is beautiful, profound, and theologically meaningful, but I haven’t yet learned to be comforted by it. In fact, I think it really scares me. It’s too powerful, too dangerous to touch – sometimes I don’t believe it even really exists. I want to be loved for me, because people know who I am and love the person they have come to know. It’s hard to accept unconditional love from a stranger. It’s uncomfortably humbling. But maybe, just maybe, if I keep trying to live into these words, it will slowly become humblingly comforting.

2.) Theological Conservatism

Those of you who know me know that I tend to be pretty liberal on all accounts, particularly in my theological interpretation. While I’ve known all along that the Protestant Church in Peru is more conservative, the idealistic liberation theologian in me continues to cling to this vision of a Latin American Church that is constantly proclaiming good news for the poor and the Year of Jubilee. This is not exactly my current reality. Socially, I’m pretty much on the same page as the churches I’m serving – they’re all about eradicating the root causes of poverty and working for environmental justice. But theologically, there’s a good deal of Biblical literalism and evangelical sentiment that I wasn’t expecting and to which I am not exactly sure how to gracefully and lovingly respond.

I particularly struggle with the evangelical component. The other day, I accompanied one of my fellow teachers from Collique on a visit to the home of one of the kids. The experience of being invited into this girl’s home and received so hospitably by her family was wonderful, and I was really appreciative to get a glimpse of her daily reality. But somehow, without me really knowing what was going on, it turned from a check-up on the health of the family to my fellow teacher instructing me to evangelize to a man in the neighborhood who “did not know Christ.” In front of this man, who was clearly very uncomfortable with the solicitations, she told me I needed to pray that he would “accept the Lord into his heart.” Fortunately it’s early enough in the year that I could play the bad-Spanish card and pretend I didn’t know what exactly was going on, but it was a really uncomfortable situation. I am willing to adapt and change in many ways to live into my Peruvian reality, but I can and will not participate in activities that I consider immoral. And in my book, insensitively forcing my own beliefs on another person is immoral and counterproductive to the mission of the Church (feel free to take issue with this, by the way). So I find myself facing the difficult question of how to remain true to myself and my own convictions while lovingly and respectfully partnering with my coworkers. I don’t have the answer yet. But I’ll let you know what I discover throughout the year.

To close, I’d like to once again share a passage from Scripture that’s been floating around in my head recently. My first couple days in Peru, I decided to do a personal study of the book of Acts, reading a little each night before I went to bed. I’ve been here a month, and the part I’m sharing with you is from Chapter 2, so you can see for yourself how faithfully I’ve kept to that! Anyway, the passage is from Acts 2:42-47:

“[The early Christians] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he/she had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”

This and Acts 4:32-34 are often cited as the first references to Christian Socialism, and I really enjoy these passages. A community of people who live together in fellowship, sharing all things in common and renouncing private property sounds a lot to me like the Kingdom of God. (Stick with me, my friends of a more conservative persuasion. I promise this is not one of my economic tirades!)

However, these verses are not just about an economic and social policy among the early believers – they’re also about fellowship, a lifestyle of community. And I’m finding that sharing your life, your very self, can be harder than sharing your possessions. It’s scary. Sharing requires vulnerability. And vulnerability means that at one point or another, you’re going to get hurt. It’s much easier for me to share living space, cleaning responsibilities, books and movies, and my laptop with my host family and community in Peru than it is to share my personal time or my feelings of loneliness and fear. But true community requires both.

And in spite of it all, I think it’s worth it. This past weekend I learned a little bit about the value of vulnerability. After several really rough days, including a super-lonely birthday, I mustered up the courage to email Debbie, our site coordinator, and express to her the sadness I was feeling. She surprised me by showing up the very next morning at the church where I was working and just letting me talk for a couple hours after the service. And the most beautiful thing happened. (I hope this doesn’t embarrass you, Debbie, when you inevitably read this!) As I was talking about my loneliness and struggles with my new life in Peru, she started crying. Just because she loved me. Just because she wanted me to make it through the hard times and feel joyful again. Just because that’s what it means to be a part of a community.

The Indigo Girls said it right. We’re better off for all that we let in.

Beyond Mountains are Mountains

2009-09-06T22:44:00.019-04:00

The title of this post is a Haitian Proverb and the title of Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains. I don't remember exactly how it was used in the book (I think to describe one of Paul Farmer's treks across Haiti?), and I'm not even that sure what it's supposed to mean in the cultural context, but yesterday I think I got a glimpse into what it might be trying to say...

By the way, I'm in Peru! Lima, to be exact. I've been here for almost a week and so far am having an incredible experience! Orientation was wonderful (particularly the worship services...hopefully I'll have time to write more about that later), and though saying goodbye to Andy for a year was really hard, I've found myself feeling very alive here in Lima. My fellow YAVs are wonderful (check out the links to their blogs on the left), and I've really enjoyed living with them this week. Though I know we are all going out to where we are called and where we belong, I'll be sad to see 4 of the 6 leave for their placements in the provinces of Peru at the end of this week. (Though Joe will still be in Lima with me. Poor thing.) Regardless, I'm excited to be building a community that can offer each of us fellowship and support during our time in Peru. It helps to know that there are people I love and care about who are going through similar experiences.

Anyway, onto the real subject of this post -- mountains. Yesterday, we went on a hike with some friends of the family we're currently staying with and members of the churches where I'll be working. Many of you know this, but for those who don't, I'm not the biggest fan of hiking. I'm in terrible shape and I always feel self-conscious about how slow I am and guilty for holding others (usually my fast-walking mom) back. So needless to say I was apprehensive yesterday morning as we prepared for what our Peruvian friends called our "walk," especially when I learned that it was 13 kilometers (for American brains like mine, that's a little more than 8 miles). Fast-walking mom's jaw probably just dropped as she read that. That's right, Mom, 8 miles. And aside from being very sore and sunburnt, I'm still in one piece!

We started the hike at 9 AM in the shantytowns of Comas, a district of Lima very near where I'll be living and working. Many of the poor families of Lima have built their one-room homes up along the side of the mountains we were climbing. It was a moving and heart-breaking juxtaposition -- the natural, divinely-created beauty of the mountains next to the heaps of garbage and rampant poverty that our human institutions have brought about. The mixture of emotions it brought about in me really can't be put into words. I wish that I could share pictures with you, but my camera actually broke (sad times...anyone looking to get me a birthday present?). However, I know you can see at least a few pictures on the blogs of my fellow Peru YAVs, so please explore that if you have the time. It's the best and really only way I know how to describe what we saw.

We were told our goal was to travel over a mountain between Comas and San Juan Lurigancho another district of Lima with similar poverty to Comas. To be honest, for the first hour or so, I hated it. Like I said, hiking's never been my thing, and this was by far the most difficult hike I'd ever been on. There was no trail like my cushy Blue Ridge Mountain hikes, and we were literally scaling surfaces that were at about a 45 degree angle to the ground. I found myself many times on my hands and knees climbing over the rocks and dirt (apparently my face got pretty dirty too and served as the entertainment for many on the hike). While I enjoyed the time with my fellow YAVs and new Peruvian friends, I felt physically exhausted, and my self-esteem was taking a pretty big hit.

And here's where the title comes in. Each time we made it to the top of one mountain (which, naturally, got progressively bigger and more treacherous), our Peruvian guides promised that the next was "el ultimo cerro" (the last hill). However, we soon learned that "el ultimo cerro" means something a little different to us gringos. Each time we made it to the peak of one mountain, an even larger loomed before us. The Haitians are right -- beyond mountains, there are mountains. They NEVER stop. And apparently for the Peruvians, all these separate peaks were one big "cerro," el ultimo cerro, in fact.

After awhile, I gave up believing that we would ever reach el ultimo cerro. Which was good, because there must have been at least 4 "ultimos cerros." But the thing is, I started to really enjoy the hike. As we climbed on, I became accustomed to the physical exhaustion and began to accept the self-esteem blow as a lesson in humility. There was no way I was going to make it through the mountain(s) by myself -- I needed to accept Efrain's outstretched hand, listen to Joe's expert climbing advice, and accept Alissa's knee-brace on the way down (and listen to Anna when she oh-so-motheringly insisted that I put it on right then!). At the same time, I was provided with small opportunities to reciprocate generosity to the group -- I could carry Sarah Alta's water bottle in my backpack, catch Sarah Baja as she slid down the mountain behind me (most likely because I had loosened up the dirt by sliding down myself), and offer my hand to Jose to help him make it up a particularly difficult patch of rocks. Yesterday, I feel that I truly learned about solidarity and reciprocity. Those are two buzzwords that the YAV program likes to throw around that I've contemplated and "theorized about" countless times, but yesterday, I lived and experienced them as realities and integral parts of the Christian life. Why else am I in Peru except to practice solidarity and reciprocity? How else can we live as disciples of Christ?

I leave you with this: a reflection from Eduardo, my host dad and the pastor of one of the churches where I'll be working. For devotion one day this week, he shared the story from John's Gospel of Jesus healing the cripple at the pool of Bethsaida. (Read it here -- John 5:1-9) In this story, many who need healing have congregated around the pool of Bethsaida, for legend has it that the Angel of the Lord comes down periodically to stir the waters and, after this happens, the first one into the pool will be cured of any disease. The man that Jesus heals is a cripple who has been waiting there for 38 years and has never made it down to the water in time. When Jesus sees this man, he asks him a strange, either sarcastic or dim-witted question, "Do you want to get well?" The cripple does not answer the question, but responds in an even stranger manner, saying, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.
While I am trying to get in, someone goes down ahead of me." Eduardo proposed to us that this is not so much a story about miraculous healing as it is about solidarity. So many people lived together by this pool, likely in some sort of community, and some for as long as 38 years. They must have shared with one another and been integral parts of each other's lives. Still when the water was stirred and the miraculous healing was offered, it was every man or woman for him or herself. Despite living in community for so long, when it came down to the wire, selfish individualism won the day. However, Eduardo proposed to us that maybe these desperate and sick people had been experiencing this miracle the wrong way. Maybe it wasn't about getting to the water first. Maybe it was about helping one another get down to the water. Maybe it was even about circling the pool, joining hands, and and stepping in at the same time so that all present might be healed.

What would happen if we all joined hands and stepped into the pool? Perhaps that, in fact, was the "milagro" (miracle) that Jesus wanted us to experience.

Just a Curbside Prophet

2009-08-12T00:39:00.004-04:00

Today, my car broke down.

Not that this is really groundbreaking news. Or even news worthy of posting on my blog. I mean, granted, you are presumably reading this blog because you care about me, so maybe this news warrants a sympathetic shoulder-pat or a knowing nod of solidarity. But 3 hours and $100 dollars later, my car and I returned home just fine. A blow to my time and resources, yes, but nothing that will really change my life. But the story continues...

Today, my car broke down, and I was mad.

Mad because I was all the way out in Mechanicsville when this happened. Mad because I had a neatly-organized schedule for the day that quickly fell to pieces. Mad because I was sitting outside and it was nearing 100 degrees. But mostly mad because I had been deprived of something to which I felt "entitled." I expected a safe, easy, and relatively cool trip home and lunch. I got intense heat, a car that could barely even hold a charge once it was jumped, and no lunch.

It's a funny thing, this American sense of entitlement. I would say it's a negative by-product of the individualistic, capitalist society in which we live. (Please excuse me for speaking in generalizations -- I know this is not the case for every American and that there are many outside of Western culture that also feel this sense of entitlement. These are just the reflections that have been floating through my head.) We believe that if we want something and work hard enough for it, we will eventually have it. More so, we deserve to have it. And when, for one reason or another, we don't get what we "deserve," we become, as I became today, filled with this sense of "righteous anger."

However, I must remember that I don't necessarily "deserve" an easy trip home. On a global level, I am one of the fortunate few with personal access to a nice, well-functioning car. And who am I to complain about missing a meal when 13% of the world population is hungry or malnourished? Why am I so set on getting my car back in working order when I know that the gases it emits are contributing to the crisis of Global Warming that, unless a radical change is made in the next 10 years, will seriously hinder the well-being of future generations?

I'll step down from the soapbox, as there are other things I want to address in this post as well, but I'll leave you with this thought: I feel very personally convicted to try to free myself from my sense of entitlement and also from the things to which I feel entitled. There are so many other ways in which my "righteous anger" could be put to better use. I encourage you, if you feel so called, to do the same. As the keynote speakers at the Montreat Youth Conference told us, "Find something worth being angry at." As a Christian living in a broken world, I have much more to be concerned about than a car that won't start.

There's a bit more to my story.

Today, my car broke down, and I was mad, so I set on the curb for an hour finishing Henri Nouwen's book ¡Gracias!

(Now we get to the title of this post. It's from the song "Curbside Prophet" by Jason Mraz, a singer/songwriter from, ironically enough, Mechanicsville, VA! Small world.)

I mentioned this book in my first post, but to recap, it's a journal of Nouwen's thoughts and experiences throughout the six months he spends in Bolivia and Peru. I enjoyed the book more than I had initially expected to - it turns out Nouwen worked with liberation theology more than I had expected and was fortunate enough to have several instances of personal contact with Gustavo Gutierrez himself. Having written an honors thesis (read it online!) about liberation theology at the College of William and Mary, it was very enlightening and affirming to read the personal journal of someone who experienced personally much of what I spent the last year researching.

What struck me today, however, was Nouwen's journal entry from March 5, 1982, about why people go into mission service. Nouwen writes:

"Why do people become missioners?...This question has no simple answer. A desire to serve Christ unconditionally, an urge to help the poor, an intellectual interest in another culture, the attraction of adventure, a need to break away from family, a critical insight into the predicament of one's own country, a search for self-affirmation -- all of these and many other motives can be part of the making of a missioner...[However], the two most damaging motives in the makeup of missioners seem to be guilt and the desire to save. Both form the extremes of a long continuum, both make life in the mission extremely painful" (Nouwen, 161).

With less than three weeks until I leave the country, the question of "why?" is extremely relevant and feels very pressing. Several of Nouwen's motives hit home, others, I feel, don't apply to me as much. The best answer I know to the question of "why" is "How could I possibly do anything else?" In a broken and unjust world, how can I dedicate my life to anything less than love and justice? When it feels like God is light years away, how can I do anything but offer up my self as a place where God can come near to others? With a passion for social justice, young people, Latin America, and liberation theology, what other path could I take right now? I suppose this is a glimpse of what we in the church like to call a "calling." And let me just say, from my own experience, that calling is a lot messier, more confusing, and sometimes more troubling than most like to admit.

I am struck also by what Nouwen calls the "most damaging motives of missioners": guilt and the desire to save. He goes on to say that no "missioner" (I don't particularly like that word...it's awkward) is ever free from either of these, they are both natural human responses to brokenness, but that we must continually strive to let God replace these motives with others that are more pure and constructive.

I certainly agree with Nouwen that guilt and a desire to save propel many people into service, and I certainly recognize that both can be damaging and distract from the main purpose of serving God through serving others. However, I am reluctant to let go of either of them. While guilt can surely weigh you down, I feel like a certain amount of guilt for my current extravagant lifestyle will help me honor my commitment to live simply. And while a desire to save and "play God" in a situation will lead to harmful pride, egoism, potentially bigotry, and disappointment when we inevitably fail at our "saving" mission, I think that converted into a desire to do everything possible to empty myself and serve others, this also can be a very helpful and Christ-like motivation to service.

Who knows? Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps in a few months, I will know all too well what Henri Nouwen meant when he said these motives were damaging. Or perhaps we disagree about the morality and usefulness of these two motives. Only time will tell. For now, all I can say is that I am embarking on a year of mission service in Peru because there is nothing else I can see myself doing. I am wholly called to the year to come.

Today, my car broke down. Who knows what it will be tomorrow. Maybe one day, I'll get out of bed and have the spiritual strength to walk.

World on Fire

2009-07-30T16:44:00.006-04:00

I write today from the Way Out Porch in Montreat Conference Center. I’m here spur-of-the-moment chaperoning youth from my home church (First Pres Richmond) along with Andy who is serving as the youth’s official “back home leader” and, if I may say so, is doing a phenomenal job connecting with them and leading respectful discussions about things that really matter. It’s a huge blessing for me to be able to spend a week in Montreat before leaving the country for a year – this is a very special place to me where I have attended many conferences and spent a summer working, and I find it a comforting and inspiring place to go in the pivotal moments of my life. (And if moving to Peru for a year to live a simple life of love and solidarity with the poor isn’t a pivotal moment in my life, I don’t know what is!)

Aside from just being glad to be at Montreat, I am also grateful to say that this is potentially the best Montreat conference I have ever attended, and if you know me, you know I’m in the double digits as these conferences go. The theme is “World on Fire,” a double metaphor for the world being on fire with pain, injustice, and hatred but also for us to be refined by the purifying, holy fire of God in order to fight these fires with the fires of love and justice. The preacher, who leads us in worship every night, is an older man from Tucson, Arizona, named John Fife. He is a retired pastor who currently works with the faith-based social justice initiative called No More Deaths, which offers humanitarian aid and works to assure that one day there will be no more deaths along the Mexico/US border. It is a program of subversive love, and John Fife is a man of subversive love preaching Christ’s message of subversive love to high schoolers (and adult leaders, for that matter) who all too often fall into the sin of blindly following the rules. Christ is truly present in this conference, and I commend the PCUSA and planning team – you should be very proud of what you have created!

The themes of the week so far have included global warming, countering violence with peace, economic injustice, righteous anger, global awareness, and the Great Cloud of Witnesses of the past, present, and future that help us work toward justice peace, and love in all of these great “fires” that plague our world. I feel moved and challenged every day, particularly in our nightly worships, to change my life to one of radical simplicity for the sake of our earth and radical justice for the sake of our people. I actually just bought a book called Radical Simplicity that I hope to read throughout my year in Peru to help me carry out the YAV commitment to simple living and the Christian call to care for our world and its people.

On a slight side-note, there is a YAV program in Tucson, AZ that participates in the same types of border ministry as John Fife and No More Deaths. While I’m not sure whether any Tucson YAVs are placed directly with No More Deaths, it’s exciting to hear about this subject and know that my fellow YAVs are at work in this type of ministry.

I look forward to the last two days of this conference and the way that it will inspire and challenge the youth and their adult leaders like Andy and me.

On the subject of my actual YAV experience and Peru, I have received two articles of interest in the last day or so concerning the situation in La Oroya, a town in Peru where 97% of children below the age of six have lead-poisoning. It is considered to be the most polluted place on earth. The cause of this great pollution is a smelting plant run by the American company Doe Run. The citizens of La Oroya are in a terrible catch 22, for while the pollution caused by this plant is literally killing them, it also employs a majority of the working citizens in the town and in that way provides these articles, one from the PCUSA website and the other from the New York Times, address this situation better than I ever could, so I strongly encourage you to read them.

However, what struck me the most in these articles was their mention of Ira Rennert, the owner of Doe Run. While innocent people suffer, starve, and die because of his polluting factory and the shamefully low wages its workers are paid, Rennert is a billionaire that has multiple houses around the world. Such a disconnect sickens me – that someone could cause so much suffering yet enjoy so much wealth and privilege without second thought. However, I am humbled and sobered by the realization that every time I consume food, wear clothes, or buy products marketed unjustly, I am participating in this same situation of oppression. Any time I spend my money on “that which is not bread” and indulge my own selfish desires without thinking of others, I commit the same sin as Ira Rennert. We all do. Such rampant injustice and selfishness is unbelievably discouraging. How could there be hope? However, as a Christian, or rather, as a member of any world religious tradition, I am called to hope – to have faith that the Kingdom of God on earth is possible and to spend my life working toward it.

May we all work, as unselfishly as we are able, toward this Kingdom on earth. Amen.

"When summer's beginning to give up her fight..."

2009-07-20T22:33:00.003-04:00

Welcome one and all!! For any of you who don't know, I will be spending next year (beginning August 31) in Lima, Peru, serving as a Young Adult Volunteer for the PCUSA. I will be working with an organization called the Fraternidad Cristiana Vida, a group of 10-12 churches that are part of the Peru Joining Hands Network. I will be working with two churches in particular with their Sunday School and youth programs as well as compassion programs and humanitarian aid. I'm living with Eduardo Arborccó, the president of the Fraternidad, and his family. As I find out more about my placement and what I will be doing, I will let you know!

This blog is here partly to keep you all updated as to my adventures and partly for my own sake, to make me intentional about writing down my thoughts and experiences in a regular and coherent manner. I've been reading the book ¡Gracias! by Henri Nouwen, a journal that he kept for the six months that he spent in Bolivia and Peru. While I may not agree with all of his theology, I love the way he records his thoughts, however disparate and random they may seem, into a book that as a whole makes many important points and lasting impressions. So consider this blog my own humble attempt at my own important points and lasting impressions. If I ever publish it, I promise to give it a less cliché name than "gracias."

By the way, ¡Gracias! was one of two books recommended to me by a fellow YAV (I don't remember who...maybe Sara or Anna? Whoever recommended these books, thank you so much!) before coming to Peru. While it's certainly an interesting read, I'd recommend Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder if you're looking for one book to read this summer. Kidder writes of his first-hand experience with Dr. Paul Farmer, a daring and unconventional doctor who dedicates his life to helping the poorest of the poor, particularly in Haiti, but also in Peru, Russia, Cuba, and many other places. It is a truly inspiring, moving, and challenging book about modern-day heroes that wrestles with many important questions and challenges our modern Western idea that serving the poorest of the poor is not cost-efficient. Check it out, I promise, you won't regret it.

I leave for YAV orientation a month from this Friday (the 24th) and am spending most of my time babysitting and preparing for this great adventure. Each YAV is asked to raise $9,000 to help fund his/her time of service, and I am blessed and astonished to say that, thanks to the immense generosity of family, friends, and several churches, I have exceeded this fundraising goal! Thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart! Should you wish to contribute more (or if you had planned on giving to me but have not yet done so), I encourage you to give to my boyfriend, Andy Bair. Check out his blog here. You can also still give money to me, and any money over the $9,000 will go into the general account to support all 60 national and international YAVs.

Well, I believe that's all for now -- I should be getting to bed before I babysit at 8 tomorrow morning. I don't know exactly how often I'll be updating, but check back in every week or so and see! I'll try to also send a message out to the facebook group every time I update!

Paz de Cristo, mis amigos,
Ginna