Reaping the fruits of 4-H and shop class

I have to say that while being here I’ve learned to appreciate my mom more than I ever had before.  Living in a community not only means that we get to eat together, learn Spanish together, laugh together, and cry together, we also get to care for a house together.  But caring for a house is a lot more work than I thought, and it’s not just because of the Chimbote dust.  Sweeping never ends, dishes never end, dusting never ends, bathrooms are never perfectly clean, the table is never cleared off for more than five minutes, etc., etc., etc.  BUT as a house of hospitality it’s also a lot of fun – because cleaning isn’t something we do only for ourselves, but for our friends, neighbors, and coworkers to whom we open our home.  Our community goal of participating in the culture of hospitality that surrounds us also inspires us to creatively make our home a more inviting, comfortable place.  Thus leading to the reason for the title of this blog post…

One of those ideas was sparked by Katie, who has been set on getting a lamp for our living room for several weeks now.  Finally one afternoon she and I went downtown to price some lamps, and discovered the neither the styles available nor their corresponding prices gelled with our needs.  So I said Katie, I think we can just build a lamp!

With a little help from the internet to brush up my electrical skills and some perusing around the house to find discarded or unneeded objects, we did it!  Our living room is now graced with a beautiful (dare I say?), quirky, symbolic lamp make with (almost) completely recycled materials.  And I only blew the power out once J  Definitely a purple ribbon, if not best of show ;)   Here’s a little description, not for bragging purposes, but to maybe inspire you to make something cool out of old junk that’s lying around!

We started by buying the necessary electrical parts for a lamp – the light socket, cord, and plug – which in the U.S. can be bought in a lamp kit but here are sold individually.  We also bought a small piece of plastic tubing, some wire, and super glue.  Then we identified a cool-looking plastic bottle from our extensive collection of bottles waiting to be recycled.  The base of the lamp was constructed by fitting the tube from the neck of the bottle to the bottom corner, stringing the cord through it, and attaching the light socket on top.  We filled around the tube with sand that Kelli retrieved from a sand dune just down the road and… complete!  You can fill the inside with other little things as well… we added around the top the words, “Ustedes son la luz del mundo,” which means “You are the light of the world,” from the Gospel of Matthew. 

 Now for the lamp shade.  We used two wire hangers and bent them into squares, then attached them at the corners with a second plastic bottle, cut into strips.  This I first tried to cover with tissue paper and then decorate with used matches (we have a gas stove), but it was a little sub-par quality.  So we thought a little harder and came up with using an old T-shirt, which in our case ended up being my bilingual Incarnate Word Missionaries shirt, which was too big for me anyway!  A little cutting (don’t take for granted your rotary cutter – children’s scissors make the job a little more frustrating!) and sewing (also don’t take for granted your sewing machine!) led to the (almost) perfectly-fitted lampshade cover.  To attach the lampshade, we wrapped wire around the bottom lampshade frame and looped it to wrap around the neck of the bottle.  Voilà!  And it’s even IWM-themed J  Here you can pictures of the front and back… the fact that both designs ended up being centered was pure luck!  Yay for recycled products!

Another post to come soon to share about our Christmas celebrations… I wish you all a very joyful and peaceful Christmas!  Another opportunity to realize how truly BLESSED we are that our God chose to come to the earth and be one of us… God doesn’t want to be far away and scary.  In the beginning God was the word, but the word was made FLESH in order to be closer to us.  I pray that this year’s celebration truly allows you to feel that closeness.

Thanks for reading!  I would love to hear from each and every one of you J  Chau!

                                  

not forgetting, but forgiving

This weekend I went for the first time to mass in one of our parish’s chapels, Santo Domingo. The neighborhood is on the outskirts of Chimbote and has a very rural feel. I’ve been walking by it for several months on my way to LENTCH, always noticing it but never inquiring. This past week I finally decided to bring it up to Padre Luciano and see what’s going on there. I went Sunday in hopes of meeting the right people to start developing some kind of outreach to the kids or youth in the neighborhood.


When I walked into the chapel, I saw a very simple room. At the front was the altar, and behind it there was no wall but instead a garden. There were two rows of simple wooden benches and a handful of señoras (elderly women) sitting on the right. I walked in, took a seat near them, and they greeted me and everyone else as they arrived. There ended up being a total of about ten people. Padre Miguel arrived a few minutes after four, and the Mass started.

Until that Mass, it was like any other Sunday for me. Then Padre offered the opening prayer, and added, “Today we are lucky to have here Emily, from the United States, as we commemorate ten years of the attack on her country at the World Trade Center and pray for the thousands of victims from the U.S. and from all over the world.” Ah, of course, the ten year anniversary of 9/11! I had completely forgotten, but as the Mass proceeded, it turned out to be a better commemoration than I could have asked for.

The Gospel for this Sunday was the parable of forgiving others as God forgives us (Matthew, 18: 21-35). Padre Miguel started out his Homily by highlighting the most common message that we understand from this reading – so many times we are so grateful that our loving God forgives even the gravest of our sins, but we are unwilling to forgive our brothers and sisters for the smallest offenses. Then he said, “We have a good opportunity today, as well, to consider the social message of this Gospel.” The message that he proceeded to give re-awoke in me the emotion of 9/11, and it re-ignited my own sentiments about the way we respond to it:

What if warring nations, instead of retaliating with hatred, started with forgiveness? Obviously many people will present arguments of practicality – the government has to worry about the safety of its people, and we should also work to combat systems of evil in the world. But does not hatred simply breed more hatred? Why not strive for national sentiments of forgiveness, understanding, and solidarity with the millions of other people who deal with terrorism every day? Forgiveness does not mean letting the same atrocity happen twice, but it does mean changing the attitude behind our reaction.

With these thoughts I sat as the Mass continued, and Padre Miguel invited me to offer the petitions, even though I was a fist-time visitor in this tight-knit community. This allowed me to step outside my internal reflections and participate in an active way with the community. I received the body of Christ that day with perhaps more conviction and belief than I have in a long time, because I felt the truth of Christ’s message of forgiveness, on the smallest and largest scale.

So as we move on with our lives and the anniversary of 9/11 passes, let us carry not more hatred toward those who carry out acts of terrorism, but forgiveness. Let us pray not that they suffer for what they’ve done but that love, more powerful than the strongest hatred, may fill their hearts. And let our hearts also be filled with love and the courage to work for a more peaceful world.

learning to bear beams of love

Well, I’ve officially been part of the IWM family for just over a year now.  Marcelle, one of my community mates, finished her two years of service and is now back in the states.  Katie and Kyle, our two new community mates, have arrived and are starting to gain their footing here in Chimbote.  Our community is slowly developing into what we hope will be a solid, supportive household.  The four of us are beginning our journey to imitate Christ’s first disciples, who “bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” through the love made manifest in their community (Acts, 5:33).  We are willing recipients of your prayers during this important time of transition!

It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long since I left the U.S., but looking back on the past year I know that I have experienced and grown a lot.  I have formed lots of life-giving relationships that I already know will be very painful to say goodbye to, and in that process have found little niches in my service sites that help me feel like an active, contributing member, and not just a visitor.  All taken into account, I am very happy with my life here in Chimbote.

Amidst the many joys that occur daily in my life, I have lately been struggling with and reflecting a lot upon my own incapacities – incapacity to be everything a friend should be, to be everything a community mate should be, to be everything a missionary should be.  I grew up thinking, and rightfully so, that I can do anything I set my heart on.  But what is too easy to forget is that it’s not going to go perfectly, and it’s not going to be easy.  Likewise, I developed many ideas in college about what it means to be a Catholic missionary, what it means to be a development practitioner and what it means to be a United States native in a foreign country.  These ideas are well-ingrained in my thoughts and beliefs, but what is again too easy to forget is that I’m not going to fulfill those roles perfectly, and that it’s not going to be easy.  And it hasn’t been.

I will not claim to have made any significant difference in the lives of people here in Chimbote during the past year, but I know that I have discovered much about myself, my capabilities and my limitations, some of which is very exciting and some of which is difficult to swallow.  Just this morning I happened to turn to a passage in a collection of writings by Dorothy Day that illuminated my feelings of self-doubt.  Her reflection spurs from the words of William Blake: “We are put on earth for a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love.”  She writes:

“Suddenly I remembered coming home from a meeting in Brooklyn many years ago, sitting in an uncomfortable bus seat facing a few poor people.  One of them, a downcast, ragged man, suddenly epitomized for me the desolation, the hopelessness of the destitute, and I began to weep.  I had been struck by one of those ‘beams of love,’ wounded by it in a most particular way.  It was my own condition that I was weeping about—my own hardness of heart, my own sinfulness.  I recognized this as a moment of truth, an experience of what the New Catechism calls our ‘tremendous, universal, inevitable, and yet inexcusable incapacity to love’ … Because I felt so strongly my nothingness, my powerlessness to do anything about this horrifying recognition of my own hardness of heart, it drove me to the recognition that in God alone was my strength.”

People sometimes ask, if it is so difficult to choose to live closer to the poor, closer to the world’s most ghastly injustices, and jump into a position of uncertainty where I may or may not have any idea what I’m doing, why do it?  I do it, as I think many people do, because by putting myself in a position of completely vulnerability, by losing the ability to depend on family, intelligence, material comforts, language, talents, privacy, and the limitless list of dependencies that we humans foster, all I am left with to depend on is the love of God, made manifest both in the people around me and in myself.   And then I begin to realize that only by accepting that love am I capable of sharing it. 

So that’s what I’m working on right now… an on-going process that is in every moment more difficult and easier at the same time.  But I am thankful for the life I am living, and that it allows me to pursue a spirituality that is fueled by the raw authenticity of the world. 

Thank you for letting me share some of my reflections with you!  My prayer for you, as much as for myself, is that we can know and accept our limitedness and incapacity in order to fill it with the unlimitedness and infinite capacity of God’s love!

out to sea

Hello everyone!  I hope this writing finds you all well and enjoying the summer!  It’s a little crazy for me to imagine you all celebrating the 4^th of July with barbecues and picnics when we’re just getting into the heart of winter here!  Of course, winter here is nothing compared to a Nebraska winter, with temperatures oscillating between perhaps 55 and 75, but the open-air nature of the buildings and houses here does allow for the constant coolness to reach under the skin and chill the bones. 

This weekend wrapped up the lingering festivities from the celebration of San Pedrito (Saint Peter), who is the patron saint of Chimbote.  It was a two-week celebration – the biggest event of the year – with lots of concerts, food and artisan fairs, art and dance exhibits, etc.  The first culminating event is the vigil night, June 28, which features a huge concert in the main plaza until about 6 in the morning.  I went for a few hours with a group of five people and we had to grab hands and make a train so we wouldn’t get lost in the sea of people!  The following day, June 29, is the central day of the fiesta and starts with a boat procession out to sea led by a 2-foot statue of San Pedro.  Despite being out late the night before, we were determined to pull ourselves out of bed and take advantage of the unique opportunity to take a boat ride in Chimbote’s bay.  It turned out to be quite the adventure…

We left the house later than planned, about 7:30 when we should have left at 7 at the latest.  We took a taxi to the main dock for boarding the boats and quickly got in line – a little questioning revealed that the boarding wouldn’t actually start until 9, so we had some time to wait.  We had been told, though, that the year before they had waited in line but the boats filled up before they reached the front, so we were willing to wait.  Our Peruvian friend went to check out another dock further down the seafront to see if we might have a better opportunity there, and brought back the news that the line we were in would only let us board tiny boats, which could be more dangerous and less comfortable, but the other line would lead us to bigger fishing boats, which could be a more enjoyable ride.  So, we decided to abandon our spot in line and head to the other site.  We arrived to find a short line of people waiting to board a very large boat, decked out in colorful flags and a five-person band.  After a short wait we became uneasy about the random method there seemed to be for letting some people board while others no, so our friend went to inquire.  He soon waved us over to the boarding ramp and explained that it was a private boat by invitation only, but he had explained that he had friends from abroad visiting and the captain invited us to join them.  After a bit of debate and prodding from the captain’s sister (details of which I won’t go into fully) a couple of us were very uncomfortable with the idea that we would get to board just because we were foreigners while all these other people would be refused entry.  So we sent our one roommate with her friend (who really was visiting from the US) on the large boat while three of us (Kelli and I and our Peruvian friend) left to see if we could still get on the smaller boats.  Story said and done we easily boarded a small row boat, which carried us to a slightly larger fishing boat and out to sea.  It was a 2-hour ride on a small, dirty fishing boat but it was beautiful and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.  The waves made us a little uneasy at times but the sights of sea lions, pelicans, rocky islands and open water helped to distract us!

We compiled a little list of some of our San Pedrito experiences on the program blog, http://www.iwmissions.blogspot.com/.  I also wrote a little spiritual reflection about Saint Peter and the celebration with that article, so please read if your interest is sparked!  It really is a celebration of Chimbote – the culture, the food, and of course the people!  It’s a beautiful display of pride and unity that I hope is reflected in the U.S. during this holiday season!

Apart from the celebrations, my activities are going well!  My main activities are coordinating the parish youth council, organizing activities for the youth movement, helping teach Confirmation and First Communion, teaching English, participating in the parish theater group and volunteering at an after-school program for children who work on the streets of Chimbote.  I generally fill my spare time with preparations, one-on-one help with English or computers, cleaning the house, reading, praying, heading downtown, cooking, watching Kelli practice tricks on her spinning top, enjoying Marcelle’s cooking, playing music with friends, hanging out with the Sisters, catching up with the lives of friends and family on Facebook (haha, hint hint, call me!), etc., etc., etc. 

As we celebrate the 4^th of July, I pray that it can be a time of unity and that our pride (or whatever feeling it may be) in our home country may drive us to act on behalf of a stronger and healthier global community where dignity for all is our top priority:  “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.”

Peace,

Emily

we are a resurrection people

I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written! I didn’t realize. There have been so many occasions in which I thought about writing, or had something to share, and just never got to it…. But here I am!

We just got back yesterday from our annual retreat. We went to Tortugas, a little beach town about an hour south of here. It was really rejuvenating to have the ambiance of the ocean waves and tranquility of Tortugas to facilitate a few days of reflection and prayer. It was led by Herman Katty, one of the Incarnate Word sisters here. She is our age but much older in wisdom and at the same time much younger in the childlike joy that she finds in everyday life. She is also Peruvian so the retreat was led in Spanish which was an exciting challenge for us. I could share lots of details but overall I feel like I have a new energy for my service sites and my house community! You can read a small piece of my reflections at the IWM blog, where we posted personal versions of the Beatitudes that we wrote during the retreat.

We celebrated Easter here with lots of enthusiasm! A Peruvian (and widely Latin American) tradition is to act out the Way of the Cross through the neighborhood streets on Good Friday. Good Friday is actually a bigger celebration than Easter, I think because for a people who have suffered or are suffering greatly, it is easier to identify with the crucified Christ than with the Risen Christ. And with all the killing in the world, whether it be the slow and subtle murder of a malnourished child by an imbalanced society or the direct and calculated murder of an identified individual in the midst of war, it is easy to see Christ being crucified in our world today. The difference is that we weren’t there when Jesus walked the way of Calvary, so we couldn’t take a stand, though we like to think we would have. But today we can. That’s why we are called to accompany those who suffer most—so that we can say no to the suffering of Jesus in our world today and all rise up in the Resurrection together.

Back to the story… the theater group I participate in in our parish coordinated the acting and I played the part of a bad person in the pueblo, yelling “Crucify him, crucify him!” through the whole process. Since we rehearsed the Vía Cruces, as it’s called in Spanish, for weeks beforehand, I felt like I was living the Passion of Jesus for a long time, and was thus really ready to live the Resurrection!

To celebrate the Resurrection we planned an all-night vigil/retreat for the youth movement. It started with the Saturday night vigil Mass at 8… though for me it started Saturday morning with a market run to get all the supplies. Saturday afternoon we started cooking the lamb and unleavened bread. After Mass we did some icebreaker-type games and then sat down to share a Jewish-style Passover meal—a very cool experience. The rest of the night was filled with more games, a movie, and a campfire. Around the campfire each individual got to share a bit of their testimony… or really how they were drawn into the parish. It was a really neat time to hear their stories and reflect on how God’s call is uniquely designed for every one of us. We ended at 6 a.m. with a short prayer… then I went home and slept for two hours before returning to the church for First Communion class, which was also really fun! We have class from 9:30-11, and at 11 we have a children’s mass. We still have communion, though obviously there are only a few of us who receive it. That day I went up to receive communion, and when I went back to my seat two of my 9-year-old girls turned around to face me. Their eyes were filled with curiosity and they excitedly asked me, “Does it taste good? Is that what we’re going to get?” I said yes, it tastes like happiness and peace, and yes, you will be able to receive it in November, and they looked at each other as their eyes and smiles widened. It reminded me of my own excitement to be able to walk up with all the grown-ups and receive the Eucharist, and even though I had a very simple understanding of what was happening, I think we would do well to share a bit of that childlike excitement as we walk up to communion!

After First Communion I went to theater practice for a little while, which was a celebration of the completion of the Vía Cruces and Easter—also lots of fun, because I just love being with the other members of the group. I left early to return to my house for Easter lunch… lasagna and brownie sundaes! It was a WELCOME treat after our Lenten diet. In the afternoon I was able to talk with my family and in the evening went to a meeting with the Confirmation catechist team before going to Mass in the evening. By that time I was started to crash but the whole day was very joy-filled and I wouldn’t change a second of it! (Re-reading this paragraph I realized it was FULL of exclamation points… and still has lots… but that’s because it was a very exciting day, even meriting multiple exclamation points in true Peruvian style!!! (sorry, Ginger ))

It’s a crazy thing to write a message to the general public, never knowing who might read it, but whoever and wherever you are, thank you for reading! We share our experiences so that we can all become better at loving and serving our neighbor, and we all have a perspective to offer. I thank you for considering mine and would love to hear from you as well!

I wish you joy and energy during this Easter season and beyond, and wish you the strength to respond to the call that you feel in your heart!

Lent & Tsunamis

Less than a month since my last post…  I hope you are all doing well in this Lenten season!  Things are good for me here in Chimbote.  The past couple weeks have been really busy and a little stressful with preparations for our Catechesis programs in the parish and for English classes… as well as some organizational challenges with the youth movement.  Both Catechesis and English start the first week in April so we’ve been working on making flyers, visiting the local schools, solidifying our leadership teams, and making the yearly plans.  Organizing meetings is the most difficult part, because nights are really the only available time, and it’s impossible to accommodate everyone’s schedules.  We (the missionaries) are also taking a little bit more leadership in the new English cycle.  Kelli and I will each be teaching a class by ourselves, and so we’ve made a few organizational changes and right now we’re working on advertising to draw a larger number of people to the classes.  LENTCH is on a break right now before starting again in April, so that has given me more time to work on other projects, but needless to say I can’t remember the last time I had a free night!

With all this going on I am also trying to embrace the reflective spirit of Lent.  As a community we decided on a sort of material fast to radicalize the simplicity of our home.  To do that, we decided to quit using electricity… which means no lights, no radio, no microwave, no refrigerator, no blender, no charging laptops (and no movies), phones, or cameras.  We stocked up on candles, so the evenings are kind of fun.  Some things are just starting to get challenging, and I think with time perhaps we will get tired of dealing with the inconvenience, which we hope will spark greater reflection.  We also decided to simplify our meals, so our lunch menu every day (except Sundays) consists of rice, beans, and a vegetable of choice.  This will also spark reflection as we tire of eating the same thing every day, and it lets us dedicate less time and energy for cooking, hopefully allowing for more personal reflection time or time to spend with others.  It also creates solidarity between the three of us as we challenge ourselves with the same fast. 

Personally, I am focusing more on my prayer and reflection, meaning trying to go to bed consistently earlier so that I have energy to reflect on the day, looking closely at those moments in which I felt most alive and those moments through which I struggled, asking how I can approach similar situations in the future in a better way. It’s a continual process, for sure.

Something a bit more interesting… we, like people all over the world, were heartbroken with the news of the earthquake in Japan.  Without undermining the gravity of the situation, I would say the climate here that day was quite interesting as Chimbote prepared for a tsunami.  People were out in the streets, meetings were cancelled, and one of our friends came over because, as his office is located very close the ocean, his workplace sent everyone home early.  All anyone could talk about was the tsunami—how big would it be, what would it be like, would we be safe, etc.  There was also talk of another earthquake happening here in Peru.  In the end, we did have a tsunami…. the strongest wave reported at a whopping 20 centimeters.  Many Chimbotanos went to sleep that night relieved, but many went to sleep disappointed at the missed chance for some excitement in Chimbote.  But thank God, and send more prayers to Japan.

With that I will end for today.  Again there is so much I could say… little by little.  Thank you for accompanying me on my journey.  It is best that we make the journey through the desert together!  No sense in trying to do it alone.  Prayers, peace, and discontent to you!

love deeply

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve last written!  My apologies… it’s amazing how time flies.  Our community posted an entry this week on the IWM Blog.  I’m including my part at the end of this post but I encourage you to read the entire entry as well.  But first a few general updates…

Classes are starting this week at most primary and secondary schools in Chimbote.  The universities are still on vacation until April, so my schedules are slowly changing.  The summer program at LENTCH has ended and we will soon be starting the regular academic reinforcement classes three afternoons a week.  I loved helping out in the classroom during the summer program, though there were many challenging and frustrating moments.  The kids in my classroom are starting to become more comfortable with me, asking me more questions and talking more freely.  This is a double-edged sword, as I love learning more about their lives but the more I learn the more frustrated I become by the challenges they face.  When we got to Chimbote, sure, it was definitely clear that poverty exists here, but perhaps partly due to previous experiences it wasn’t something that shocked me or slapped me in the face.  With time it is becoming all too clear that economic stratification and problems of hunger, abuse, sickness, and lack of education (etc., etc.,) are very, very real.  The detail for me lies in recognizing the injustice and combating it not with anger at an abstract system, but with love, with concrete actions of love toward individuals.  Our director Clare recently shared with me a quote from a friend of hers: “We did not change the world, but we loved it deeply.”  This thought struck me in a very strong way.  It is not to say that we should not hope to change the world, because the very task set before us is to construct the reign of God.  The way to do so, though, is not to bring more hatred and bitterness into the world (even if it is directed at sinful structures) but to experience a genuine love for all that is before us in the present moment.  This love will change the world, but that’s not the point.  The point is to love. 

Those are my reflections, at least.  I could write so much more, but I want you to read my other post as well, so I’ll stop for now.  Soon I will try to write more… there is so much that I could talk about!  I am learning a lot about the fishing economy here and I want to share some of what I’ve learned, but I’ll save it for a separate post.  I also want to tell you about some of my kids at LENTCH because they are truly amazing.  I want to tell you about Kelli’s birthday party, I want to tell you about the continual joys and challenges in the parish, I want to tell you about teaching English, I want to tell you about hiking Cerro de la Paz with the Sisters, I want to tell you about the beach, I want to tell you about my living community, I want to tell you about the mimed played we are working on in theater… is there any need to go on?  If you are particularly intrigued by something, please let me know, or if you have any questions or comments or wishes or stories of your own to share, please share! 

I wish you all the joy of the present moment!  With no further ado, please read on…

“Because food is always better when shared”

I never know if I should laugh, be disgusted, or feel accomplished when my economic lessons find their way into my everyday thought processes.  It happens often, not surprising considering the extent to which our community revolves around the exchange of goods.  Three mornings a week I head off walking to Casa LENTCH, an academic and social support program for children who work in the streets of Chimbote.   I have come to enjoy my 20-minute walk as a time to mentally prepare for the chaos of the classroom and soak up the sights, smells, and sounds of the neighborhood. 

One morning a couple blocks before arriving, I encountered two of our boys, brothers, about 13 and 7, buying food at the corner store.  They each bought a small package of crackers and an Inca Kola.  I waited but walked a bit ahead of them, as they walked slowly, probably wanting to finish their breakfast before arriving.  The older of the two opened his crackers and offered me one.  I immediately thought, I can’t eat his breakfast, especially not knowing when he had last eaten.  Still, I smiled, thanked him, accepted the cracker, and took this small act as an opportunity to enter into conversation.  “We came from San Luis,” he said.  I had visited San Luis, a neighborhood on the south side of Nuevo Chimbote, at least a 45-minute trip.  “There probably won’t be many kids here today,” he continued.  “It’s Valentine’s Day-- they’ll all be downtown.”  I hadn’t thought of that, but of course, with so many people out shopping for gifts, they would want to take advantage of the increased business.  I mulled with that as I thought, ah, but you are still here because your utility curves provide that the benefit of studying and eating at LENTCH outweighs the opportunity cost of the money you could be making downtown.  We approached the open gate.  “How good that you are here, though,” I told him, and he nodded.  We entered and casually parted ways. 

As I walked toward my classroom I took note of which students were present, wondering how they decided upon the best way to spend the day, a classic example employed by economics teachers when teaching opportunity cost.  Should a seven-year-old boy spend his summer day doing cartwheels at stoplights for money or learning how to add and playing soccer?  Applied economics in action, but I’m not sure if I should feel accomplished, be disgusted, or cry.

Read the full blog here: http://www.iwmissions.blogspot.com/

A group photo from LENTCH.. can you find me?  

accomplishing the common things

“You are a unique person made by God capable of loving and being loved. Accomplish the common things in life in uncommon ways.” –George Washington


At this point in my life, I am realizing that being a missionary isn’t necessarily about have a packed schedule of organized service, but about turning everything I do into an act of service. With that, I’d love to fill you all in a bit on my day-to-day activities…

It’s about ten o’clock in the morning right now and I’m sitting at my kitchen table typing on the laptop. We don’t have internet in the house but it’s nice to have a computer so we don’t have to spend so much time on the internet when we want to write e-mails or blogs or print documents. I’m realizing that I haven’t shared many details about my living situation in general, so I’ll share a bit more about the house. Our house is located on the edge of Dos de Mayo and Magdalena, two neighborhoods in northeast Chimbote. They are well-established neighborhoods, but still considered “young towns” because they were originally started as invasions, or essentially squatter communities. Most of the houses around us are constructed of cement and are fairly good in terms of quality, but many have unfinished second floors or attachments constructed of estera, or a woven reed-like material. Walking north or east of our house will lead you to the edge of Chimbote, where there are many more houses constructed completely of estera. Our house is very similar to those in the immediate vicinity minus the fact that it’s huge. We have two complete stories, with four bedrooms, a huge living room partially divided in two, two bathrooms, a large dining room, kitchen, and large patio and garden out back. Just before Thanksgiving we painted our living room orange, so it feels much more lively and homey than it did before. We are slowly making changes and improvements using the resources we have to make it our own and make it a welcoming space for visitors. In terms of amenities, we are a step above most of our neighbors because we have a water well behind our house and a pump that carries the water to a tank on top of the house. All the houses in this area of town have running water, but the water is only turned on for a couple hours in the morning and night, so houses without a well are more limited in terms of water usage. A few weeks ago our pump broke for about a week, so we filled buckets from the well to use for showering, drinking, washing clothes/dishes, flushing toilets, etc. For drinking or cooking the water must be boiled. What else… ah, yes, we don’t have a water heater, so the options are a cold/lukewarm shower or a hot bucket shower. When it was colder I generally opted for the bucket shower, but now that it’s summer the cold showers are no problem. We also don’t have a washing machine so we wash clothes by hand and hang dry them, but it’s not a bad chore. Our other big chore is dusting and sweeping, because our street isn’t paved yet so the dust is incredible. We cook all our own food in the house, but fruits or vegetables must be eaten cooked and/or washed with dish soap.

This week we got a new addition to the house – ducks! A friend of ours has about a hundred ducklings to get rid of, so after a careful decision process we decided to adopt three of them. As you can see in the picture, we built a little corral in the back corner of our patio for them. We have yet to name them but that’s our next task! And that’s our hammock in the background… :)

Now a little bit in terms of daily activities… it’s a little difficult because I don’t necessarily have a regular schedule, every day is a little bit different. That fact is intensified because of summer vacation (Jan-Feb), when most programs take a break. I’ve started to fall into a bit of a routine this week, though. I’ve been getting up at 6:15 to go running with a couple friends, which I love! Some mornings it’s a little painful but we run down the street I love on straight out of Chimbote to a sand dune. I love this little escape into the country, seeing all the farmers heading to town with donkey carts loaded with goods to sell (usually corn). This morning while the others ran laps on top of the sand dune (which my legs don’t find very agreeable… haha), I picked a little peak off to the sand and did a little meditating… it was so beautiful to sit there, looking out over the fields, listening to the sounds of birds, donkey hoofs, and distant mucic, letting the cool morning breeze wash over me. I’ve learned to wear bug spray when I go running, because the other day I returned to the house with 30 bug bites between my legs and arms. I’m still recovering from that one!

Anyway, back to my daily activities. My mornings right now are generally filled by cleaning the house, going to the market, or running random errands downtown. Yesterday morning I went with Sister Katty, who recently returned from a semester studying in Mexico, to the public university, where she was part of the leadership team for the campus Catholic ministry. It was their last gathering of the school year, as classes just ended about a week ago, but it was so good! The priest was super animated and the mass was very participatory and informal… it was the most life-giving mass that I’ve attended here. They don’t start again until April but if it seems appropriate at that time I might get involved with student ministry there. Sister Katty, who is actually a student at a private university here, prefers to participate in the campus ministry at the public university because tuition is free, so the students with more economic challenges study there. It also just felt really good to be back on a college campus. So we’ll see what comes of that!

There have also been some exciting advancements in the parish: we have officially opened the youth center! With a couple games sent by my sister (they love playing UNO, Ginger!) and some games that we bought here, we open the youth room three nights a week from 8-10 so they can come hang out and play games. We also open the parish center for sports one additional night and Saturday afternoons to play soccer or volleyball. So right now I am at the parish Wed-Sat from 8-10 at night plus Saturday from 4-7, and then I have theater practice at the parish on Sundays from 10ish-1ish, plus masses and miscellaneous meetings. I love this time with our parishioners and am really starting to feel at home with them.

And I can’t forget to mention the blank spaces filled by summer activities! Trips to the pool or the beach are also at the back of my mind to plan, though so far I’ve only made it once to the pool and have yet to get to the beach. But summer in Chimbote means VOLLEYBALL! Peruvians love their volleyball and they are GOOD… it’s a sign of summer to see a group of kids (or adults, really) playing volleyball on side streets with their nets stretched between two telephone poles. There are a couple families that put up their net every night about a block from our house and I finally went and played with them a few nights ago. Since then I’ve played almost every night, and even won a little money! It does make for some late nights, but hey, that’s summer! The weather is hot, but there’s usually a cool breeze and it’s quite comfortable in the shade, so taking advantage of our hammock is a favorite after-lunch activity…

Okay, if you made it this far, you are probably tiring of reading, so I think I’ll stop there. You are all continually in my thoughts and prayers… my prayer for you all right now is that you continually find the JOY in the small things. I had a conversation over ceviche the other day with the coordinator of the theater group and expressed my doubts about having anything real to offer to this community. He said, “Of course you have something to offer, tu alegría!” (your happiness!). So that we all remember that in every encounter, in every situation, we do have something to offer!

I would love to hear from you, or answer any questions or cloudy spots that may exist about what I’m doing here… or about life… or really anything!

PAZ y ALEGRÍA for you.

the church in chimbote

Since studying a bit of liberation theology in college I have developed a strong interest in the Catholic church and how it lives out its mission, but I had no idea what I was getting immersed in by joining the Incarnate Word Sisters in Peru.  I really had no intention of getting super involved in parish activities… and then by some strange twist of fate (or maybe that’s just how God works) the parish work here just drew me in.  It has been in many aspects frustrating, in others encouraging, in others very life-giving.  I have definitely seen mixed signals of the vitality of the church in Chimbote… we face challenges of participation and commitment, but we also have many religious and lay people are who dedicated to building the reign of God here in Chimbote.  

This week was the Diocesan Assembly to reveal the pastoral strategy for the coming year in light of the most recent Latin American bishops conference, Aparecida (a conference in which the bishops gather to re-orient the direction of the Latin American church).  I really enjoyed hearing the bishop speak on this topic – he spoke very passionately and directly about the challenges and opportunities facing the Church in Chimbote.  Always being a bit cynical I would have liked to hear more about our personal responsibility to restore dignity to the poor and less about the need to make sure young people learn the Creed… but it was made clear that the Church has a preferential option for the poor, and I do understand that there are real problems with catechesis programs here, so I’m overall pretty satisfied.  He also said that every family should have a copy of Aparecida in their home, which is pretty amazing, especially for me, coming from the U.S., where it seems very, very few people actually read anything put out by the bishops.

Along the same lines, our monthly diocesan newspaper came out this month and included an article written by a Spanish priest who works in San Luis, one of Chimbote’s “young towns/pueblos jóvenes” (area of new development, but very poor development with terrible living conditions).  He offers a great introduction to the message of Aparecida and the preferential option for the poor, which I have written about before.  I liked it so much that I took the liberty of translating it into English so you all could read it and understand a little bit more about the role the Catholic Church plays, or should play, or tries to play and often fails, or plays in some occasions but not others (you get the point), in Latin America and in the world.  I especially love his interpretation of charity, which is inseparable from a critical assessment of the structural causes of poverty.  Enjoy.

The Church and the hope of the poor

by Father Fernando AsínCastellón (Mar Adentro, January 2011)

“(The option for the poor) asks us to dedicate time to the poor, pay kind attention to them, listen to them with interest, and accompany them in their most difficult moments, choosing to share with them hours, weeks, or years of our lives and searching with them to transform their situation” (Aparecida, 397).

“All that which has to do with Christ has to do with the poor, as Jesus said, ‘When you did this for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did it for me’ (Matthew 25:40)” (Aparecida, 393).

The preferential option for the poor should permeate all of our structures and pastoral priorities.  It must be manifested in visible options and gestures, principally in the defense of life and of the rights of the most vulnerable and excluded and in the sustained accompaniment in their efforts to be agents of change and transformation in their situations.

The social doctrine of the Church (I prefer to say “the social message of the Church”) is capable of stirring up hope in the midst of the most difficult situations, because if there is no hope for the poor, there will not be hope for anybody, not even for those called rich.

“Only the proximity that allows friendship permits us to profoundly appreciate the value of today’s poor, their legitimate yearnings and their own style of living the faith.  The preferential option for the poor should lead us to friendship with the poor.

“Day after day, the poor make themselves agents of evangelization and integral human promotion: they educate their children in the faith, they live a constant solidarity between relatives and neighbors, and they constantly seek God and give life to the Church’s pilgrimage” (Aparecida, 398).

Of course, each parish community should have a catechetical team and a liturgical team.  But it would remain crippled without also having a team for parish charity.  And, at the diocesan level, the diocesan charity team promotes and supports the parish when they don’t have the capacity for full human development projects.

The charitable team must meet three objectives.  First, it must provide social assistance, which would help and accompany those who suffer from immediate lack of food, medicine, money for transportation, etc.  A second objective is the communication of these necessities to the greater Christian community and the denunciation of the situation of poverty and injustice and its causes.   The third objective, no less important, is to carry out human and social development projects which signal the Reign of God.

The preferential option for the poor, said Pope Benedict XVI in the opening address of the Conference of Aparecida, is implicit in faith in a Christ who God made poor for us, in order to enrich our lives with his poverty.  I hope that we have the same attitude as Christ and continue his path.

me pican mis ojos! an anecdote

If anyone ever tells you that Peruvian chili peppers are like no other, believe them.

Kelli and I went to the market on New Year´s Eve morning with stir fry on our minds for lunch.  One of the last items on the list were peppers, so by the time we started looking for them we were a little tired and came upon a stand with ricotto peppers, the hotter variety, and asked if they had some that were less picante, or spicey.  They man pointed some out and we bought them.  We got back to the house in somewhat of a rush because our friend Giancarlo was going to be coming over to help us finish our muñeco, or doll, that we were going to burn that night to celebrate the coming of the new year, and we had to clean the house in the afternoon to get ready for the night as well.  So I frantically started cutting up the vegetables.  When I cut the peppers, I made a mental note to wash my hands before doing anything else.  I didn't notice any burning sensation in my hands or eyes so assumed they were probably good enough to cook and eat with the stir fry.  Just as I was finishing, I heard a knock at the door so I stopped to let him in to work on the doll.  I walked from the kitchen to the front door fixing my pony tail a bit, typical mindless rearrangements that I do a million times a day.  And then... for some unknown reason also felt the mindless urge to wipe my eyes, one hand on each eye, a really good wipe, no messing around.  Just as I opened the front door, it hit me, and I doubled over, squeezed my eyes shut and yelled out.... ahh, the pain!  Poor Giancarlo, so confused, helped me run, eyes closed, to the bathroom and started to help me throw water on my eyes, yelling instructions at me all the while.  ¨Don´t use your hands, Emilia, they pica!  Here, wash them with this bar of soap.  Nope, they still pica.  Keep washing them.¨  Then he filled a bucket with water and just had me stick my head in it, essentially.  Ah, relief.  And come out to breathe.  Still burn.  Resubmerge.  Here let me rub ice cubes on your eyes.  Ah, relief.  Dang that´s really cold.  Still burns.  Let me wash my face with soap.  No, your hands still burn.  Wait.  More ice.  More water.  Relief.  Ok, use a little soap.  And apparently Peruvian medicine says that oils in females´ hair relieves the pica, so we rubbed my hair over my eyes as well...  it was all very chaotic.  And very painful.  I was a little worried about damaging my eyesight.

Luckily the redness went down before the New Year´s Eve celebration.  Just one of many crazy things that happen here, to give you a little taste.

Next time you eat something and have the option to use hot sauce... do it.  And think of Peru.