Well, it’s official: I’m a teacher. I know I shouldn’t be so surprised, as nearly my entire purpose for coming to Paraguay was to teach English, but this realization caught me a bit off-guard last week. You see, I went to my first teacher’s conference, a cultural experience in and of itself, and what you might call my own personal initiation into the world of teaching. The conference, a short bus ride away in another suburb of Asuncion, was organized for teachers from Christian schools all over the country by a Christian book publisher. It was held in a mega-grocery store supercenter with several conference halls perfect for lectures and workshops and practicals.
My first impression when I arrived was how out-of-place I looked in line waiting for my conference materials. There were only a dozen or so men out of a dozen hundred or so participants, and of these I was easily the tallest and blondest, too. In a game of which-one-doesn’t-belong-with-the-rest, I was the easy-to-find and sure-fire answer to the not-so-difficult puzzle. Although I looked and felt so strange among a group of so many Paraguayan women, though, there was something quietly reassuring about being in a group of teachers. I felt relaxed, like things would be taken care of, and that I’d learn something from all the nice folks around me if I cared to. I felt like I was at home once again in elementary school amongst a group of mentors just like my own dear teachers of school-years past. I’m pretty sure I even saw in the crowd my own first-grade teacher, Mrs. Roush, alongside many precious other educational characters that have had such a great impact on my life.
I realized, too, that the looks, attitudes, and even the personalities of teachers transcend cultures and countries. The relaxed-but-professional clothing, the cloth tote bags, and even the uniquely teacher haircuts of these Paraguayan educators proved they shared a common culture with their North American counterparts. The way they spoke one with another, their friendly glances, and their proud, but not too proud, postures betrayed the fact that they were all educators. The teachers’ interest in learning new methods of teaching and excitement at prospects for creativity in the classroom, finally, showed me, too, that they were all of a very special and unique sort.
The main-hall lecture consisted in the recounted history of the many psychologies of modern learning, starting with Pavlov’s behavorialism and ending with the more recent constructivist approaches to education. The smaller lectures proved even less inspiring, with more-or-less demagogic professors teaching common-sense methods for classroom instruction while at the same time always lamenting the quality of education in the Paraguayan school system. I had the chance to attend one such lecture on story-telling within the classroom, and ended up leaving some hour and a half later with very few practical things that I could put to use as an itinerant English teacher. Despite the impracticality of the conference, however, I’m very satisfied that I had the chance to attend. I had the double privilege of being invited to a mysterious and obscure “teacher in-service-day” while also being initiated into their top-secret culture; a culture, I learned, that transcends even the boundaries of language, frontier, and time.
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Penny Bargains
I can remember more than a decade and a half ago when my family started building a big old garage at our home on Blake Road. My Dad, the mason in charge, put a cornerstone dated 1990 in an especially visible place out front. Before he laid the special brick, though, he gave us kids the chance to put a real shiny new penny in the mortar for good luck to go along with whatever wish we could make. Most kids, I’m sure, would ask for a bike or a puppy or maybe summertime all year long. For me, though, I could think of nothing more important to wish for than the health of Grandma Donahey, the mom of my mom. She had been sickly for as long as I could remember and more recently hospital and bed-ridden, and as her young grandchild I was overwhelmingly burdened for her well-being. And so, with the fully-trusting and fully-given-over heart of a five-year-old, I made a secret but powerful prayer for the health and life of my grandma.
With my lucky penny firmly cemented in place and my wishful hope steadfastly determined in mind, I figured that God had to do something for me and my grandma. Surely He could see how important my shiny piece of metal was and would know, too, how important the wish was for my soft and vulnerable heart. I hadn’t asked for anything selfish, after all, but instead sought so earnestly something so good for someone I loved so much. With such pure motives, surely God had to act in an amazing and incredible way, perhaps making my grandma breathe all right again without oxygen tubes so that she could get up and dance around and even play with me like other grandmas did.
Needless to say, my heart was broken and continued to break as Grandma’s health continued to decline. She never did get any better and never could really play with me at all, and ended up passing away a short two years or so after I made my wish. Although my lucky penny was still part of the garage’s foundation in 1992, I was suddenly seven years old and without a single grandma in the world.
I think I learned then a mightily powerful lesson: God doesn’t play by my rules. He doesn’t have to heal people because of lucky pennies, and He doesn’t have to change things because I feel a certain way about them. He doesn’t have to relieve physical suffering because it makes me feel bad, nor when making His decisions does He have to honor my innocent pleas for the well-being of those I care about. The world can be rough, I found out early-on, regardless of all my best wishes and most ardent prayers otherwise. Sometimes what God decides to allow just doesn’t make sense to me.
I had no idea, and I still don’t have any idea, of what God intended by allowing both of my grandmas to die so young. Like Job, though, I figured out that “God can do all things, and that no purpose of His can be thwarted.” Also like Job, I learned that in my pride and foolishness I had demanded too much of God in the healing of my grandma. I had tried giving a mandate to the All-Mighty, and received back for it a lot of nothing that I had required. As His creature, I had told my Creator what was best for my grandma and for me and what He had to do for her on my account, but I had “hid counsel without knowledge and uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
All of which brings me back to today. You see, I’ve got a new shiny penny in my life and a new unselfish request, too. My new lucky coin is the time I’m spending here in Paraguay—a year of my life doing good and exciting things for others. It’s bright and nice and new and impressive, too. My new unselfish request is pretty moving, also -- a constant burden and heartfelt prayer for the reunification of my family. Like before, it’s a pressing and hard situation that requires healing and life and the grace of God. Like before, though, once more I’m realizing all over again that my shiny penny isn’t working.
Before I left for Paraguay, I let God know of some pretty important conditions for my going: namely, that although there were so many worries in my family at home (shouts of anger from siblings, whispers of divorce between parents, wailings of fearful abandonment from a bed-ridden ailing grandfather who hasn’t made a good confession of faith in decades) I’d still go to Paraguay if He could make sure to take care of them all. I’d go away, give up plenty of comforts with all my ambitions, and lay a fresh coin in the mortar so that He’d have to fix up familiar things in healing broken hearts, putting back together messed-up relationships, and bringing back to faith those who’d left it. I really believed God owed it to me.
Now that some time’s past and things haven’t gotten any better back in Ohio, though, I’m in a hard place where I’m learning again that it’s awfully foolish of me to try to tell God what He has to do. All the expectations of everything I ever imagined being fixed in my family have been shattered, just like the time when I put a lucky penny under the cornerstone of a new garage, made a wish for my grandmother’s health, and then she died. I feel as if I’m losing all over again a certain child-like innocence to my faith (or is it presumption?), as if my expectation for practical graces at work in the world around me are completely unfounded and, as Job says, without knowledge. I know it know it sounds like a sad story, but really, who am I to question why God can’t be paid in pennies?
With my lucky penny firmly cemented in place and my wishful hope steadfastly determined in mind, I figured that God had to do something for me and my grandma. Surely He could see how important my shiny piece of metal was and would know, too, how important the wish was for my soft and vulnerable heart. I hadn’t asked for anything selfish, after all, but instead sought so earnestly something so good for someone I loved so much. With such pure motives, surely God had to act in an amazing and incredible way, perhaps making my grandma breathe all right again without oxygen tubes so that she could get up and dance around and even play with me like other grandmas did.
Needless to say, my heart was broken and continued to break as Grandma’s health continued to decline. She never did get any better and never could really play with me at all, and ended up passing away a short two years or so after I made my wish. Although my lucky penny was still part of the garage’s foundation in 1992, I was suddenly seven years old and without a single grandma in the world.
I think I learned then a mightily powerful lesson: God doesn’t play by my rules. He doesn’t have to heal people because of lucky pennies, and He doesn’t have to change things because I feel a certain way about them. He doesn’t have to relieve physical suffering because it makes me feel bad, nor when making His decisions does He have to honor my innocent pleas for the well-being of those I care about. The world can be rough, I found out early-on, regardless of all my best wishes and most ardent prayers otherwise. Sometimes what God decides to allow just doesn’t make sense to me.
I had no idea, and I still don’t have any idea, of what God intended by allowing both of my grandmas to die so young. Like Job, though, I figured out that “God can do all things, and that no purpose of His can be thwarted.” Also like Job, I learned that in my pride and foolishness I had demanded too much of God in the healing of my grandma. I had tried giving a mandate to the All-Mighty, and received back for it a lot of nothing that I had required. As His creature, I had told my Creator what was best for my grandma and for me and what He had to do for her on my account, but I had “hid counsel without knowledge and uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”
All of which brings me back to today. You see, I’ve got a new shiny penny in my life and a new unselfish request, too. My new lucky coin is the time I’m spending here in Paraguay—a year of my life doing good and exciting things for others. It’s bright and nice and new and impressive, too. My new unselfish request is pretty moving, also -- a constant burden and heartfelt prayer for the reunification of my family. Like before, it’s a pressing and hard situation that requires healing and life and the grace of God. Like before, though, once more I’m realizing all over again that my shiny penny isn’t working.
Before I left for Paraguay, I let God know of some pretty important conditions for my going: namely, that although there were so many worries in my family at home (shouts of anger from siblings, whispers of divorce between parents, wailings of fearful abandonment from a bed-ridden ailing grandfather who hasn’t made a good confession of faith in decades) I’d still go to Paraguay if He could make sure to take care of them all. I’d go away, give up plenty of comforts with all my ambitions, and lay a fresh coin in the mortar so that He’d have to fix up familiar things in healing broken hearts, putting back together messed-up relationships, and bringing back to faith those who’d left it. I really believed God owed it to me.
Now that some time’s past and things haven’t gotten any better back in Ohio, though, I’m in a hard place where I’m learning again that it’s awfully foolish of me to try to tell God what He has to do. All the expectations of everything I ever imagined being fixed in my family have been shattered, just like the time when I put a lucky penny under the cornerstone of a new garage, made a wish for my grandmother’s health, and then she died. I feel as if I’m losing all over again a certain child-like innocence to my faith (or is it presumption?), as if my expectation for practical graces at work in the world around me are completely unfounded and, as Job says, without knowledge. I know it know it sounds like a sad story, but really, who am I to question why God can’t be paid in pennies?
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Visit to the Campo
I took the chance this weekend to visit San Pedro, a town six hours away in the campo—countryside-- where a couple decades ago was born the Apostolic Christian Church in
I saw some Mennonites in the
There are two bus lines with similar schedules that go to San Pedro. The bus line we took traveled through the night, leaving around 10 and arriving around 4 in the morning. It was the nicer bus line, with air conditioning and very few stops. The cheaper bus line suffered a terrible crash a week ago where everyone on board was killed, and some were even decapitated. The bus drivers were drinking and making merry in the New Year festivities and not paying enough attention to the route, which is currently being paved for the first time and is very dangerous.
We were welcomed to our destination at four a.m. with big hugs from Juan’s grandma, Abuelita (little grandma). She was just getting up for the day, and resolutely gave me her bed to sleep in for the rest of the morning. She wouldn’t have it back the entire weekend, either, insisting Saturday night that I have her bed to myself while she shared an old mattress on the ground with her daughter. Abuelita lives on her own with a few granddaughters, surrounded by the smaller homesteads of her now well-grown children. She keeps a tremendously large garden that looks like it ought to be taken care of with a tractor, when really it is all tilled and planted and weeded and harvested by hand or with the help of a horse every once in a while. She has fiercely bright blue eyes—an extreme rarity in
Saturday we traveled to the river about a half an hour away to buy some fresh fish to carry back to
Saturday night we went to a recently chipped-off-the-old-AC-block church service meeting outside of a home in San Pedro. The church there (the first in
Sunday afternoon I drank pure milk straight from the cow’s teats for the first time ever. It was warm and buttery and delicious, and I thought how terrible it is that some Americans are thrown into prison for selling such a wonderful delicacy. Cows here are a sure and solid investment, and the number of cows a person owns reflects just how much power and wealth they have, too. I’m thinking of buying a cow as an investment of sorts, one to be managed by friends from the church who live in the countryside and one that reproduces itself every year or so. Then, when my herd reaches twenty or so, I can sell 19 at great profit and start all over again.
We returned back home on Sunday night, nicely fattened by a weekend of great food and leisure. At times the campo life was boring, but it was always beautiful and full of relationship. There were family and friends and time and visits and everything else in the world that’s important, although so many commodities of modern life were missing. There was sunshine and stars and flowers and cows and little horse-drawn carts and so many other things to give so much pleasure to a tecnoeducadvanced North American. I really took a great deal of delight and rest from my short time in San Pedro and hope to return soon to see and take in even more of the simple country life.
Friday, January 11, 2008
A Nice Visit
A typical Paraguayan visit:
Sunday, 10:30 am: Invitation received. The Señora: “Why don’t you come over to our house sometime this week?” Me: “Sounds Great. How about lunch on Tuesday? How does 11:30 sound?” The Señora: “11:30? Way too late. Let’s make it 10:00.” Me: “OK.”
Tuesday, 10:40 am: Having completely forgotten my lunch appointment, I realize I’m now over 40 minutes late. I make a quick call to the Señor. Me: “Senor, I’m really sorry I completely forgot about lunch today. Is it ok if I come over now?” The Señor: “Sure, no problem. Our schedule is completely open. Come on over.”
4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.
11:10-12:45: Approaching the house, I ask permission to enter and am welcomed inside. The Señor, after realizing that I’d be late, has begun to repair the refrigerator door on the kitchen table. After 16 years (as long as they’ve been married), the refrigerator is coming apart. I am offered an egg and vegetable tart to eat so that I’m plenty full before we start to share terreré together. You’re never supposed to take terreré on an empty stomach. We pass time together making small talk as the Señor, shirtless, fixes the refrigerator. The Señora starts preparing lunch only after I arrive.
12:45-1:00pm: Lunch is ready. We have a typical Paraguayan meal: noodles with a hamburger-tomato-vegetable-potato sauce, cabbage salad with cut up potatoes and canned corn and mayonnaise and vinegar, and bread. We wash it all down with pineapple juice, made in the blender with one pineapple, some water, and a ton of sugar. No one talks during the meal. Paraguayans know how to eat, and when they do, there isn’t much chatter. The food is good. As usual, I ask for seconds, even though I’m full, to show how much I appreciate the meal.
1:00-1:15: The Señora asks me if I’m tired. I say not really, we fail at communication, and she offers me her son’s bed to take a nap while she does the dishes. Content always to accept the offer of a nap, I oblige and lay down. Since it’s so hot, the nap is short but good.
1:15-1:45: I wake up and go back to the kitchen, where the Señora questions how long my nap was. I tell her I feel great and refreshed, and then I go watch her sons play soccer on the family computer in the Señor and Señora’s bedroom. The Señor, trying to take a nap, is woken up by my entrance. Feeling like it’s the polite thing to do, he sits up and starts to chat with me. The soccer on the screen is in terrible slow-motion. The computer is too outdated for the fast-paced program.
1:45-3:00: The Señor leaves the room, off to take a nap somewhere else. The sons show me pictures on the computer of the church and camps and other special events from their life. We sip terreré. The Señora comes in sometimes from the kitchen, where she is preparing pudding, to chat.
3:00-4:15: I leave the bedroom and go out on the back porch to sit down. By this time, the Señor’s nap has ended and the Señora’s pudding is all cooked. We sit under the shade of a mango tree and sip terreré again, passing time together and talking. Feeling like the afternoon lunch has been a long and good one, thinking I’d like to check my email back at home, and not wanting to take up any more time of my gracious hosts, I politely tell them I’ve got to put away the tools I was using before I came and must return to the school before the room that holds the tools is locked for the day. The excuse to leave is not a lie, but it’s pretty lame.
4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.
Sunday, 10:30 am: Invitation received. The Señora: “Why don’t you come over to our house sometime this week?” Me: “Sounds Great. How about lunch on Tuesday? How does 11:30 sound?” The Señora: “11:30? Way too late. Let’s make it 10:00.” Me: “OK.”
Tuesday, 10:40 am: Having completely forgotten my lunch appointment, I realize I’m now over 40 minutes late. I make a quick call to the Señor. Me: “Senor, I’m really sorry I completely forgot about lunch today. Is it ok if I come over now?” The Señor: “Sure, no problem. Our schedule is completely open. Come on over.”
4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.
11:10-12:45: Approaching the house, I ask permission to enter and am welcomed inside. The Señor, after realizing that I’d be late, has begun to repair the refrigerator door on the kitchen table. After 16 years (as long as they’ve been married), the refrigerator is coming apart. I am offered an egg and vegetable tart to eat so that I’m plenty full before we start to share terreré together. You’re never supposed to take terreré on an empty stomach. We pass time together making small talk as the Señor, shirtless, fixes the refrigerator. The Señora starts preparing lunch only after I arrive.
12:45-1:00pm: Lunch is ready. We have a typical Paraguayan meal: noodles with a hamburger-tomato-vegetable-potato sauce, cabbage salad with cut up potatoes and canned corn and mayonnaise and vinegar, and bread. We wash it all down with pineapple juice, made in the blender with one pineapple, some water, and a ton of sugar. No one talks during the meal. Paraguayans know how to eat, and when they do, there isn’t much chatter. The food is good. As usual, I ask for seconds, even though I’m full, to show how much I appreciate the meal.
1:00-1:15: The Señora asks me if I’m tired. I say not really, we fail at communication, and she offers me her son’s bed to take a nap while she does the dishes. Content always to accept the offer of a nap, I oblige and lay down. Since it’s so hot, the nap is short but good.
1:15-1:45: I wake up and go back to the kitchen, where the Señora questions how long my nap was. I tell her I feel great and refreshed, and then I go watch her sons play soccer on the family computer in the Señor and Señora’s bedroom. The Señor, trying to take a nap, is woken up by my entrance. Feeling like it’s the polite thing to do, he sits up and starts to chat with me. The soccer on the screen is in terrible slow-motion. The computer is too outdated for the fast-paced program.
1:45-3:00: The Señor leaves the room, off to take a nap somewhere else. The sons show me pictures on the computer of the church and camps and other special events from their life. We sip terreré. The Señora comes in sometimes from the kitchen, where she is preparing pudding, to chat.
3:00-4:15: I leave the bedroom and go out on the back porch to sit down. By this time, the Señor’s nap has ended and the Señora’s pudding is all cooked. We sit under the shade of a mango tree and sip terreré again, passing time together and talking. Feeling like the afternoon lunch has been a long and good one, thinking I’d like to check my email back at home, and not wanting to take up any more time of my gracious hosts, I politely tell them I’ve got to put away the tools I was using before I came and must return to the school before the room that holds the tools is locked for the day. The excuse to leave is not a lie, but it’s pretty lame.
4:15-4:30: The Señora insists I have some of her pudding, which is still two hours from being chilled enough to eat properly. I eat it warm anyways, and it’s very delicious anyways, too. I say many thank-yous and then begin to leave. The Señor and Señora invite me back again another time to spend an entire day visiting with them—a day when, as they kindly say, I won’t have to worry about putting any of the tools away.
Monday, January 07, 2008
How I´m doing: A General Update Letter
Dear Friends and Family, January 5, 2008
Greetings in Christ and a Happy New Year from Paraguay! I hope this letter finds you all knowing and enjoying the best of God’s blessings as January begins. Here in Paraguay, we’re in the midst of vacations and the unforgiving tropical summer heat. The mango trees are growing heavy with their ripening fruits and I too, along with them, am growing a little heavier from the abundance of tropical fruit I’ve been eating myself. Thankfully, construction on the school here has kept me busy with some physical work, while playing soccer and volleyball at the church nearly every day has helped keep me in some sort of shape as well.
My Spanish is improving by leaps and bounds. I can communicate now with nearly everyone after they’ve repeated themselves two or three times, although I’m certain that when it’s my turn to speak I sound like a foreigner and my speech is often garbled. Needless to say, it’s been a good lesson in humility for me to learn another language.
School starts in about another month. Until then, I’ve got many preparations to get my lesson plans in order and many activities in the church to keep me busy. There are services three nights a week along with Sunday morning church, as well as sports nearly every evening. The church community here is very close: they live together, worship together, and spend time together all the time. When there’s nothing else to do, people sit around and talk. When there’s everything in the world to be busy about, they still take the time to sit around and talk. It’s an incredible blessing for me to be so actively involved and to be so warmly welcomed in such a closely-knit fellowship.
Thank you so much for all your continued prayers and support. I’m learning more and more everyday just how dependent I am on God’s grace for even life itself, and I know that your prayers play such an important role in the work that God is doing. I have seen so many miracles in the way God has provided for the church here, and in my own time here as well, that I can’t help but believe He’s behind it all. We serve an awesome and faithful God—one who cares for us and wants us to know just how much He is moving in every way in our lives.
Please continue to remember my family in your prayers, too. The situation at home continues to be very trying for every one of them, and I know for certain they are in need of much encouragement and support. God has used many of you in the past to build the faith of my family, and I pray and trust that He will continue to use many of you in the same way now.
I miss you all very much and look forward to seeing you again, Lord willing, at the end of this year.
All the best,
Jason
Greetings in Christ and a Happy New Year from Paraguay! I hope this letter finds you all knowing and enjoying the best of God’s blessings as January begins. Here in Paraguay, we’re in the midst of vacations and the unforgiving tropical summer heat. The mango trees are growing heavy with their ripening fruits and I too, along with them, am growing a little heavier from the abundance of tropical fruit I’ve been eating myself. Thankfully, construction on the school here has kept me busy with some physical work, while playing soccer and volleyball at the church nearly every day has helped keep me in some sort of shape as well.
My Spanish is improving by leaps and bounds. I can communicate now with nearly everyone after they’ve repeated themselves two or three times, although I’m certain that when it’s my turn to speak I sound like a foreigner and my speech is often garbled. Needless to say, it’s been a good lesson in humility for me to learn another language.
School starts in about another month. Until then, I’ve got many preparations to get my lesson plans in order and many activities in the church to keep me busy. There are services three nights a week along with Sunday morning church, as well as sports nearly every evening. The church community here is very close: they live together, worship together, and spend time together all the time. When there’s nothing else to do, people sit around and talk. When there’s everything in the world to be busy about, they still take the time to sit around and talk. It’s an incredible blessing for me to be so actively involved and to be so warmly welcomed in such a closely-knit fellowship.
Thank you so much for all your continued prayers and support. I’m learning more and more everyday just how dependent I am on God’s grace for even life itself, and I know that your prayers play such an important role in the work that God is doing. I have seen so many miracles in the way God has provided for the church here, and in my own time here as well, that I can’t help but believe He’s behind it all. We serve an awesome and faithful God—one who cares for us and wants us to know just how much He is moving in every way in our lives.
Please continue to remember my family in your prayers, too. The situation at home continues to be very trying for every one of them, and I know for certain they are in need of much encouragement and support. God has used many of you in the past to build the faith of my family, and I pray and trust that He will continue to use many of you in the same way now.
I miss you all very much and look forward to seeing you again, Lord willing, at the end of this year.
All the best,
Jason
Thursday, January 03, 2008
The New Year
The New Year celebration came and went here without much fuss on my part. New Year’s Eve was spent at the church with about a dozen good friends from the Shurance and Caballero families along with a few folks from the church and kids from the community. It rained, which made me feel a little sad and homesick, but which also made watching some of the younger folks play soccer on a wet slippery field really entertaining. We waited until after midnight to have the best and latest New Year’s meal of sausage, roast chicken, mandioca, potato salad, rice salad, tomato and cucumber salad, and soda. As on Christmas, the city lit up at midnight with fireworks as so many thousands of amateur pyros lit off so many tons of explosive gun powder.
People say that every new year is a good chance to reflect on the year past and to also wonder at the year ahead. Not wanting to forsake any tradition, I’ve been doing some reflecting of my own. Last year at this time, I was at the Urbana Missions Conference in St. Louis wondering where in tarnation I’d be today. Needless to say, after much prayer and preparation, I’ve arrived here in Paraguay, ready to serve and learn. God was incredibly faithful in getting me ready to go and securing in my heart the desire to come here, and I’m so thankful for the certainty He’s placed in my heart that here is where I needs be for now.
And as for next year? Just like one year ago, once again only Heaven knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing when the calendar strikes 2009. With my family in turmoil at home and friends in places all over the States (neigh, even all over the world), plenty of things I’d like to do and experiences I’d like to have (not the least of which is finally settle down a little bit and maybe get a job, or wife), and an open heart and mind for plenty of tasks, I really could end up anywhere doing any thing.
I once thought that after high school life choices would be easier and easier to make, with certain pathways becoming more and more clear every day ( ie. get a Georgetown political science degree and girlfriend, go to law school and make her my fiancé, find a job and take her as a wife.) Needless to say, the way I imagined things has turned out much differently, and it seems to me today as if I’m right at the beginning again with so many possibilities and so many choices.
I don’t complain, though. To have so many options is a unique and beautiful gift, and something I don’t ever want to take for granted. Still, however, it’s a tough gift at times, and one that builds up my faith in the work God’s going to do in my life tomorrow as I keep on trying to do the work He’s got for me today. Thankfully, I know some things for sure that I have to do every day, since I know “what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of me, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.¨ When it’s all said and done, perhaps the best thing I can do is to not let too much of me or own thinking get in the way of this necessary way of life. After all, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps..”
People say that every new year is a good chance to reflect on the year past and to also wonder at the year ahead. Not wanting to forsake any tradition, I’ve been doing some reflecting of my own. Last year at this time, I was at the Urbana Missions Conference in St. Louis wondering where in tarnation I’d be today. Needless to say, after much prayer and preparation, I’ve arrived here in Paraguay, ready to serve and learn. God was incredibly faithful in getting me ready to go and securing in my heart the desire to come here, and I’m so thankful for the certainty He’s placed in my heart that here is where I needs be for now.
And as for next year? Just like one year ago, once again only Heaven knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing when the calendar strikes 2009. With my family in turmoil at home and friends in places all over the States (neigh, even all over the world), plenty of things I’d like to do and experiences I’d like to have (not the least of which is finally settle down a little bit and maybe get a job, or wife), and an open heart and mind for plenty of tasks, I really could end up anywhere doing any thing.
I once thought that after high school life choices would be easier and easier to make, with certain pathways becoming more and more clear every day ( ie. get a Georgetown political science degree and girlfriend, go to law school and make her my fiancé, find a job and take her as a wife.) Needless to say, the way I imagined things has turned out much differently, and it seems to me today as if I’m right at the beginning again with so many possibilities and so many choices.
I don’t complain, though. To have so many options is a unique and beautiful gift, and something I don’t ever want to take for granted. Still, however, it’s a tough gift at times, and one that builds up my faith in the work God’s going to do in my life tomorrow as I keep on trying to do the work He’s got for me today. Thankfully, I know some things for sure that I have to do every day, since I know “what [is] good; and what doth the LORD require of me, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.¨ When it’s all said and done, perhaps the best thing I can do is to not let too much of me or own thinking get in the way of this necessary way of life. After all, “A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps..”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)