Hello all!
(Despite the date, this is the real first post.)
So I decided that I might as well get started on this soon-to-be-lovely blog I’ve got here. Already I’m backed up with things I’d like to write about… since this blog is to have its beginnings in my experiences in cross cultural ministry, a love I continue to develop, I thought it proper to start it out with how that interest began in my life.
Perhaps like many Americans, particularly Californians, my first (and only for quite a while) taste of another country was Mexico. I got a glimpse of Acapulco when I was probably around ten… this was a touristy trip with extended family, but still there are those bits of reality tucked away among the spiffed-up hotel and resort areas… and though it was far from my main focus at the time I was intrigued by new sights—from pickups on the road full of vaqueros (or, more strangely federalis with machine guns) to the venders and hair-braiders on the beach, to the makeshift shelters of a few poorer people (a tarp, an old disposed-of easy chair, maybe a rug and a table)… the things that surprise any spoiled American about Mexico, I suppose. I do remember getting my hair braided and leaving those cornrows in for the longest time (I was in sixth grade), and that the woman who made the tiny braids was named Mercedes (not pronounced like the car). I also enjoyed Mom’s attempts at communicating with Spanish, which we all thought pretty impressive at the time.
Years later, a freshman in high school, I would take my first “real” glimpse of international ministry as our youth group traveled to Ensenada (something we did each year) in the springtime to build houses with a missionary couple there. It was well known among our youth group that Mexico was the best trip of the year in almost every way, so I couldn’t miss it. And yup, of course, life-changing indeed.
So we jumped in to life there for a week, staying in the dorms at Las Tres Palmas. We bonded together as a group, and of course got oh so dirty, sore, sunburned, and not to forget wonderfully-fed. (My first experience at a Mexican taco stand was also life changing… and I suspect you shall hear more about my love for them in the future. ;) )
Culture shock was definitely there. I remember being so happy to finally cross the border back to my beloved USA! But…I also remember really loving Mexico. There was not a bit I resented about it, and I remember thinking to myself that, ironically, “you know, I think this place is just so completely different from my normal life at home, that it somehow actually suits me quite happily.”
And it did. Each year’s trip was more and more delightful; perhaps also as my knowledge of Spanish began to grow from my classes, and the unfamiliarities of the foreign country became more familiar and beloved (especially alongside my much-loved youth group of course). I loved the dirt roads, the quaint countryside, the wonderful people, the food (I was a much pickier child before I discovered the wonders of real Mexican food), and even the piling-together-in-one-car-with-definitely-less-seats-than-people. The late nights of card games and pillow fights with the youth group girls, sore and smelly, and night worship time together. And of course, the amazing Mexican believers, and the way they sang and loved passionately in every church service.
Yup, I loved nearly every bit of it but onions and peppers (which is still a fault in my “Mexicanity” to this day). But it never occurred to me to consider such ministry long term in any way. I was going to be a pastor’s wife, if God should have it, and I was going to be perfectly happy in the good old USA.
As God would have it (and I still chuckle about this part of the story), I liked a boy during parts of my last years of high school whom I assumed hoped to be a pastor one day. One day someone told me that, in fact, he wanted to be a missionary. This hit me like a ton of bricks. I remember a day that he called me and mentioned a trip to Russia our church was putting on, and wondered if I would be applying too. I would not! I could not be a missionary. I don’t remember exactly why, but a missionary was perhaps one of the last things I thought I would like to do. This seemed irreconcilable, but I decided to tentatively give the idea a bit of a chance. I think it terrified me. But I tried to learn a bit about it, talk to missionary kids I met, or the like. …Maybe it wouldn’t be the WORST thing ever.
And so, as God would have it (this is the part I still chuckle at), and perhaps in part due to the fervent prayers of a real special old lady I know, my interest in this boy went away. But, my interest in missions did not! And by the spring of my senior year, I found myself feeling that I HAD to continue to look into this joy and love I found in getting to know the Mexican people. So on one of the last nights of our trip, as I considered my desire to spend more time getting to know Mexican woman and children, I was faced with a “chance” meeting with the American director of Casa Esperanza, a Christian-run shelter for abused or abandoned women and children.
As God would have it, we exchanged emails. And that very summer, after graduation, I found myself on a bumpy dirt road, riding a bike much too small for me, with Mexican children around me and one even sitting on my handlebars—the second-to-only American on the property, my mind holding a fair amount of confusion (“What in the world did I get myself into? What am I supposed to be doing? What are these kids even saying?”).
As I wrote during that trip, it was “not what I expected, but just what I wanted.”
And so it began.
(to continue the story of this trip from its beginning, click back in time to the post of July 9, 2007, the date it happened).
