Observations of an Outsider

I am 18 years old, and part of Bruce and Paula's Christmas volunteer team from Chicago. And I've been here before; the world of missions and ministry is familiar ground, one my feet walk with ease and complacency. But something about this trip is tearing me apart...I feel like my heart is being ripped to pieces: You drive five minutes to go through customs, and another ten to wind up in the Nopelera colonia, this communtiy where poverty has legs and people have nothing. Talk about culture shock! I feel as though I am standing between two entirely separate worlds, and I'm not sure how I feel about that, either. I just spent the day putting up walls on a house no bigger than my living room back home; how can I justify exchanging it every night for a world of long, hot showers, big dinner spreads, and warm beds? There is a part of my heart that keeps saying that if this is missions work, then I want nothing to do with it. But I know that what will save me are the children. I was nervous about this trip, and only for the fact that I don't know any Spanish. However, I learned quickly that I may not speak Spanish, but I do speak the language of children. It is a language of tickles and giggles and smiles that break into laughter, of piggy-back rides, long games of tag, and of dancing. Always dancing! They run throug the streets squealing at each other, chasing each other on bikes and with their soccer balls--pelotas, I learned to say--and forever laughing at my sloppy imitations of their words. I am finding so much joy with them, despite my frustrations. My friend once wrote, "What we love, we never forget." These children, these beautiful babies of the third world...I love them to the point of not forgetting. Gabby, Junior, Angel, Felix, Juan, Perla, Chewy, Caleb, and Mimi: their names are graven on my heart. As we build (and as I take periodic breaks to chase them and tickle them and carry them on my shoulders), I am praying that the glee and the purity of children always eclipses the pains of the human condition. This trip, so unasuming at first glance, has left me with far more unrest than I came expecting. Shane Claiborne writes that we spend so much time saying, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime," but nobody's asking who owns the pond or who polluted it. And so I will leave this place for the cold of my Chicago home, seeking justice. I will search out grace and compassion, and I will not be so self-satisfied. I will live in my unrest until the poverty that has broken my heart is resolved, until the gladness of these children replaces my suburban complacency. Above all, I will rejoice in the fact that mine is a God of justice, hope, and satisfaction! It is He who will begin to piece together my broken heart, creating a new one fashioned after His own.