I thought I would dread spending the holidays so far away from my family, my friends, and my church, but I'm really enjoying Christmas in Cochabamba. Thankfully. It's quite an experience, to say the least.
Dec. 15th was our big Christmas production at el Centro. It poured rain, we started an hour late, one of the boys vomited all over the floor, and the other kids trekked the puke all over the place. But other than that, it wasn't too much of a disaster. We had a crowd of about 70 people, which was pretty encouraging since our numbers have been low for a while. And it was fun to pass out clothes, toys, and candy to all the kids. So at the end of the year we went out with a bang. A little bang, but a bang nonetheless.
You can see some photos in my online gallery: gallery.mac.com/greeneyesopening. I would have more photos to share with you, but I had to help direct the little kids and then mop up vomit.
I have such a glamorous life...
Now that Christmas is just 2 days away, the decorations are out in full force. Multi-colored lights are strewn all over town without any rhyme or reason, and the best part is that they all play terrible, mechanical versions of Christmas carols. And of course, the carols don't play simultaneously, so it really just sounds like very high-pitched locusts have taken over the city. It's hilarious and wonderful at the same time.
Tomorrow, Dec. 24th, is actually the big day here. The familes get together to celebrate Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) by having a HUGE feast at midnight on the 24th. After gorging themselves in middle of the night, everybody exchanges Christmas gifts around 3:00am and then sleeps half the day away on the 25th. It's an interesting way to celebrate Christmas, and I'm jumping right in. I'm joiing Sra. Carmen (I live in her backyard) and her family at 9:00ish tomorrow for the big party. I won't be gorging myself so much because the food is mostly meat, but there will be plenty of delicious, gooey pastries to eat. And I hope to bring cookies to share, but that depends on whether or not my oven wants to cooperate.
Then on Christmas day, I have 4 single missionaries coming over for brunch at 10:30. It's going to be amazing...fresh squeezed OJ, french toast, eggs, cheesy hasbrowns, LOTS of fresh fruit (fruit that we don't even have in the US), hot cocoa, coffee, and who knows what else.
We're going to watch some Christmas movies and probably play games, but I'd really like to have a devotional (for lack of a better word), a time of reflection, and maybe communion.
It'll be different, but it should be a good day.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
Intentionality
I love Cochabamba.
It is so good to be here, serving and loving the little ones- the forgotten, neglected, and abused ones. They're dirty. They all have skin diseases, warts, and lice. Their teeth are brown and broken. Their toenails are caked with dirt and grime. But they are so precious in His sight. So I hug them and kiss them and tell them how beautiful they are.
They ARE beautiful...and so resilient. Under the radar, there is a lot of sexual abuse going on. The physical abuse is more evident. Neglect is the most common problem. Many of the kids have been abandoned by their parents, who have journeyed to Spain is search of a decent job. And somehow, the kids survive all of this. But it does change them.
Maria's mom left her and her 2 sisters last year to move to Spain and work as a maid. I hadn't seen Maria (in the middle of the photo) since 2005, and it is obvious to me that there is a sadness inside her that no 5 year old should have.
Maybe, more than anything, the kids just need someone to love them.
And I can't imagine doing anything else with my life.
Wait, I take that back. There are plenty of things I could IMAGINE myself doing. I'd love to live in a cabin in Northern Minnesota, own a vineyard in California, or even just be near my family and friends so I can tour around the country with FBS or hold Madilyn, my baby neice.
Every time I see Madi on the webcam, it's all I can do to not dive through my computer screen and kiss her chubby cheeks. It breaks my heart that she is going to grow up while I'm thousands of miles away. But Madi has a lot of people around her who love her, and most of the kids down here don't have anyone who loves them and treasures them.
So I realized a while ago that life isn't just about fulfulling my dreams or even just creating comfort for myself. It's about living with intention and truly following the Jesus of the Bible (not the Jesus you hear about from televangelists or the like). Its about waking up each morning with a purpose, not just a schedule.
That's why I'm here.
How could I possibly NOT be here?
I may not be able to do much about the social sins of Bolivia. I'll never eliminate poverty or child abuse, but I can do the little things.
Sometimes, it's the little, unexpected things make the biggest difference.
I want to share a story with you that is retold by Rob Bell in his book, "Sex God." It's really a journal entry from a British soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Mercin Willet Gonin DSO, who was involved in liberating a German concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
"I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my
men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just
a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere,
some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they
had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and
children collapse as you walked by them ... One knew that five hun-
dred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying
for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect.
It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diph-
theria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it. One
saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak
to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread
purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely
tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman
too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the
food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching
down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves ... [a] dysentery
tank in which the remains of a child floated."
Horrible. Disgusting. Anti-human. It's nothing like a concentration camp- even in the poorest of areas in Bolivia, but there is something anti-human about the way the poor people have to live here. No one should have to live with lice and fungal diseases all over their skin, or live in a house with a dirt floor and a straw mattress, or have to bathe in a poluted river where cows are watered and cars are washed.
Anyway, the journal goes on...
"It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no
connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not
at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands
of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much
that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer
unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees
than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but
with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but
a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman
dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of
lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individu-
als again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed
on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That
lipstick started to give them back their humanity."
Intentially giving people back their humanity can change everything.
It is so good to be here, serving and loving the little ones- the forgotten, neglected, and abused ones. They're dirty. They all have skin diseases, warts, and lice. Their teeth are brown and broken. Their toenails are caked with dirt and grime. But they are so precious in His sight. So I hug them and kiss them and tell them how beautiful they are.
They ARE beautiful...and so resilient. Under the radar, there is a lot of sexual abuse going on. The physical abuse is more evident. Neglect is the most common problem. Many of the kids have been abandoned by their parents, who have journeyed to Spain is search of a decent job. And somehow, the kids survive all of this. But it does change them.
Maria's mom left her and her 2 sisters last year to move to Spain and work as a maid. I hadn't seen Maria (in the middle of the photo) since 2005, and it is obvious to me that there is a sadness inside her that no 5 year old should have. Maybe, more than anything, the kids just need someone to love them.
And I can't imagine doing anything else with my life.
Wait, I take that back. There are plenty of things I could IMAGINE myself doing. I'd love to live in a cabin in Northern Minnesota, own a vineyard in California, or even just be near my family and friends so I can tour around the country with FBS or hold Madilyn, my baby neice.
Every time I see Madi on the webcam, it's all I can do to not dive through my computer screen and kiss her chubby cheeks. It breaks my heart that she is going to grow up while I'm thousands of miles away. But Madi has a lot of people around her who love her, and most of the kids down here don't have anyone who loves them and treasures them.
So I realized a while ago that life isn't just about fulfulling my dreams or even just creating comfort for myself. It's about living with intention and truly following the Jesus of the Bible (not the Jesus you hear about from televangelists or the like). Its about waking up each morning with a purpose, not just a schedule.
That's why I'm here.
How could I possibly NOT be here?
I may not be able to do much about the social sins of Bolivia. I'll never eliminate poverty or child abuse, but I can do the little things.
Sometimes, it's the little, unexpected things make the biggest difference.
I want to share a story with you that is retold by Rob Bell in his book, "Sex God." It's really a journal entry from a British soldier, Lieutenant Colonel Mercin Willet Gonin DSO, who was involved in liberating a German concentration camp called Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
"I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my
men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just
a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere,
some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they
had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men, women and
children collapse as you walked by them ... One knew that five hun-
dred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying
for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect.
It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diph-
theria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it. One
saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak
to turn over, men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread
purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely
tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman
too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the
food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching
down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves ... [a] dysentery
tank in which the remains of a child floated."
Horrible. Disgusting. Anti-human. It's nothing like a concentration camp- even in the poorest of areas in Bolivia, but there is something anti-human about the way the poor people have to live here. No one should have to live with lice and fungal diseases all over their skin, or live in a house with a dirt floor and a straw mattress, or have to bathe in a poluted river where cows are watered and cars are washed.
Anyway, the journal goes on...
"It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no
connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not
at all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands
of other things and I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much
that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer
unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees
than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but
with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but
a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman
dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of
lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individu-
als again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed
on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That
lipstick started to give them back their humanity."
Intentially giving people back their humanity can change everything.
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