los dos ladrones

¿Saben ustedes la leyenda de los dos ladrones?

Hay dos ladrones que viven en Honduras. Pues, viven aquí en Talanga, bien cerca, en una cueva que se llama La Cueva del Diablo. 

Un ladrón se queda en la cueva para proteger el tesoro, y el otro ladrón sale para robar más tesoro y llevarlo a la cueva.

Pero los ladrones necesitaban una manera de averiguar quién esté tocando a la puerta de la cueva. ¡No pueden dejar a cualquiera persona a entrar! Por eso, inventaron una clave. La clave permite que el ladrón dentro de la cueva puede saber que la persona que toca a la puerta sí es el otro ladrón.

El ladrón que regresa a la cueva toca a la puerta. Después, el ladrón adentro dice un número. El ladrón afuera tiene que responder con la respuesta correcta, la respuesta de la clave.

Por ejemplo: el ladrón afuera toca a la puerta. El ladrón adentro dice, “El número es 2.” El ladrón afuera responde y dice la clave: “La respuesta es 3.”

Segúndo ejemplo: el ladrón afuera toca a la puerta. El ladrón adentro dice, “El número es 20.” El ladrón afuera responde y dice la clave: “La respuesta es 6.”

Otro ejemplo: el ladrón afuera toca a la puerta. El ladrón adentro dice, “El número es 7.” El ladrón afuera responde y dice la clave: “La respuesta es 5.”

El último ejemplo: el ladrón afuera toca a la puerta. El ladrón adentro dice, “El número es 1.” El ladrón afuera responde y dice la clave: “La respuesta es 3.”

¿Cuál es la clave de los dos ladrones?

___________________

Do you know the legend of the two thieves?

There are two thieves who live in Honduras. Actually, they live here in Talanga, in a cave called The Devil’s Cave.

One thief stays in the cave to guard the treasure, and the other thief leaves to steal more treasure and bring it back to the cave.

But the thieves need a way to know who is knocking on the door of the cave. They can’t just let anybody enter! For that, they created a code. The code lets the thief inside the cave know that the person knocking really is the other thief.

The thief who is returning to the cave knocks on the door. Then the thief inside says a number. The thief outside then uses the code to figure out the correct answer, the coded answer.

For example: the thief outside knocks on the door. The thief inside says, “The number is 2.” The thief outside answers, saying, “The answer is 3.”

Second example: the thief outside knocks on the door. The thief inside says, “The number is 20.” The thief outside answers, saying, “The answer is 6.”

Another example: the thief outside knocks on the door. The thief inside says, “The number is 7.” The thief outside answers, saying, “The answer is 5.”

Last example: the thief outside knocks on the door. The thief inside says, “The number is 1.” The thief outside answers, saying, “The answer is 3.”

Can you solve the thieves’ code?

magic moments

A girl sneaks up behind me and flings her arms around my waist. She snuggles her head between my shoulderblades and giggles, “I love you, Erica! I love you forever and ever! Even though you are angry sometimes, I think you are fun.” I turn around and kiss her on the forehead. “I love you too,” I reply. “I am glad that you are my friend.” She looks at me with smiling eyes and then, in a flash, she sprints to her room.

Four boys sprawl on the concrete floor, heads together, frantically arranging something on the ground. I look down at my watch and shout, “One minute has passed!” One replies, “¡Pucha!” (That is a very common word used in Honduras that means ‘dangnabbit.’) A moment later, they all back away and demand that I look over their work. They have arranged the months of the year in Spanish and English, matching the two different languages and then putting the pairs in order. I grin, “This took you one minute and… FOUR SECONDS. You beat 7th grade’s best time by one second! Way to go, team!” They leap up and begin slapping each other on the back and giving each other noogies. I quietly grab my things and prepare to bow out, because I have a different class to teach. As I walk toward the door, one guy touches my arm. He shuffles his feet and then looks me straight in the eye. “I’m sorry for how I behaved in computer class today,” he says. “I was not a good student. And I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” I smile and give him a huge hug. “I forgive you,” I say. “Thank you for apologizing. You are a great student, and I am very happy that you are in my classes.” He smiles widely and squeezes me tighter for just a second before he lets me leave the room.

I am laying on my bed, reading Mere Christianity and waiting for the girls to turn the lights off so I can sleep. One of them walks over to me and sits on my bed, crushing me in the process. She peers down at my face, which is distorted in mock agony as she sits on me. “Why do you wear that thing in your mouth?” She taps her teeth as she speaks. I pull out my top retainer and tell her that I used to have braces, so this helps my teeth stay straight. I put my fingers up to my mouth and demonstrate how awkward my teeth used to be. “Oh,” she says thoughtfully. After a pensive moment, she looks down at me again. “I am glad you’re here at the project. You’re fun at night.”

Several kids and I are sitting at a picnic table, waiting for the rest of the kids to show up. I have my Beginner’s Bible in front of me, along with a page of notes I wrote out for giving devotions. I glance over my preparations one more time, then close the book and prepare to concentrate on these kids until I have to talk. The boy sitting next to me is five years old. He has a glow-in-the-dark necklace that the short-term missions group was handing out. He hands me the necklace and says, “This for you! Put on your necklace!” I try to shimmy the necklace over my head, but it is too small. I drape it over my head and say, “This is my crown. I am the queen!” He hugs my arm tightly and says, “You are the queen, and I am the king!” I play along. “I am the queen,” I say, “and you are my king! Who is she?” I point to a girl sitting across from us. “The princess,” he answers. “And her?” I point to another girl walking toward us. “Oh, her,” he squeaks. “She sweeps our house.”

I am in the hallway, chatting with Helga, one of the leaders of the project. She mentions, “The kids have realized that you can’t be manipulated.” I ask her to explain what she meant by that. She smiles and says, “Some of the kids have come up to me and complained that you are an angry person. I asked them when you get angry. They said that you get angry when they don’t listen to you in class. Erica, I know you are a good fit here, because a lot of volunteers are scared to be authority figures. But you have that gift.” I laugh, and say, “Well, I’m glad I have the gift of being angry! It was really hard for me at the beginning. I remember calling my dad and crying, ‘One of the girls told me I am angry a lot. I don’t want to be an angry person!’ But I think it’s a lot easier for me to be in charge now.” Helga shakes her head and smiles back at me. “You are a good teacher. Thank you for being a strong person.”

My alarm clock is set, my teeth are brushed, my retainer is in, and my glasses are safely stored under the bed until morning. I am ready to sleep. As I am preparing to shut my eyes and slip into unconsciousness, a small voice drifts down from the bunk above me. “Erica, will you sing to me?” I raise my eyebrows in the darkness and ask, “What kind of song do you want me to sing?” There is a pause. Then, “Sing me a song from your mom.” A song from my mom? What kind of request is that? I think for a moment. Snatches of lyrics come to the front of my mind. “This is a song that my mom sang to me whenever I was sad,” I begin. “Whenever I was crying, or hurt, or scared, she would sing me this song.” I clear my throat, and start to sing. “When you’re down and troubled, and you need a helping hand, and nothing, oh, nothing is going right… close your eyes and think of me, and soon I will be there to brighten up even your darkest night. You just call out my name, and you know, wherever I am, I’ll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer or fall, all you have to do is call, and I’ll be there, yes I will… you’ve got a friend.” The girls are silent in the darkness. I then tell them in Spanish, “This song is called ‘You’ve Got A Friend,’ and it talks about how you have a friend who will always be there when you call their name.” I then go through and translate each line from the song into Spanish so they understand it. There is a long moment of silence. A sigh punctuates the darkness, and a girl says, “I like that song. Will you sing another tomorrow night?” Yes. Yes, I will.

Living and working at the Manuelito Project, there are many difficult moments. This is hard work. It is good work, but that does not make it easy.

Moments like these keep me going.

Yuli

Every night, I have the same conversation with one of the girls here at the Manuelito Project.

“Your mom’s name is Yuli, right?”

“Yes,” I say, “My mom’s name is Julie.”

“Yuli came here before.”

“Yes, she did,” I respond. “She was here for a few days when I first came here. And she was here last October with my sister and some people from my church.”

“Yuli has white hair.”

“Yeah, my mom has really pretty white hair. It used to be dark brown, like yours, but then it turned white and silver.”

“Yuli has brown eyes.” She stares at me.

“Mm-hmm,” I nod. “She has gorgeous brown eyes.”

“Your eyes are the same as your mom’s eyes.” She still stares at me, expressionless.

“…Thank you.” I pause, unsure of how to proceed. “Your eyes are brown, too. They are beautiful.”

“Yuli is beautiful,” she reflects. “She has white hair and brown eyes and she is beautiful.” She pauses. Then, “Yuli is coming back.”

“Yes, Julie will be coming back. With my sister and my dad and me. Do you know when?”

“YULI COMES BACK IN JANUARY!”

My mom has stayed at the Manuelito Project for a grand total of a week and a half. And every night, one girl and I have this conversation.

I was not there to see how my mom acted during her week-long mission trip to Manuelito. But I did see how she acted in the few days she was here at the end of May.

The most compelling thing about her behavior here was how present she was. Whether she was laying on the bed next to me and letting me talk through all my fears about my upcoming time here, or sitting in front of the girls’ dorm covered in children and reading to them, she was actively building relationships here.

It is not easy to be fully present for a few days. It is not easy to be fully present for a few minutes. Being fully present involves taking time by yourself. I would venture to say that Jesus was the most fully present human that ever walked the earth, and we know that he frequently took time to pray and to be by himself.

So we need to be by ourselves sometimes.

But what about the rest of our time?

Being fully present is hard. It is paralyzingly hard sometimes. Obviously, though, it has benefits.

Yuli comes back in January. Yuli will be here for a week. The girl dances around our room singing my mom’s name.

If one woman can have that kind of an effect with just a few days of influence, what can you do?

What kind of an impact can you have on your children’s lives?

On your friends’ lives?

On strangers’ lives?

I want to propose something else, as well.

What would it mean if we waited for Jesus like this girl waits for Yuli?

What would it look like if we were so consumed by thoughts of Jesus that his impact on our lives bubbled into random conversations?

How would our days be different if the thought of going to church and being with Jesus filled us with such joy that we danced in anticipation?

I long for that enthusiasm.

Come, Lord Jesus.

And come back to Manuelito, Yuli. We miss you.

bad people

I walked down the sidewalk hand-in-hand with one of the girls in the project.

Out of the blue, as we were walking, she clenched my hand a little tighter. In a hushed voice, she asked, “Why are there bad people?” I wasn’t sure that I had heard her correctly, and asked her to repeat herself. Again, she asked, “Why are there so many bad people in the world?”

Every nerve in my body went on alert mode. This, now, was the reason why I came here. If only for this conversation, this has all been worth it. Unless, of course, she was just playing with me.

I paused, said a desperate prayer, and said, “God created all of us with an incredible capacity to do good. We all have so much strength to love, to grow, to think, to create beautiful things. God wants us to use our abilities to do beautiful things, and so he gave us huge powers. But being able to do so many good things, to love so strongly, means that we can be bad too. If we have a small capacity for good, we can only do a little bit of bad. But if we can do amazing, huge, glorious things, that means that we can fall far down and do incredibly horrible, evil, ugly things. There are terrible people in this world. There are people who only want to hurt others. I am sorry that you have had some of those people in your life.”

We had walked into the dorm as I spoke and we were now sitting on my bed. She processed what I had said for a moment.

She let go of my hand and leaned away from me as she said, “Sometimes… sometimes I have sad days. Days when I can’t stop thinking about things. Sad things. I don’t like to be sad. It hurts when I think about my sister. Sometimes I think about taking away my own life and giving it to her and letting her live again.”

This is why I am here, folks.

Even if I would only have that conversation — if nothing else I said or did here made a difference — I would still go through all of the transition and pain and complication of coming here, of being away from my family and friends longer, of everything I have written in this blog and much more.

These kids are stronger than anyone I know. Every moment of every day, they are fighting giants bigger than anything I can imagine. Goliath is huge, and he is real, and he laughs.

Oh, how he laughs at these souls who stand in front of him: barely four feet tall, with knobby knees and leaky noses, with anxiety and wet beds and more baggage than American Airlines.

He laughs, and the kids reach into their pockets and with trembling fingers they draw out smooth round rocks. A rock for food every day. A rock for a bed to sleep in. A rock for shoes on their feet. A rock for physical and psychological medical care. A rock for all of the staff and volunteers who give these children laps and loving arms and firm boundaries and more unconditional love than they know how to handle.

And constantly, constantly, they are picking up these rocks and loading them into their slingshots and attacking these giants.

They attack the memories of bad people.

They attack the memories of Mom and Dad, of a home that used to be, or that never was, or that should never have been.

They attack the present reality that seems so stifling, that at times does not look like freedom because there are rules to follow.

They attack their own behavior, which they at times cannot explain nor control.

And rarely, but far more often than I would expect, they let people slip past their defenses and into their hearts.

This is why I am here, my friends. I want to help these children learn English, to absorb Bible stories, to learn to type and to behave and to take their medicine every day. But most of all, I want to be the one who cries with them because there are bad people.

wise beyond her years

I have reached a strange point in my life. When little old ladies at church want to compliment my observation skills, they no longer say, “That Erica is wise beyond her years.” They just call me wise.

What does it mean for someone to be wise beyond their years?

When do they reach the mysterious tipping point where the pile of wisdom in their soul is proportional to the burden of years that their body lugs around?

I am going to cut to the chase and say that I find absolutely nothing helpful about the phrase “wise beyond her years.” Or his years. Or its years. The pronoun isn’t what has my hackles up.

The hackle-raising part for me is what this phrase implies.

By cooing this at a six-year-old who has said something precocious, we are not complimenting him or in any other way helping him. Yes, it is fulfilling and satisfying to be called wise, but why the tag at the end? Why do we have to qualify our statement? Can’t we just say that the kid is wise and be done with it? Oh, you’re so full of wisdom; too bad there are only a few shining stars in your generation who can produce such witty or thoughtful statements as you.

Quite a few of the times I received that compliment were because I spent a significant amount of time reading books when growing up. If it had text, I would read it. Shampoo bottles, marriage advice books, do-it-yourself tips, parenting advice, and the Encyclopedia Britannica were my closest friends. Because of this, and because of my obnoxious self-awareness (due to the parenting books and personality analysis tomes), I was able to cock my head, purse my lips, and deliver in a dovelike voice a piece of advice straight out of Please Understand Me or a quip from Calvin and Hobbes. The adults around me would either hoot and grin or sit back with big eyes and look at me silently.

It was a great game.

Those friends, those self-help books, helped me say a bunch of apropo things that earned me respect as child wise beyond her years. That was not wisdom. That was a game, like I said. I was, whether consciously or subconsciously, manipulating the adults around me.

I am not saying that children who read those kinds of books or who funnel second-hand wisdom are not wise, or that reading those books will not eventually make them wise. I merely state that children who sound like a psychologist may have a good reason for that other than their precocious observations on life.

At the same time, there were plenty of things that I said that just popped out of nowhere that had the same effect. Being less than four feet tall is an advantage sometimes. People underestimate you.

And that, dear friends, is my point. By telling children that they are wise beyond their years, we are essentially saying that we do not value what people their age have to say.

I don’t know about you, but I have met plenty of eight-year-olds who are a far sight wiser than some 40-year-olds I have seen.

Wisdom does not imply that they know many facts, or that they can drive a stick shift, or that they know how to rewind a videotape.

Age has absolutely nothing to do with the wisdom of these individuals. The 40-year-old has probably learned to behave in public, whereas the eight-year-old may not have those rules down pat. The 40-year-old probably has developed ways to hide or coping mechanisms for his or her foolish behavior, whereas the eight-year-old’s foolish decisions are most likely obvious to the family or even to the general public.

Who are we, then — we who sit alone in our car at the McDonald’s drive-thru and turn to the imaginary kids in the backseat to offer them each a McFlurry — we who sit in the kitchen and cradle our head in our hands as we clutch the bottle ever closer — we who sit silently in the bathroom with the door locked, jaw clenched as we are once again sure that we can feel pain — who are we to tell a young child that older people are the wise ones?

I am now at the point where I am considered wise, not wise beyond my years. Maybe it’s because I finally learned how to dress myself well. Maybe it’s because I’m done going through puberty. Maybe it’s because I have partaken in social rituals like graduating high school and attending college. Maybe it’s because of the 2-inch growth spurt that happened when I stopped eating gluten.

Or maybe it is just because I am conventionally no longer a child, and we know children are foolish creatures.

It is time to stop looking down on people because they are young. The next time a child wants to say something, listen to him or her. They might say something wise. They might say they need to pee.

Goodness knows that our children will not grow up to be wise if we do not actively listen and engage in conversation and read with them and encourage them. I would venture to say that in addition to that, if we convince our children that they are wise beyond their years, they will begin to see childhood as a foolish time.

I do not believe that foolishness is God’s plan for childhood. The book of Proverbs states that a wise child listens to the reprimands of his parents. How many adults do you know who listen to reprimands? Adults who truly seek to understand the fault in themselves, the damage it has caused to those around them, and the advice being offered of how to change?

I know that I deeply struggle with being criticized, and I suspect that most of the human race does.

Children are not wise beyond their years. They are not entirely wise, and they are not entirely foolish. They are in a continual process of changing and maturing in ways they cannot yet understand. As are we all.

I hope that as you go through today, you actively think about the way you respond to criticism. Slow down. Say a quick prayer for strength. And above all, pray for wisdom, because God has promised to give wisdom freely to all that ask for it and do not doubt.

citizenship

I sat at a picnic table with a few of the girls from the project. They were idly doing each others’ hair, idling their way through homework, and chatting about Justin Bieber. In some topic of conversation, one of the girls was talking somewhat disparagingly about “la gringa” (the white foreign girl). I turned around, raising my eyebrows, ready to both tease and rebuke her. She caught my gaze and just looked at me in confusion. Another girl stepped to her aid, understanding my disappointment. “We were talking about a different girl… Erica, you are not a gringa. You are Honduran.”

This moment has stuck in my psyche since it occurred, never bubbling to the surface but never entirely going away.

I have tried to dismiss my thoughts on it, thinking that the issue was pride. I am proud that my Spanish is good enough that I do not come across as foreign. I am proud that these girls have accepted me. Dangerous pride can easily bloom beyond its reasonable limits. So I told my parents about the incident and let it slip from my thoughts.

This last weekend was spent holed up in a World Gospel Mission guest house, as isolated as possible. I stayed in my room with the door shut and the fan on and ice water on the nightstand. I alternated between laying on the bed while staring aimlessly at the ceiling, laying on the bed blogging and emailing, sitting on the bed chatting with my friends online, and laying on the bed reading The Silmarillion. (You begin to sense a pattern underlaying all of this.)

I desperately needed that alone time, though. It was healing. I am quite introverted, which surprises most of my acquaintances. While some people are built up by social interaction and drained by time alone, most often I am exhausted by social interaction but built up and reinforced by time alone.

I knew that before my time alone. It was my excuse. But I learned something else, as I reflect back on it.

I only had two Spanish conversations this weekend. One was me asking where my bags of groceries were. The other was a very quick surface-level chat about employment and hobbies and time off.

The groceries I bought were milk (in a carton, not a box!), cheese, deli turkey, apples, red peppers, plain yogurt, M&Ms, and peanut butter. I had surrounded myself with the some of the things I would eat on a typical weekend in Minnesota, even though many other (cheaper) options were available.

I tried to plan for my classes. I really did. I tried to plan Bible studies for the next week. Okay, I thought I was trying. I half-heartedly began attempts and then abandoned them in favor of sitting listlessly on a couch while basking in the glory of time without voices or television or any noise other than my own breath.

As I look back at my strangely fulfilling weekend, I see a clear pattern.

I was not avoiding the children nor procrastinating on my work.

I was escaping to Minnesota. I was seeking familiarity.

Where does this all tie into not being a gringa? Why does it matter that I’m Honduran if, when given the choice, I run to the familiarity of Caribou Coffee and cold rivers and roads with stripes painted on them?

My pleasure at the girl’s statement was much deeper than pride. It was desperation.

I am a foreigner. I am a stranger in a strange land. I have been since before I left Minnesota on February first.

The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. I have been studying and working in Central America for just over 4 months. There is no comparison. It would be arrogant to say that this is a time of trial and testing my mettle when by all rights I should be here 39 years and 8 months more. But at the same time, I begin to see and perhaps even to understand my own vulnerability.

I desperately, desperately need to be home. I am sure the Israelites did too. I am sure that Ruth, as she followed Naomi back to Israel, had moments of regret and apathy and desolation. Seriously — your people will be my people, and your God will be my God? What kind of crazy woman is this? She had to have been very alone, and very desperate, and absolutely valiant. I cannot imagine the isolation she must have experienced, even as she clung close to Naomi.

But I can imagine a few of the struggles she went through.

There are so many things that I have taken for granted in my life in the United States. I have never questioned the fact that I can speak with the cashier in a store and understand their requests. I can sit down for a serious conversation with a family member or friend and not waste too much time trying to think of the correct word as they sit there, frustrated and impatient (okay, so it takes me an eternity to get one serious sentence past my lips, even in English… you get the point, though). I can go to church and usually know when to stand up and when to sit down. I can look at most foods and know basically what they are.

Living in another country that speaks a language other than my mother tongue, those simple pleasures are not always reality. Actually, they are rarely the case. It used to be a fun adventure to go to the store and find strangely packaged mystery foods and try to understand what the cashier was saying. Later, I went through a phase where I avoided going to the store because I knew I would only catch half of the instructions and be left looking stupid. I am now at a point, with stores and with daily life, where I will engage in whatever conversations and tasks come my way. But while I have learned a great deal of Spanish and a great deal about the culture, I still get absolutely confoodled sometimes.

Even people who go to different countries (or different regions of their own country, sometimes!) for just a few days can experience this. So I am not somehow special in this way because I have been here for a long time. These are universal frustrations. But at the same time, because of my time here, I have had to work through these frustrations and begin to come to terms with them.

Notice that I said “begin to.”

One of my frustrations with Guatemala, after the first couple months, was that I felt like more than a tourist and less than a citizen. I was living in towns that are either very tourist-oriented or very used to mission teams. There was inherently a distance between me and the people who lived there, who belonged there. As much as I was loved and welcomed, I was a visitor.

This is exactly why the gringa vs. Hondureña comment lodged in my mind.

As much as I know that it was a light statement, a passing comment made by a child in the face of their friend’s confusion, it was still said.

I have not felt like I truly belonged somewhere in a very long time. I am passing through here.

I have peach skin covered in freckles. I have a short snub nose. I have rough blonde hair that neither scrunches into ringlets nor sleeks back into a perfect ponytail. I stumble in the middle of a rolling conversation and gaze imploringly at the other person, waving my hands and saying, “Este, cómo se dice –” (Um, how do you say…). And even so, and perhaps more strangely, I am a white person who does speak decent Spanish.

Even before I left Minnesota, I knew that I was leaving. I continually had to fight the urge to withdraw from my friends and family. Why would I go out of my way to connect with them, to make conversation and share my heart? I formed some incredibly strong friendships in the few weeks before I left, ones that I am sure will last for the rest of my life. And even as I poured myself into these people, I was continually pulling against the ropes that pulled me back and whispered, “You’ll be gone soon. None of this will matter. Don’t even bother, because this conversation, this friendship, this moment of sacrifice will blow away in the roar of your plane’s jet engines.”

With her small “Hondureña” statement, the girl told me so much more than her words. I know she did not mean it this way, but even the fact that she would think that nourished me. It watered my dry roots. It stabilized me and opened my eyes to the fact that my citizenship is not in the United States. Yes, yes, I know I have a certificate that proves that I am an American citizen. But more than that, so much more than that, I am a citizen of a heavenly kingdom.

This goes along with what I posted yesterday about realizing where my home truly is. Home is where your citizenship is. And your citizenship is where you belong. You belong at home.

I have a paper certificate from the United States, but I have a new soul from the God of the universe.

It does not matter whether I feel like I belong here in Honduras, but the fact is, I am realizing that someday I could. Even if I cannot and never do feel like I entirely belong again, that is a blessing. Once I feel comfortable, I will not need to cling to Jesus. I will scramble down from his arms and take his hand, walking at his side, saying, “I’m okay. I can walk now.” And once I relax more, I will release his hand, walking next to him in silence. And after that, I will dash ahead of him, anticipating his path because I know where I am and where I am going. I will shout, “Look at me, Jesus! I can do it myself!”

I am Hondureña. I am an American. I am chapina. I am Minnesotan. I am Lutheran. I am a proud bearer of my last name. I am a Bethel student. I am so many things.

And in the end, whether I can be identified as those things does not matter. Whether I am a gringa or Hondureña does not matter at all.

If I cannot be identified — whether by my unspoken thoughts, my bank statement, my eating habits, my words spoken in the heat of anger, or by the actions I take when no one is watching — as someone who seeks to glorify Jesus in everything she does, then I have failed in my mission.

learning to teach and longing for home

To begin with, let me provide you with some numbers.

Former street kids at the Manuelito Project: 32

Different subject areas I’m teaching: 3

Class sessions per week: 31

Ages I’m teaching: 5-17

Days of classroom teaching experience: 4 as of Thursday

Days I have technically spent at the project: 10

Number of calls and texts home: unfathomable

Words written in my word-document “journal” since arriving: 12,938

And in spite of that last statistic, I find myself remarkably tongue-tied as I sit down to write this post.

There are so many different things I want to share with you, and at the same time I want to hide all my experiences and stuff them away.

My time at the project has been intense, for lack of a better word. Intense and deeply trying. I think that the best experiences in life can be described that way.

To give you a flavor of life, here is what an average weekday looks like for me.

6:00: wake up after 8-ish hours of sleep and either shower or read my Bible

6:30… or 6:40 or 6:50: help the under-six-year-olds shower, get dressed, put lotion on, and walk over to the school

7-12:40: teach 8ish classes of English, Bible, and computation, and eat breakfast somewhere in there

1-1:30: eat lunch with the young’uns

1:30-4: prepare lesson plans for the next day, nap, read, call home, entertain children if I have time or energy

4, approximately: teach piano lessons to whatever student wanders into the general vicinity

5-6:30: eat supper and then either wash dishes or keep under-sixes from killing each other

7-8: devotions with the girls of the project

8-8:30: invent or embellish stories for the younger boys of the project (and the older ones who surreptitiously listen in)

8:30-10ish: plan classes and devotions for the next day, then sleep

I am caught in an interesting place. I have been in Central America for 4 and a half months. That is a long time. And I just moved to Honduras after about four months of experience in Guatemala. I thought Guatemala was unfamiliar while I was there, but now I look back on my time there and know differently. I knew the layout of the town I lived in. I had a tribe of people around me who knew me and who had lived through many different experiences with me. I knew what words I should say and which words I should not. I knew without a doubt how to correctly address a person.

In Honduras, everything is different. I have not arrived fresh from the states, but rather after a very long time away from home and after living in a different foreign culture. While the people I live with expected me to be put off by electricity and running water outages, the things that actually shook me up the most were more along the lines of eating red beans instead of black beans and using “vos” instead of “tú” or “usted.”

But these little differences don’t matter. While black beans will always be superior, I have grown accustomed to red beans. While I will always feel like a bit of an impostor using “vos” in my everyday speech, it is no longer foreign to me.

The factor that matters most now is the time I have already spent away from home. After an entire semester away, making the transition to a new country and new people and new places, with all their accompanying culture shock, is exhausting. I desperately want to go home. And it has absolutely nothing to do with where I am right now. While working at the project is difficult, the trials and challenges I face spur me on to live more excellently and to be a better resource and friend to these kids. No, this is a battle being fought on the most treacherous battleground — my own heart.

The leaders of the project sit me down and ask me how I am doing sometimes. How do I respond? How can I respond? “I love the kids, and I just want to see my sister face-to-face.” “Yes, the food is delicious, and I would kill for some baby-back ribs and a salad with lettuce that I trust.” “You guys are incredibly kind to me, and I desperately need to hug my mom and dad.” There is no “but” in those sentences, because one phrase does not negate the other. The two truths — these two worlds — are coexisting in a way that I had never thought possible.

And even as I am torn between Honduras and Minnesota, Guatemala edges its way into my heart and whispers, “Have you already forgotten about me? Have you forgotten about the beautiful trajes that the indigenous women wear? Have you forgotten about lazy walks through Parque Central? Have you forgotten about breaking your thumb, and eating with your host families, and watching the Bourne movies with your friends, and the purple splendor of Semana Santa?”

Even as these thoughts — these unwanted but desperately needed memories — crowd into my heart, I smile and continue reading the Beginner’s Bible to a classroom of 1st and 2nd graders with huge eyes, scars on their skin and souls, and hearts so desperate for love and affirmation that closing myself off for a moment leaves them withdrawn and afraid.

I want to be home. But that doesn’t mean that I want to leave here.

I barely understand this dichotomy, and explaining it seems like a futile effort. But then I read Hebrews 11:13-16 and am taken aback by how completely the Bible applies to my life. Funny how that happens, isn’t it?

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

I have read this before, but I have never understood it so fully and painfully as I do now. I am not home now. I will not be home in 44 days when my plane touches down in Minnesota. I will not be home if someday I return to Guatemala. Home is not a place. Home is love; home is relationship. Home is not a country or a building or a farmstead or a drink from Starbucks. Rather, home is the deepest, most vulnerable communion of souls. And where I have that, I will be whole.

However, this is a bittersweet truth, because I will not have that on this earth. Yes, I will catch glimpses. My plane will land in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport and I will run blindly to my family and we will cry and laugh and say stupid things and be with each other again. I will stand in Vespers and raise my arms and close my eyes and sing with hundreds of others in a single voice. I will play duets on the piano with friends, laughing at wrong notes and making silent eye contact when a passage goes perfectly right. I will dip my gluten-free wafer into the chalice of wine and partake in the communion of saints in a church that speaks my language and knows my family and knows my history and has supported me all through this adventure. God willing, I will eventually share my heart and my life with a man and we will be the image of Christ and his church. Some of these, none of these, all of these may come to pass in this lifetime. But I will never be home.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “I have found out everything. We have come to the wrong star. That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. We are in the wrong world.”

I am in the wrong world. No simple change of scenery or companions will change that fact. This is a sad and glorious truth. It is sad because I am continually longing for something… different. Something stronger. Something more beautiful and perfect. I long for a world where I can simultaneously be with my roommates, my music friends, my Guatemala friends, the children and staff of Manuelito, and the family and adoptive family that is scattered across the United States. But the truth is, this desperate longing is a purification. Jesus desperately longed to be reunited with his Father, to have that communion. I am beginning to barely understand the sweetness of his prayer time and the subsequent weight in his step when he walked out of his silent places to be with the world again. I am being purified for the perfect communion. This is the glory in all of this. God has prepared a city for us. 

Hebrews 11 continues on after those verses to talk about all the heroes in the Bible and their valiant acts of faith. Hebrews 11:39-40 says, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” I long for my family and my dear friends, but God has promised us that we will someday be together in eternity, partying it up forever with Abraham and Moses and Rahab and Ruth and Gideon and Esther and Jesus. How overwhelmingly, ridiculously beautiful is God’s plan for us!

God has a perfect plan for each one of us, and that plan does not look like blissful unending happiness all our earthly days. That plan looks like suffering. It looks like peace that truly passes all understanding, that comes and blankets us when we have no covering left on our raw and aching spirits. It looks like an inferno that will purify our souls. It looks like joy that lifts us out of the deep water and carbonates our souls and lets us laugh at the days to come, because the creator God of the universe became flesh and lived among us and lives in you and in me right now.

So am I having fun in Honduras? Am I liking it down here?

It depends on the moment, and probably more often than not, the answer will be slow in coming.

Those are weak words. They are human words.

I am being tested, purified, and refined by this experience. This time has been perfectly engineered to rub raw those parts of me that are rough and prickly.

I do not seek to make my experience overly dramatic or frightening to those who are back in the states praying for me. There are so many moments of every day where I just smile and shake my head and pray that this will be etched into my memory forever, because losing the magic of that particular moment would be a tragedy. One by one, these children have been prying my shriveled heart open and squeezing themselves inside of it and not budging. My time here is giant beetles in my hair, children on my lap begging for one more story, tiny faces looking at me seriously and telling me that I am not a gringa (white foreigner) but that I am hondureña (Honduran), older students going out of their way to invent inside jokes with me, and moments of blessed conversation with the other teachers and leaders as we laugh about the school day.

But at the same time, there is one pair of footprints in the sand right now. I like to say that I lean on Jesus. This time, however, is a time of holding up my arms to Jesus and whispering, “Daddy, I need you to hold me.” Jesus has been faithful to my plea. And because of that, I know that someday I will be home.