That's All She Wrote

This is it everyone.  The end of the tracks, the final stop, the last float of the parade.  Friday, I will hop on an airplane, wave a final goodbye, and begin my long adventurous voyage home.

Ok, so it's not really a final goodbye, per se.  I know I'll be back. I just don't know when exactly.  So it's going to be more like, "So long, Costa Rica. Catch ya later for coffee sometime." That makes it much easier, thinking of it as only leaving for now.  Yes, I like that very much.

And just to say it, I have had the time of my life here this past year.  Ok, thank you Captain Obvious.  But seriously, I cannot express how amazing and life changing this year has been.  For one thing, my hair is longer, I'm a coffee addict and I like to play soccer.  That is a completely different Kelsey from before :). On a more serious level, I've learned more about who I am and what it means to live out my faith, to seek justice for those whose voices are silenced, to love those who are shunned and different.  I have been challenged in nearly everything I believed in, and I've become stronger because of it. And not only stronger, I've become more alive.  I've never felt this alive in a very long time, ready to face the world, to learn more, to do something.  I'm excited to see what this coming year has in store for me, that's for sure!

So what do I get to look forward to in these coming days, weeks, months?  Well, to boil it down: a lot!  Friday I fly to San Salvador, El Salvador for a few day stop to visit the first Central American country I visited (outside of Costa Rica) and see some very good friends of mine.  From there I'll hop on a bus and go north to Guatemala City to spend time with friends, quick have a couple work meetings with Jim, Rachel and Co. and participate in the first Masters intensive with my fellow classmates (btw, I made it into the Urban Ministries Masters program--yay!).  From there Rachel and I will meander our way north through Mexico by bus, stopping several times along the way to meet up with friends and acquaintances and seeing what their ministries are up to.  If all goes well we should hit the Mexico-California border before Christmas.  If not, well, we'll just have to hunker down with some friends and spend Christmas with them Mexico style :) I'll then spend some time with Rachel family in California before finally making my way home to Michigan soil. Ummm, I mean snow.  So I'll be seeing all of your pretty, frost bitten faces sometime in early January.  Someone please bring a winter coat for me to the airport! And mittens.  And a hat.  And maybe a hot water bottle and one of those electric blanket things.  Thanks!

Please pray for safe travels, for Rachel and I to have a blast, and for the bus rides to not be too terribly long and boring.  Please also pray for me as I come to the end of my time here.  I hate goodbyes, let alone goodbye parties, and this week is going to be chucked full of them.  Please pray that I'll be able to find joy through the tears and comfort in the thought that it's not a goodbye for good.  Just for now.

See you all when I get back!

Cross-Cultural Engagment

My family left yesterday, flew home to snow and the threat of tornados, hopefully bringing home with them a new sense of understanding and interest with regards to traveling, Costa Rica, and my life here. I had an absolute blast with them, watching them engage the strange and different world around them, being with them as they felt awkward and uncomfortable in new settings and situations.  To say the least, they were great students :)

Today, I want use them as an example to discuss the topic of cross-cultural engagement.

Engagement, not just passive witnessing.

To be engaged in something means to fully apply oneself--heart, mind and soul.  No aloofness, no reservations, no judgement allowed at this engagement party.  Here, we are diving in, not with swimmies strapped to our arms, but fully submerging into the clear blue water before us.  We need to feel that cool water against our skin, taste its saltiness on our tongues, be swept away by the currents swirling around us.  

Diving in is, in my opinion, the only true way of getting to know something.  You can read about Paris, for example, all you want in your textbooks, about its history, its culture, its landscape.  But you can't really know it until you've been there, until you've sat in the shade of the Eiffel Tower, until you've ordered a pastry in broken French, until you've gotten lost on the windy streets that make up the city.  And even then, that's only scratching the surface of that life.  

But it's a start.

So I want to challenge everyone of us to take that dive today, in whatever new environment you may find yourself in.  Going on vacation?  Don't get sucked into the tourist life and forget to experience how the locals live outside those safe and colorful walls.  Visiting a new church?  Make sure you sing as loud with the rest of them, yell Amen! when they yell Amen!, and praise our Lord right alongside of them.  Visiting Grandma at the nursing home?  Well, give her a hug and chat with her, and with her neighbor, and with those in the hallways because they too live there and need some company every once in a while.  

And so what if you feel weird, or uncomfortable, or scared?  WE ALL DO.  I still do every day and I've lived here in Costa Rica for over a year.  But I try to not let that stop me from experiencing the world around me.  Jesus doesn't want our fears to rule our lives.  He doesn't want us to be confined to live in the comfort of our homes.  Jesus himself walked the dusty streets of Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, engaging people as he walked, asking questions, lending a helping hand.  He's the example we should follow.

So I say let's follow in his dusty footsteps.  Let's walk the streets, engaging the people and the culture as we go along.  Let's learn and let's be amazed.

Stay tuned!

A Trip to the Mountains

This past weekend I had one the most AMAZING experiences of my life: a tenting trip to the mountains of Costa Rica!  It was North America meets Central America in a true mash-up of cultures, my non-Spanish speaking family on one end and the non-English speaking Solís family on the other.  And let me tell you, it was a BLAST!

(Back) Kendall, Susi, Francisco, Dad, Grandpa, Me
(Front) Ashly, Beppe, Mom, Rachel

The family of two of our kids in the Bola Bola project, Kendall and Ashly Solís, invited me and my family to go with them to camp on their family’s property, the chance for everyone to experience the rural beauty of Costa Rica.  There were 12 of us in total: Beppe, Grandpa, Dad, Mom, me, Rachel, Susi, Kendall, Ashly, Santiago (their little brother), Francisco (their dad), and Isabel (their mom).  Not to mention the several relatives we met along the way.  What we lacked in electricity and bathrooms, we more than made up for it with rain, mud, bug spray, cows, and laughter.  With nothing but the green tropical wilderness as our friend, we enjoyed the blazing warmth of a campfire, the savory goodness of long-roasted chicharrón (pork), the sticky sweetness of s’mores, and the pleasure of good company.  The Solís family was our guide, taking us to see waterfalls, rivers, forests, and all sorts of other natural wonders.  They also fed us like royalty, offering all sorts of new fruits and vegetables to try (and fresh milk from the cows that morning and homemade cheese and tortillas).  To say the least, we were stuffed the whole weekend!

One of my favorite moments though was watching my family interact with those they couldn’t really understand, to see them struggle with the amount of hospitality that was extended to them, to come to terms with the beauty of a simple rural lifestyle and being welcomed with open arms into their homes.  And they were great!  I am so proud of the way they were genuinely interested in learning more about the Costa Rican culture they were experiencing around them.  More than that, I am so incredibly proud of the humility and respect I saw them have for Isabel, Francisco, Kendall, Ashly and their relatives.   I was not embarrassed to have my family there, despite their newness and lack of exposure to a Latin culture.  They were the best tourists in my opinion, trying the strange looking food offered to them, smiling and nodding when no translators were nearby, trudging through the muddy paths without complaint, sleeping under the stars with strangers by their sides.  I can’t express the joy and pride I feel right now for them—thank you for being so awesome!

This week I get to enjoy my family for a few more days, traveling and sightseeing as well as sharing with them my life here at Casa Adobe.  Please pray for safe travels and good times for all!  Stay tuned!

The Power of Words

I love words.  I love the taste of them, the flavor each can have in the salad mixture of sentences, paragraphs, stories.  I love the sweep of their inky borders, capturing the commonplace, the quotidian, the ordinary events of everyday life.  I love how words and language bring us together in an act of sharing, of understanding, of creating, of imagining.  Writing, reading, speaking are all very communal events.  Yes, there’s an author… BUT there is also an audience.  Words can build and construct; they can catch fire and spread; they can inspire and enlighten.  Words are beautiful. 

I also hate words.  I hate how one moment they can be so constructive and then, quite sporadically sometimes, they change course and leave a path of destruction in their wake.  They catch fire and spread movements of such passion and yet sometimes, without care, words blaze onward and burn those they touch.  Ideas crumble.  Hope disintegrates.  Beauty turns to ash.  Words are very very dangerous.

But I am not naïve nor in denial.  Words do not act out of their own volition.  They are neither to be praised for their ingenuity nor blamed for their capacity for destruction.  For words are wielded by us.  We are their source of ingenuity and destruction.  We are the tool-masters and the weapons-wielders.

And I need to confess that I have not been a wise wordsmith.  I have used words in beautiful ways, yes, with writing and reading and whatnot.  I have sadly also used words to put others down, to crush them beneath my foot, to hurt them more than they hurt me.  I have lashed out, flippantly throwing words here and there, a chaotic swirl of ill-intent and pain.  I have also managed to unintentionally hurt others, so unaware the effect my words had on the ears they reached, so unaware that I was adding to the pain, confusion, discomfort that was already there.  In my state of such oblivious existence, I have alienated, mocked, and judged those I should have embraced.

And for this I am sorry.

Today, I want to move forward and vow to be a better wielder of words.  To understand and appreciate the weight my words have on the relationships I have with others.  To believe that my words can destroy and to believe even more strongly that my words can build.  I feel that the gift of words, of language, was bestowed so graciously upon us by God and I feel as if I have abused that gift.  I want to change that, to walk through each day with the forever present reminder that I have words that I can share to either dignify the people I interact with… or hurt them.  I hope I forever choose the former.

On a side note, this week is my birthday and my family is coming to visit me!  Pray for safe travels and a fun time for all.

Stay tuned!