Living in the Present

I have now been in Bolivia for almost two months, and things are definitely starting to get busy! In addition to my responsibilities with the madrina program and in the library, for the past couple of weeks I have also been acting as the videographer for plays in the kindergarten run by the sisters here. The performances were spread out over six nights, with two plays each night performed by different kindergarten classes. I was in charge of filming each of the plays, and then editing them and putting together a DVD to sell to the parents of the aspiring actors and actresses. The plays have covered a wide range of genres, from horror to Disney classics (The Little Mermaid and Cinderella) to fairytales (The Piper of Hamelin and The Wolf and the Goats, which is apparently a popular one in Germany even though I had never heard of it) to religious (The Nativity and The Prodigal Son). It has been fun watching all of the plays, but it also made life really busy, especially because the school year is ending here and girls still need homework help when I get back. We are also getting Halloween plans together and have already started Christmas fundraising!

A lot of the girls (and one boy) from the Hogar were in the Cinderella play

The Duke

One of our girls was even Cinderella!

Cinderella getting into her modernized carriage!

        I have made time for reading even with all this craziness and have been reading a book called A Priest’s Pilgrimage. It is written by Father Steve Ryan, one of the Salesian priests that I met during retreat, and contains his reflections while walking El Camino de Santiago. The Camino is a pilgrimage across Spain that ends at Santiago de Compostela at the cathedral of St. James. Father Steve went on sabbatical for a month to be able to walk the Camino before transferring to a new position in Tampa, Florida, where he is currently working. As I was reading today, he was reflecting on how he would be able to be most successful in his new job. He said that five things would be required:

         1. Presence and joy
         2. Living in the present moment
         3. Keeping people first before doing things
         4. Staying prayerful and being reflective
         5. Hard work and overcoming the temptation of laziness and quitting

I was reflecting on these five lessons, and decided not only that they were good lessons to live by in general, but that they all especially applied to me and my current mission in Bolivia. I think most Americans, myself included, would tend to focus on number five as they try to gain success and maybe forget about the other four. But I think, especially for me on mission, that the other four are just as if not more important. In fact, when I thought about it, I had already written a blog post about staying prayerful (Varicella and Visas) and had talked about the importance of keeping people first before doing things in my last blog post. So in this blog post I’m going to talk about number 2: living in the present moment (and place).   

I was really bad about living in the present moment in the first half of college. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted my life to look like for the next five or so years, and I couldn’t wait to get to the future so I could live out that life. It took a really bad breakup for me to realize that I really have no control over my life, and if I give my life to God, He would do something better than I could plan out anyway. And surrendering my life to God afterwards is what ultimately led me here to Bolivia on mission! Although I am generally much better at this aspect of my life than I used to be, there certainly are still times when I have trouble trusting in God and focus on the future, the what-ifs, or the places that I could be. About a month after I got here, there was a week when I was really homesick and instead of focusing on the girls, I was focusing on how much I missed American food, air conditioning, watching sports, and, of course, my friends and family from back home. Because I deferred my grad school acceptance and was technically accepted for this year, I am still getting emails and facebook notifications from this year’s class, and seeing this made me think how different my life could be if I had gone straight to grad school, especially when things got difficult here. But that wasn’t doing me or the girls any good. Although I still miss people and American comforts (I think air conditioning might be replacing American food for the number one spot as we head into summer), I am happy where I am because I know it’s where God wants me to be.

Because we wanted to celebrate fall even during the 90-100 degree heat, us volunteers made an apple pie last weekend!

PS. Shameless plug: remember how I was talking about how I have started Christmas fundraising? Well…if you enjoy my blog and want to help all the adorable girls that you have seen in the pictures have a great Christmas, please consider donating at http://www.gofundme.com/g590pg Any amount helps! Thanks in advance! J