Ripples

I have a confession to make: some part of me thought mission life would be easy. When I pictured my life in Bolivia, I pictured myself coming down here, playing soccer, coloring pictures, or talking about Jesus with smiling children that were so happy to have me in their presence. And though I was warned during orientation that there were going to be difficult moments, I figured that I’d gotten through a double major in engineering at Vanderbilt, so how hard could it be? And yet, sometimes I find myself feeling like a failure in pretty much every aspect of life here: my job with the girls, my Spanish skills, my community life with the other volunteers, my spiritual life. I mean, I have already been here for three months, and I had pictured myself at this point having deep conversations with the girls all the time in my fluent Spanish, building the other volunteers up in their work, and magically (or maybe divinely?) having a better prayer life because of the fact that I was doing mission work. Now, maybe my expectations were unrealistic, but that doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t have real relationships with a lot of the girls, I sometimes lose my patience with the other volunteers and tear them down instead of building them up, it still takes a lot of effort to set aside time every day to pray, and I sometimes (okay, a lot of the time) struggle to find the right words in Spanish. However, as I thought about these “failures,” I realized that I was measuring myself in a very American, or goal-driven, manner. This makes sense because pretty much all of my life has been centered around a goal-driven culture. You go to school to make good grades, you make good grades to get a job; you work hard, you generally see the rewards. And yet, Bolivia hasn’t been like that. I can’t always see the effects of my coming here and spending three months of my time with these girls. Honestly, sometimes they don’t like me when I don’t give them what they want, whether that’s new shoes or having the library open 24/7, so that, ironically, they can have somewhere to hang out and not do their homework. Children growing up in “normal” families have these issues, and because many of our girls come from broken homes, they have behavioral problems as a result. Talking to a priest about all of this during confession, he told me that even if I don’t see the change that I am making in these girls’ lives, that doesn’t mean it’s not there or that it won’t happen in the future. This reminds me of a Mother Theresa quote that says, 

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” 

Ironically, as I got in the confession line, one of the more difficult girls that I work with got in line after me. I have no idea if she would have gone to confession even had I not gotten in line first, but I’d like to think that I may have had even a small influence in her getting in that line after me. After all, even though I have no way of “measuring” the direct results of my work here, I can still look for the ripples that I am making, however insignificant. Making one of the little girls laugh as I pick her up and twirl her around. Listening as one of the older girls spends an hour telling me about all of the typical food and legends in Bolivia in the different parts of the country. Translating letters from the girls’ madrinas so they can have an additional person to tell them they are loved. None of these things are all that significant, but I’m not going to change the world all at once, and if I don’t focus on the small ripples that I am making that God has the grace to show me, then I will continue to be discouraged.

                Thanksgiving was a great mini-retreat to help re-energize me and think about all of these things. To celebrate, all of the SLMs in Bolivia got together in Yapacani (about an hour away from Montero) and made as close to a normal Thanksgiving dinner as we could, given the circumstances. It was also just a great time to catch up with each other (most of whom we hadn’t seen since orientation), compare mission life stories, and go to mass and adoration. We were also able to attend two Bolivian parties: a birthday party for an 8-year-old girl who was the daughter of the family that ran the nursing home in Yapacani and a graduation party for a boarding school that the volunteers in Yapacani work with. Both involved lots of food and dancing, and I also learned that it is a typical Bolivian custom to shove the birthday girl’s (or boy’s) face in the cake during their party. I’m glad I was able to learn this then, because I definitely had it applied to me during my birthday the next week! Of course, this was after I came back from bringing a girl to the hospital to get stiches after she got hit in the head with a rock thrown by one of the other girls trying to collect coconuts. Never a dull moment in Bolivia!

The Bolivian SLMs sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner!

Me with the girls on my birthday!

                Finally, all of us volunteers were sent to Cochabamba this past week to attend the final vows of two of the sisters in our order! In case you don’t know much about religious life, becoming a nun (cloistered) or sister (non-cloistered) is a long process that takes many years to complete. When you first enter the order, you take shorter vows to remain in the order for a 6 months or a year. Then, as you remain in the order and become more sure of your vocation there, you take longer vows for three years or so. Finally, the last vow you take is to remain in the order and practice chastity, poverty, and obedience for the rest of your life, which is what we witnessed with two of the sisters! Then, we went sightseeing with some of the sisters the next day, to the giant statue of the Cristo (which is actually bigger than the one in Rio), a couple of parks, the site of the Marian apparition of Urkupiña, and a mansion that was owned by the richest man in Bolivia during his life which has now become a sort of museum. If anyone is under the impression that religious sisters are always serious and never have any fun, spending a day sightseeing with them would definitely convince you otherwise! It seemed like we stopped every five minutes to take pictures, whether that was on the playground at the park, climbing trees, or putting our feet into the freezing cold water of a mountain stream. I could make a nuns having fun calendar just with the pictures that I took that day!

The perfect "Nuns having fun" photo!

All of us in front of the Cristo

                Coming back from Cochabamba, all of us volunteers have been busy with Christmas shopping for the girls! We are so fortunate to have now raised MORE than our initial goal, which we have already started putting to use by sneaking candy into the girls’ shoes on St. Nicholas day! I will definitely miss being home for Christmas, but I’m also excited about being able to make the girls’ Christmas special. And to everyone that I won’t see on Christmas, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! J  

Our St. Nicholas day boxes of candy!

Merry Christmas from Hogar Sagrado Corazon!