Independence Day

Hello All,

I know that it has been quite some time, and I don't know that any of you are necessarily still reading, but I thought I'd finally post an update. As the title above indicates, today is Independence Day--for Honduras (or at least it was when I started this entry). I can only imagine the celebrations that are going on, especially in La Esperanza. I miss it.

Life in the past month has been very good--quiet and simple. As I perhaps included in previous posts, right before I left Honduras, God directed me to Psalm 139, and I keep coming back to it here as well:
Psalm 139
God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I'm an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I'm thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I'm never out of your sight.
You know everything I'm going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you're there,
then up ahead and you're there, too--
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful--
I can't take it all in!

Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you're there!
If I flew on morning's wings
to the far western horizon,
You'd find me in a minute--
you're already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, "Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I'm immersed in the light!"
It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they're all the same to you.

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother's womb.
I thank you, High God--you're breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration--what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I'd even lived one day.

Your thoughts--how rare, how beautiful!
God, I'll never comprehend them!
I couldn't even begin to count them--any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you! . . .

Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I'm about;
See for yourself whether I've done anything wrong--
then guide me on the road to eternal life.

This scripture has become my prayer. More than anything, I long for God to investigate and purify my heart. In order to minister to others, I have to be a pure vessel. This is most definitely a year of preparation, and I cannot afford to waste time being complacent--not for me, not for the others I come in contact with, and not for Honduras. Thus, I want to be healthy in every aspect--spiritually, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I want His presence to permeate every part of who I am, and I can gladly say that He is beginning to do just that.

My life on a day-to-day basis is fairly simple. I spend most of my time alone, actually. I go to class. I tutor in the afternoons, and I also have a job as an attached tutor for a remedial, "catch-up" English class here at Shepherd. I love my job! Although I am only in the classroom once a week helping the professor as she desires, the students in that class are very quickly becoming "my kids." I went from being an RA in the Honors dorm to working with students who feel like they don't know how to write. It's fitting for who I am and the direction that God is leading me. I feel right at home among them. In addition to the time I spend in class and tutoring, I also read, paint, and run often.

My senior project was approved, so I have started extensive reading that is no doubt a preparation for Honduras. My ultimate product will be an ESL curriculum specifically tailored for the forgotten youth of Honduras--juvenile delinquents, street kids, orphans, former gang members, etc. I recently finished a book called This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha by Samuel Logan, which is about the MS-13 gang. It's a gang that has a presence in the U.S. and Central America, and it is especially an issue among the people that I have met in Honduras. If you ever have the chance to read it, I highly recommend it. It sheds light onto not only the evil that surges through gang activity but also the very clear spiritual battle that is going on for so many youth across the world. Sadly, the fuel that often drives youth to become gang members is loneliness. It is only natural that everyone wants to be loved. We all crave a sense of family, and especially for many Latinos that are caught in the plight of homelessness or abandonement, it is a lifestyle that seems to offer what they are desperate for. However, it comes at such an unbelievably high price. Finishing that book presented me with some very strong questions for myself. I want to work with the forgotten, and that includes gang members. Thus, I found myself questioning, "Am I spiritually prepared to engage in the spiritual battle that is going on within the gang world?" and "Would I be willing to die at the hands of gang members if that is what God is calling me to?" I want both of the answers to those questions to be yes.

We don't hear a lot about martyrdom within the Western world, but it is certainly going on throughout the earth. One of the places where it is actually common is among the population of youth that decides to leave their gangs to become Christians. In Honduras, you can leave a gang to become a Christian. Gangs seem to have respect for that lifestyle, but you have to be serious. It is not a nonchalant decision. People wishing to leave the gang have to exit the same way they entered--by being jumped. For the two major gangs in Honduras, this entails receiving a beating for a designated amount of time by the designated number of members--for the two gangs in Honduras, it is either 18 or 13. If you survive the beating, you can be a Christian and are no longer a gang member. But, even then, the gang watches former members for a year to make sure that they are living the lifestyle that they have chosen. Any slip-up and gangs are ready to kill. When I was in Honduras, Papí Alvin told the story of two young gang members--one of whom now goes to the church in Tegus--who wished to leave the gang. The man who now goes to the church was receiving his beating, and while he was suffering and in tremendous pain, his best friend (who was still a gang member) kept telling him to hold on because it was worth it. The man survived and was free to be a Christian. His best friend later chose to become a Christian as well, but he was martyred. He didn't survive the beating.

Anyway, this is just one example of how God is shaping me. So often, I come back from Honduras feeling so torn between the culture of the U.S. and the culture of Honduras. But, God has finally taught me to want something better--His culture and His kingdom only. I almost feel as if I am having an out-of-body experience here in the U.S. I am taking every step possible to be pursuing the preparation God has for me here, yet I feel utterly disconnected from all that I have previously known. It is difficult to explain except to say that the U.S. isn't my home; Honduras isn't my home; I have finally found that the reality that means the most to me is only His Kingdom. Coincidentally, some of the songs that I have been stuck on recently come from a CD called Jesus Culture. Again, if you have the chance to listen to any of the songs, I greatly recommend the CD. One of the songs that convicted me the most was "Where You Go, I'll Go."
Where You go, I'll go
What You say, I'll say
What You pray, I pray
Life on God's terms is so very simple.

Running has become a central part of my life this year thus far as well. As I previously mentioned, I want to get healthy in all respects, and I am finding that so much of running is very spiritual. (Everything is spiritual, really.) I run 3-8 miles a day or at the very least a few times a week with a goal of 20 miles a week. I like to pray while I run. While my time alone and free time in general has made my dialogue with God so natural and constant, I find that running provides a time for me to stop focusing on me and my life so that I can intercede for the lives of others even if it is only through wordless sighs and aching groans. I find myself surrendering my runs to God and asking Him to move in the spiritual realm as I run around the track. Often times, God speaks through running to expose elements of myself that He still needs to uproot. It is humbling and a blessing to say the least.

Overall, God has brought me to an understanding of a basic struggle that I deal with often--complacency versus contentment. In short, complacency is self-satisfaction while contentment is God-satisfaction. God has begun to ask me in every aspect of life--are you satisfied? I dare you to begin to ask yourself this question within all realms of your life. It will shake you up because it defies the culture of the world we live in. It would seem that no one is satisfied--especially Christians in many cases. I am learning to rejoice in the satisfaction of God in so many of the details of my life. This being my first year in an apartment with a kitchen cooking for myself, I find that I am learning to be satisfied whether I am eating a sandwich or hot meal. And, when I am truly satisfied with Him, everything I eat tastes like the best thing in the world. I am becoming satisfied with spending my time alone--just me and God--even when I occasionally get lonely. Are you satisfied with your finances? Are you satisfied with your job? Are you satisfied with your family and your lifestyle? Are you satisfied with your home? If the answer is no, the only answer is to stop complacency (stop trying to fix all of these things to make yourself satisfied) and surrender all of those things to God, asking for His contentment. Be careful, though, because contentment only comes about by being in His will, which means we have to experience the pain of losing our own.

Loss is my current state of being. I grasp more and more every day what it means that this could be my very last year living in the U.S., and it blows my mind. I walk out of my apartment in the early morning, and the atmosphere has that weighty cinnamon smell of fall as I crunch dead leaves beneath my shoes. Autumn is my favorite season, and I may never experience it again after this year (or perhaps not in the same way, I don't know what the future holds). Honduras doesn't have changing leaves, and it's most noticeable season change is when the rainy season commences. I have begun to go through stuff. My book shelf (which typically contains my most prized possessions) is bare. My desk is now nearly empty. I keep throwing away pieces of my life, my past, and myself--old letters from friends, mementos from concerts and camps, old essays and ribbons. I am not one for a lot of "stuff" in general, but I am a memory keeper. I have kept so many things in my short life! Why do we have the inclination to hold onto the past as we do? I don't know. But, I do recognize the need for what Mamí Sara said in Honduras--we throw away the old to make room for the new that God wants to give us. It's all faith. I surrender the scraps of old memories knowing that God wants to give me new ones. I place treasured friendships and beloved people into the hands of God, knowing that He has called me to a new people. I have always been an adopter, so the idea of leaving behind people is relatively less painful because I adopt with no regard to proximity. I collect people no matter where I go, and through several painful lessons, I have learned that people are better suited in God's hands than in mine anyway.

God is the great conductor of my life right now, and in typical fashion, He brings encouragement to me in a variety of ways. This past weekend, I was home with my family when I came across a documentary called Mama Heidi on Netflix of all places. It is amazing. It is about a missionary couple in Mozambique who has a ministry, Iris Ministries, that is so very similar to Alvin's. The woman in the film, Mama Heidi, is, as my mother put it, very much a female Alvin. She adopts kids every where she goes. She loves the unlovely, and while I saw Jesus and Alvin in this woman while watching this documentary, I also saw myself. I want to spend my life loving the unlovely. I want to adopt everyone I come across. I want to bring the family of God to people that have no one. I want to be Mamí Sarah for those that don't have a mother. I have one very short life to live, and I don't want to waste it. There are so many that desperately need Jesus, and I want to take hold of the privilege of dying daily so that I can be Jesus to someone who does not know Him.

Another welcome encouragement came yesterday in the form of a phone conversation with Roy. I hadn't talked to him too much this past month, but as we began to compare the everyday events of our lives, I was so blessed to hear that we are doing and going through the same things. Roy is one of my closest friends, and it was initially difficult going from seeing him and talking to him every day to having little to no communication. But, in the midst of our separation physically, I take comfort in the truth that we are not separated spiritually. God is teaching us the same lessons in many cases, and we pray for each other often. I can't begin to express what an encouragement it is to know that I am not alone in my experiences. I miss Roy greatly, but God is leading us both in such a way that we are able to encourage each other.

I know that this entry is unbearably long (now that I have a laptop, I'll try to keep up with this better so as not to overwhelm next time), but I have one last update. I took the OPI (Spanish proficiency telephone interview) last Thursday. In addition to the personal weight it carries for me (determining student teaching and graduation possibilities), my score will also have an impact on the Spanish education department. The program is fairly new, and in order to achieve full accreditation status, they have to show evidence of progress via their students. There are only a handful of us Spanish education majors, and I will (hopefully) be the first to graduate with full certification. If I don't receive the score I need, the program likely does not have the results it needs to reach full accreditation. Saying all of that, it went very well. I wasn't nervous. I won't receive the results for a while, but I went into it know that God works it all for His good (and, thus, my good as well). He had His hand on the entire interview, and my life is in His hands. No matter what happens, He receives all the glory.

Thanks for sharing in my journey,
Sarah