Fotos II

A river runs through Cuenca, en el Parque de Paraiso

The group gathering in front of the La Nueva Catedral for our walking tour of Cuenca

our handsome little prince, Jehan, approaching the mammoth doors of the cathedral

contemplative atmosphere inside La Nueva Catedral built by the city as a place of worship for all faiths

wax statue of Pope John Paul (Juan Pablo) II, with wisps of incense and devotees' dedication rising to him

Laura and Krista in the park outside the cathedral

La Vieja Catedral

gold-painted wooden altar in a side chapel

my friend Omayra on the walking tour

girls at la heladeria for refreshment after a long day

fireworks for the fiesta del dia de the Boy Jesus...

looks like angels watching over us, as they did miraculously for me the next day

dia de los inocentes

that day is kind of like april fool's day, except it happened el 6 de enero en ecuador. day of the fools. and the way of the fools leads to death, no? one of the first things that whipped my senses to attention as we drove through guayaquil that morning were the ubiquitous cemeteries. whitewashed graves, literally. some garlanded with flowers, some still awaiting occupants... products of the 24-hour-burial rule necessitated by the tropical climate; from a culture of tight-knit families and strong loyalties; and from a 92% Catholic population. where the majority of those can claim also, "Oh, but i'm non-practicing." "Oh, and I'm agnostic." "Oh, and I'm an atheist." where, 20 years ago, someone might have been threatened with stoning or other forms of violent execution or severe punishment and cutting-off from the family for converting from Catholicism to evangelical Christianity, from distant ritual to direct relationship with Christ. i know that many Catholics do have such a relationship, and many protestants have pushed their faith into the realm of meaningless ritual, but the former perceptions hold true for the majority in ecuador, and tend to hinder the increase of true followers of Christ. yet now, with priests in shorter supply, the power of the church dwindling, broken families (whether from emigration, drugs, abuse, adultery, or other destructive lifestyles) come seeking solutions and the Catholic church has not responded in a compelling way, so they become open to other answers, other sources of hope and healing. so that is the hope of the missionaries in Ecuador, that people would wake up from their spiritual sleep, spiritual deadness, and experience a living relationship with Christ and with a community that commits to following him, to giving up their lives for him and for each other.

that day about 20 innocent lives were lost as two busetas crashed into each other on the highway between guayaquil and cuenca and caused a long line-up of largely clueless and curious cars, passengers leaving the parked vehicles and wandering in search of an accurate story, an amusing story, any story as to why we were waiting. shocked and saddened when we discovered the real reason for the holdup, we bowed our heads together inside our intact bus, and though i really wanted it to be a sweet, serious time of seeking God's face and wrestling with the situation together, when i was asked to lead i probably settled into a little pocket of pride, and subsequently i kind of martyred the praying-out-loud thing with a bunch of unoriginal word vomit which left me still shocked and confused about how to feel and respond. yes, i am saying that i failed, that i let people down, that maybe i forgot who i was praying to in the concern over what i was saying. i almost felt like a whitewashed grave, left thirsty after those brief, dry-and-gray-as-cement statements and requests lifted like dead-weight bricks to God that he 'be with us and with the people'. but hopefully that could have done for others what it did for me, which was send me immediately into more silent, more sincere prayer, seeking what words could better express the truth and needs of our situation. and God was faithful to comfort me in that respect, to speak to me through his Word and through others on the team as well as the still small voice telling me to write down these words while on the bus once the road was cleared and we started climbing towards cuenca:

"beautiful Lord Jesus,
THANK you for bringing us safely here to Cuenca, this place we've been thinking, praying, dreaming about for so long. Thank you for your provision even in the face of unexpected obstacles, for the blessing of waiting, of knowing you have protected us. We remember the accident and the people involved--though we didn't know them, they were your children, too, and we will not easily forget the reason for the change in plans today. We're coming here to be a part of the lives of new families, with so many unknowns, but we trust you, and we praise you that there are this many people here who love you and serve you every day. help us to really enter into life here, with humility and gratitude and an ability to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. God, you are doing a new thing in each of our lives today! You just keep taking my breath away! Thank you for 'bringing us home' in a different way than we ever could have imagined--we ask you to go before us and to be with us as we go out to love and serve you and to learn from your people here. Amen. love, Annaranjada"

that day was also what the church in some places celebrates as Epiphany, when traditionally the three wise men arrived to visit Jesus. epiphany can also mean a profound realization or change of perspective. and that is what happened to me on the ride up the mountains. i was so thirsty that i went back to my devotions of the morning and read the story of the three wise men in Matthew 2:1-12, and was struck to the core by the reflective questions the devotion asked me: "Ponder the passage about going home a new way. What new paths do you want to try this year? what new ways of doing things do you want to experience?" it was so remarkable that i could feel so at home, so soon, in such a new place. and yet i knew that God would have completely new lessons to teach me, too, if only i would listen to him first and then offer my prayers in humility, and only then be able to honestly offer my hands and ears and mouth and heart in service to others, as a 'lighthouse'.

that day as i was reading the Culture Shock!Ecuador book, I found an interesting figure of speech in Spanish. when a woman is pregnant, instead of talking directly about when the baby will be born, people will say, "Cuando va a llegar la luz?" (when is the light going to arrive?) Now if one child is a light, a blessing bringing new life to the parents and family and friends around him/her, then it shows how powerful our Christ is, to be the Light of the World, a blessing and bringer of new life to all people in all times and places.

that day we Taylor students arrived like innocent babies into new families, in a new city, a new culture. i received a bouquet of roses, many kisses on the cheek, and a new name: Anita. 'little Anna'. that's right--in God's family we have to learn to be little, to be last, before we can be leaders or effective servants. yes, it made me feel a bit little-girl-ish. yet when i heard people call me this name, it was always filled with the utmost affection and appreciation. like they were pronouncing a blessing on me as they called me by name. like a prayer, offered in humility. i still have so much to learn, from that journey i took on the day of the fools. what can bring life to a dead person? Jesus' power. prayer. and what can bring humility to a proud person? i'm still finding out. pray that i and others would keep on proclaiming the fact that we are just forgiven fools.

Fotos I

outside our Hotel del Sol Oriente
estamos listas

street corner in guayaquil

neighborhood of the dead

a glimpse of a guayaquil barrio across the bay

we didn't yet know why there were miles of cars lining up and people hanging out on the highway

that's why--un choque entre dos busetas, half a mile from where we stopped

playground at the gas station where we stopped para comer los platos tipicos while the mist descended

amazing andes we wound through for hours, climbing 2000 meters and elevating our awe

home, sweet cuenca, seen from a higher-up stretch of road

in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was...Verbo Iglesia,

the Christian church where we met our host families and began the adventure

of living life there among God's family, the Cuencano cuerpo de Cristo

in the beginning

before we even knew it, before we even stepped off a single flight, (before the world began), God was using us as a lighthouse of His love. i still don't know all the 'how's, but

somehow, the flight attendant giving announcements from Indy-Miami found out our final destination (thought she couldn't pronounce it to save her life) and our mission to 'serve the underprivileged...in a foreign country...what a sacrifice...i wish my kids would be that unselfish with their time'. i never really thought about it as a sacrifice of my time to go on this trip; i believed from the beginning that it was the very best use of my time. but i soon came to see it as beautiful that she valued sacrificial service so much. maybe because that is what she does so that her kids can go to college. she even got some other passengers to clap along with her appreciation for us.

somehow, in the airspace between Miami and Guayaquil, a seatmate of one of my teammates saw something in us, said 'you guys are different--i don't know what it is, but there's something different about you', started a whole string of conversation that went straight through to immigration, asking questions and seeking answers about Christ and Christianity and Christendom (oh yes, they are three very different things, which the disillusioned eye can see all-too-clearly, which discrepancy is often the driving force for church-leavers). pray for the identity issues faced by those of mixed 'race' (whatever that is)--this curious young man is half-Ecuadorian, half-Canadian, often travels between the two continents in probably a serious struggle to define what 'home' means and where he can settle his heart. but we know that only in heaven can we find that true home, and "our hearts are restless till we find our rest in Thee"--a.w. tozer. so pray he keeps searching, buscando, preguntando, llamando a la puerta de la corazon de Cristo

somehow, the baby next to me slept quite peacefully except when she decided to look me straight in the eyes and smile glamorously. her name is Ana! and i spoke with her mother half in Spanish, half in English. she looked so tired, i offered to hold little Ana so she could sleep more comfortably, but i assumed wrong. i missed the fact that ultimate comfort comes from being in our Father's arms, often conveyed by our earthly parents' arms, and from being able to cradle others in our arms when we have the chance. so she stayed warm and close to her mother, receiving continual kisses on the head from both parents. what a stereotype-shatterer this neighbor couple turned out to be. instead of the expected latin american machismo, which i had just read about in Culture Shock Ecuador, i saw a father who was tall and commanding yet shockingly tender with both his baby daughter and the two young sons across the aisle. how he filled bottles and draped and tucked blankets around his family, and playfully wrestled with his sons in the aisle, and joined in the baby-kissing and took her to sleep on his shoulder for a while. how destructive to my pride, to my possible prejudices. pray for the wholeness of families, for the healthiness of their expressions of affection--i would hope that more families could be like the one that unfolded before me on flight AA 933. thank God for his mercy in keeping our hearts soft and good soil for unconditional love to take root

somehow, the moment i stepped onto Ecuadorian soil (well, pavement), i felt like i had been transplanted back home to India. funny, a friend of mine on the team felt like she had landed in China! smells and sights and sounds put our sensory-memories on overload as we strolled down the sidewalk while our luggage was loaded onto pickup truck-beds. yes, we almost wandered off and got left behind, but luckily speed-walked back to the right parking spots in time to squish into the front seat of a pickup with a Chinese decoration swinging wildly from the rearview mirror, speeding past all the signs above little shops closed for the night with corrugated metal pull-down doors, and arriving at the Hotel Sol de Oriente. again reminded of the lodgings to be found in a far-away land, with the tiny lobby and many men with uniforms standing ready to lug our luggage into the elevators and unlock our doors for us with those hefty macho metal keys. the bathroom, the beds, el dicho 'don't drink the water', the view of dirt-streaked buildings, the blasing musica all through the night, y mucho mas.

so how was it, then? in the beginning? in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God is holy, his Word is holy...and I really felt like I was standing, sitting, sleeping, whatever, on holy ground.
here's how i felt: i couldn't stop my palms from turning upward or the droplets from forming in my eyes the moment we started filing out of the plane, with a friend behind me saying "we should kiss the ground". honestly, so far this culture doesn't 'shock' me but soothes me, spices up my mood, spikes my motivation, sparks my curiosity, sings me to sleep. yet i know i have only scratched the surface of the deep. deep river, deep flowing love of God for the nations he knew from the beginning. in the beginning

Regreso!

So now I return. Since I only posted once while actually in Ecuador, I must go back and fill in the blanks, flesh out a fuller collage of what occurred both around me and within me. Bear with me as out there I start my spring semester classes and on here try to sift through the myriad scrawls of daily journal entries as well as the host of post-trip reflections floating around in my mind. And please, please pray that I and my team members would not forget or lose the lessons we learned...that we would not go back to our former, comfortably routine lives as a result of this trip, but that we would keep knocking on God's door, asking and trusting Jesus for the strength and courage and timing to speak the truth in love, to share stories and seek solutions that can transform societies and souls, to sorrow for the suffering situations that remain, to pray for the people we personally connected with, to stay informed and put our caring into action wherever it is called for.

So, yes, if you ask me that perpetual question, I did 'have fun', I loved the environment, el ambiente de Ecuador, and I bonded with my team and learned the language more fluently and played and sang with cute little kids and held the hands of sweet old people and hung out with the cool youth of the church and had awesome meals with my host family and went hiking for a short stint in the hills and walked around exploring the culturally-rich city and flew on airplanes to get there and back, and now I miss it. I thoroughly enjoyed el viaje. But it was an enjoyment ever-aware and ever-aching for the pain of the people, for my own pride and ignorance, for the lack of peace in the world. Looking back and looking around and even looking ahead, those things are increasingly distinct. So, as a warning, my thoughts may be marked with sorrow, maybe even despair, for specific suffering people I met or for societal injustice or for the disunity of the church or for my own twisted-sinful spirit that doesn't know how to deal with all of that and often contributes to the sick cycle by neglecting to shed tears when they are deeply deserved--by neglecting to give my whole self to the cause of the peace of Christ that this world desperately needs. You can journey with me through both the joy and the sorrow; one never comes without the other, but embracing them both together can set you free to be more like Jesus...Lord help us all return to You...

"Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears [their] grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrows will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply."
- Etty Hillesum quoted in Marc Ellis, "Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation"

Home!

As soon as I stepped out of the airport in Guayaquil, Ecuador, I felt so, so comfortable. The humid air; the heat aroma; the buzzing bugs and beeping cars; the drive across the plains of red dirt, rice fields, bananas and palm trees, sugarcane, and scrub brush; the bus accident that held us up for 3 hours on the way towards the mountains; the mountains themselves, with the winding climbing roads and wispy cool mist and moss on the rocks and trickle-stream-waterfalls and swathes of eucalyptus trees on the sweeping slopes; the hill-city´s little houses cramped together under corrugated tin and red tile roofs; the sound-waves of a semi-familiar language floating past my ears; the total confidence that God is here, too, and has made the way for me to get here, and works in ways I cannot see, and is calling me to work for him here, and to open up new ways of doing, thinking, and feeling in my own life, as well.

The day we arrived in Cuenca was Epiphany, which is when we celebrate the coming of the wise men to visit Jesus. These guys were told to ´go home a new way´, which is what I can truly say is happening to me, too. ¨Hogar, dulce hogar¨, or home sweet home, is what I honestly declare when I step into the house of my host family, after unlocking a front gate, a door gate, and then the door, and greet our three little doggies, and then find whoever is in la casa to greet them with a kiss. I wonder about the people we work with around the city every day, and what their concept of home is. The kids at IPCA all have some stage or form of cerebral palsy, some with more severe mental disorders added to that. It´s just a daycare, so they have parents and a place to call home, but how much love are they really receiving in either place? The elderly men and women at la Fundación Geriatrica sit there all day in chairs and wheelchairs and sleep there at night, and maybe their children come to visit, maybe they don´t even recognize them through the clouds of Alzheimer´s. They are, ostensibly, closer to the eternal home than anyone else, but how many of them have really experienced the One who wants to hold them close forever? The little rascals at REMAR, a home run by former drug addicts, clamor to be captured in my arms and sung songs like Cristo Me Ama (Jesus Loves Me, though I frequently change it to Jesus Loves YOU, because that´s what they´re longing to hear so desperately) and Yo Tengo Gozo, Gozo, Gozo, Gozo, en mi corazón--¿Dónde?--¡En mi corazón!--¿Dónde?--¡En mi corazón! (and the rest of I´ve Got the Joy en Español). Orphaned, lost but somehow found by some compassionate people, decently fed, haphazardly dressed, sent to school, sent to bed; content yet full of hunger for something more, something secure, but how can we communicate that God is the one who can welcome them home and hold them in his arms even now?

My tears find their home on the pages of the blessed book of Isaiah...chapter 58, which is guiding my thoughts in this week of fasting and prayer for the Verbo Iglesia...and 43:19, which is the guiding verse for the Hungarian Lutheran church, sent to me by a mentor of mine as una bendición (a blessing) for the year of 2007, my 19th year.

¨See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.¨

I truly am home, and yet there are so many deserts still to cross...and yet my Prince of Peace is making the way even when I wander. ¡Qué milagro! What a wonder, a miracle!

Peace for all your homes, and may you find your home in Him.

Faces!

Preparation!

The Ecuador 2007 Lighthouse team is composed of 14 students (Amy H., Amy L., Angela, Candice, Connie, Jason, Kevin, Krista, Kristin, Laura, Mark, Ryn, Stephanie, and me) and 3 faculty members (Cathy Harner, social work; Rukshan Fernando, social work; Jody Fernando, TESOL and Spanish) with the Fernando's two kids, Maia and Jehan. During the fall semester (2006), we had weekly meetings together with the other teams (going to Northern Ireland, India, Indonesia, Trinidad, and Ethiopia) on issues of international ministry and short-term missions; then we had time with our own group to bond (through sharing testimonies, friend-raising stories, fears, joys, and prayer requests) and prepare (with committees focused on music, drama, English teaching, and prayer while we're there).
Taylor's World Opportunies Week (WOW) was held in November, with many mission representatives leading workshops and speaking in chapel and displaying their materials in the dining hall and standing around open to talk with us and pray with us. We had an assignment to interview one of them, and I met Nat Saginario from Operation Mobilization (OM), who has been leading short-term mission trips for 40 years. He seems continually sharp, both in the way of keeping on the edge of current knowledge and cultural intelligence, as well as cutting to the heart of spiritual insight. I am always amazed at the un-xpected paths God leads us through to bring us where he wants us. And my journey has barely begun! But some people he has led all around the world already, with no signs of stopping, and I have so much to learn from them. His biggest advice was: PREPARATION.
Prepare spiritually, seeking and soaking in time with God in solitude and in community
Prepare intellectually, finding facts and stories and information to investigate and internalize
Prepare materially, put together and practice dramas and music presentations, teaching tools, testimonies, etc.

Right now my team is still in that stage of preparation. We are currently together at Taylor, with one day left to pack and practice and pray. Pray for us! We may have fears of the unknown, we may have feelings of inadequacy; pray that God's perfect love would cast out our fears and conquer our feelings. Here is a prayer of dedication that we prayed this evening in our meeting:

Jesus said go into all the world.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Into the big cities and small towns
We will love like Jesus loved.
The farms and mountains
We will love like Jesus loved.
The shelters and homes
We will love like Jesus loved.
Jesus said, “Feed the hungry.”
We will love like Jesus loved.
Shelter the homeless
We will love like Jesus loved.
Heal the sick
We will love like Jesus loved.
Visit the imprisoned
We will love like Jesus loved.
And ask for nothing in return.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Expect nothing in return.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Love without expectation.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Love without strings attached.
We will love like Jesus loved.
It won’t be easy.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Some people are hard to love.
We will love like Jesus loved.
It’s hard to help those who won’t help themselves.
We will love like Jesus loved.
He loved for no other reason than to love.
We will love like Jesus loved.
We will do the same.
We will love like Jesus loved.
Amen.