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!
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| The Bolivian SLMs sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner! |
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| 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!
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| The perfect "Nuns having fun" photo! |
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| 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
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| Our St. Nicholas day boxes of candy! |
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| Merry Christmas from Hogar Sagrado Corazon! |
