week 45: the end is near (april 20-26)

goodbye kelly: i know i still have 2 months left, but it is starting to feel like my time here is almost over. probably one of the reasons is that my roommate kelly, will be finishing up her service at the end of next week and it’s going to be very weird not having her here. she came only about 2 weeks before me, so all of our time, not only here at the orphanage, but traveling on weekends off, has been together. we come from 2 different sides of the country, with totally different personality and views and opinions, but we’ve really had a great 10½ months together. some of our best memories are the times we spent organizing activities between our two houses of boys at nph. we’ve done baseball games, soccer games, movie and popcorn nights, breakfast, and tons more. we thought it would be fun to do one last thing, so on saturday, we got permission to take both of our houses to the beach for the day. we got our towels and swim suits, packed up our rice and beans, and headed on the bus to juan dolio. it ended up being just an amazing day. the weather was great and the water was beautiful… the bluest and clearest i’ve ever seen it. we spent about six hours on the beach and in the water taking pictures, playing soccer, jumping and diving, learning to float, snorkeling, building sand castles, burying each other, trying to balance on a huge piece of styrofoam, and searching for sea creatures (fish, crabs, round prickly things, and even an octopus, were among some of the things we captured). it was just a really great day, and hopefully a good going away party for kelly!


what am i doing here? while saturday was a really amazing day, the rest of my week was actually pretty tough. i’ve had a lot of frustrations with paola, one of the girls in the special needs home that i’ve worked with very closely these past 10 months. some days she’s really great and i feel like we’ve made a lot of progress. other days, like most of this week, she is really difficult and i wonder what i have been doing with my time here. and then i worry about leaving, because when i left to go home for vacation, the tías told me how horrible paola was and even when i came back it took her a couple weeks to fully forgive me for leaving (even though she knew i was going and that i would be coming back). paola is a good kid, who has had a tough past. her mother (who is schizophrenic) was really terrible to her and always told her what a problem she was and how worthless she was. she definitely has some mental handicaps of her own and a very low self-esteem. but at the same time, she is very intelligent (making her quite manipulative when she wants to be) and she is very capable of many things (both good and bad). the problem is that over her years at nph paola has heard people talk about her "sickness" and its made her even more self-conscious, at the same time, causing her to act out more and more. she can be a very difficult person to deal with (even physical at times), so for the most part, people just let her be, because it's easier than fighting with her. i, however, have been very strict with her over the past 10 months because i believe that she is capable of more than she is showing right now. despite the fact that we have a fight about every other day, i think to some extent it is working. my concern is that when i leave, things will return to the way they were. the tías in her house are nice people, but what paola needs is discipline and it seems for the most part that people here don't want to or don't have the time to put the effort into her that she needs (whether that be a lack of understanding or simply a lack of interest). either way, it's frustrating because i want her to continue to improve. so then again, i wonder what i'm doing here... if she is just going to be the same once i leave, or even worse off, why am i here at all?

i also struggle with the thought of leaving beyond my worries of paola. there are definite excitements with the thoughts of coming home, but at the same time it’s hard. i want to look back and see exactly what i accomplished. i want to feel like i made some sort of difference. but sometimes i look around this country and wonder if there is any hope. not that our country is perfect, but there are so many problems here... and they go way beyond poverty. almost all reverence has been lost for the catholic faith that still is very much a part of the culture. people celebrate the holidays, wear the rosaries and crosses, and even go to mass, but hardly anyone goes to communion, because they themselves know that for most people here the faith doesn't go much deeper than the surface. also, the concept of a family, as we know it, is almost unheard of here. teenage pregnancies are completely normal, as is the fact that most men are involved in several relationships at one time, not to mention that i can probably count on one hand the number of people i know here who are married. on top of that, there is the alcohol, the drugs and the obvious prostitution almost everywhere you go. none of these problems have or will improve in my time here. so then the whole experience i've had here becomes selfish, because it becomes more about me, and the wonderful experience i had, feeling like i did something good for the world, when in reality, what kind of difference can actually be made in only a year?

in the midst of all this wondering and worrying, i think God sent me a sign. i received two different emails from two different people on two different sides of the world… both sending me the exact same poem/prayer. one was from my friend eric who was in germany at the time and the other from my friend katherine in chicago. both of them, for different reasons, sent me the following:

it helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view, the kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. we accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. no statement says all that could be said. no prayer fully expresses our faith. no confession brings perfection. no pastoral visit brings wholeness. no program accomplishes the church's mission. no set of goals and objectives includes everything.

this is what we are about. we plant the seeds that one day will grow. we water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. we lay foundations that will need further development. we provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. we cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. this enables us to do something, and to do it very well. it may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

we may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. we are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. we are prophets of a future not our own. amen.

last week, a lady named gena (who runs the special needs home in haiti) came to try to help us out with developing the special needs home we have here. i spent a couple hours one afternoon talking with her, sharing some of my frustrations and concerns. i mentioned my concerns about paola and my worries about her being worse off when i leave. gena told me about a boy they have living in the special needs home in haiti… his body is completely tense, he can’t talk, walk or even move, but she said every single day he has one hour of therapy. will the therapy help him walk or move one day? probably not. in fact, he will probably spend his whole life in that same condition. but, she said, for that one hour he feels a little relief, a little less pain… and for that, she said, it’s worth it.

i guess that’s what i have to think about in my last 2 months. like the prayer says, we can’t accomplish everything. i may leave here feeling like what i did is incomplete, but i trust that it was a step in the right direction, or at least it was worthwhile for the time in which i was doing it. God asked me to come and be here for this year with paola, so i have to trust that while i don't know what will happen in the future, i at least know that God is in control. and as far as the rest of it... the world is a mess, that much is clear. it's not just here, but everywhere. but there is also a lot of hope. sometimes it's not that easy to see, but it is there. and it's not any of our jobs to fix every problem in the world, but it is all our jobs to seek that hope every day and do the best we can with where we are and what we have been given.

“do not abandon yourself to despair. we are an easter people and hallelujah is our song.” –john paul II