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"