Hi Nathan.

Casa

So I'm home. I've been home for 2 days now. Its a mixed bag of feelings. Sadness and loneliness for leaving, but joy and excitement for the year to come, and all the feelings in between those. Its a rather tough transition back to life in the states. One thing I learned from leaving was that when you have 60 people that you love a lot, its hard to say goodbye to them all at one time. The unfortunate thing is that good byes are not something you can start like a week before to get some out of the way, so it has to be done all at one time. Bien feo. Eh o well.

In other news, in case you were concerned, my rats ended up being a piece of mettle blown by a fan clinking against the wall. That makes me glad I didn't punch a whole through anything.

Salire

So lightning hit our little internet thinger here at the home and we haven't had internet for a while. Its been a while since I've updated and there is a lot to so and I don't have much time or desire to write it out right now. Entonces, I'm going to give you this little nugget: I leave in less than a week. And I'm not ready. And I'm going to cry. Maybe. Probably.

Honestly it seems like I just got here and now its coming time for it to end. It feels like I'm really just now hitting my stride with the kids and beginning to understand them and their little idiosyncracies and all the small things one can only notice after being in one place for a while but shape and make the experience of said place. Waking up to 400 kids going to school right outside my window. The way the buildings have a weird multicolored line painted on the bottom of them. The unevenness of every single sidewalk or street. Praise and worship music playing in a church right behind my room 24/7. The way I smell (bad) after a little kid reads on my lap. The sum of all these things has made my experience here and when none of the things are bad, then the experience is incredible. This is what God's done this summer.

There's all the nugget I got.

Ok here's another one: I recently moved into a new room temporarily. In this room there is a bed that I sleep on. Right by this bed there is a wall that holds up the house. Inside this wall there is a rat that I hate. Everynight this rat makes noise only when I'm trying to go to bed. It sounds like he has a spoon that he's banging against piping in the wall. He's a jerk and I hate him. Last night I slept with my headphones on. Tonight I'm thining I may just punch through the wall. ...which means tomorrows blog will probably be about a dead rat, a broken hand and a well rested boy.

Piensa

So tonight was a special night. We had a worship night for the kids that involved singing, guitars, and me speaking words. It just so happened that the Lord had given me some words to speak and it just so happened that those words had to be in Spanish. The idea was to have a night where the kids could chill and worship a little bit and then a fellow intern, Jessica, spoke on how to worship and I gave a bit of my testimony. For whatever reason I felt the need write it and translate it myself in Spanish. I thought it would be more meaningful and I could use my expert voice inflections to transcend my linguistic inadequacies. The testimony itself turned out to be two and a half pages typed which I then translated with the sweat and blood from my own hands. It turned out to be quite an endeavor. I had our fearless leaders Kendon and Lee help me with refining it. It wasn’t translated badly. But it wasn’t good. Feo was the word I used to describe it in Spanish.

Nonetheless, I delivered it tonight. Read the whole thing in Spanish, expert voice inflections and all. I used my testimony as a spring board of growing up in a Christian home as a segue into the need for the ability to translate what you know in your mind to become real in your life. And this, I argued, was life’s purpose: The translation of thought to experience and in so doing enhancing perception of reality which allows for more vibrant thought and the pattern to recycle. Life allows what you think about to become what you experience which in turn makes the about more like the experience. Then, thinks I, if we can find the greatest possible thing to think about it should follow that the greatest possible use of time would be to experience the about and so enhance it. What greater thing is there than God? How easy is it to stop at thinking about God? We read our Bibles, pray, go to church, answer questions, use words that only fellow thinker-abouters understand. Its when the things we know of God are translated into real life that we can make progress. Obedience. Turning what we say into what we do. And in doing we are experiencing, and in experiencing we are refining our perception. New perception repaints who we are to add layer upon layer of coloring to the picture of our world that we thought we understood long ago. This is where true growth comes from and this is what I would call the Christian walk. Pretty soon we take a step back and find that, in the picture of Jesus we are showing to the world, the coloring of our life matches the shade of His hair or the hue of His eye or the texture of His cheek. And we find that we are one perfectly placed brush stroke in the masterpiece of our Lord.

Yeh, so I didn’t quite say it like that. In Spanish it more sounded like, “Jesus love me and I like God. We need obey. Want it purpose of God.” But that was mas o menos it (athought I’d say more menos than mas).

I ask that you pray for how this message fell with the kids. I have a tendency to think really big when I speak and so pray that they understood what they needed to. Pray that God would show them how to live life.

Revelation: I realized what my love language was today. Acts of valor. Killing dragons or orcs, flying, being able to wield a hammer really well and rights of passage into manhood fall under this category. This explains why I like Lord of the Rings. This also explains my lack of girlfriend.

Matematicas

I've got a story for you (Ags...(and not ags)).

I've started helping some of the kids here with math homework because I happen to be a has-been math major. Perfect! There is a kid in particular, Solomon by name, that I have been spending a particularly large amount of time with in pursuit of mathematical glory. And by that I mean that he's 15, probably ADD, behind in school and has trouble conceptualizing abstract mathematical processes. Imagine that. When I started working with him two weeks ago he was convinced he couldn't do math and was just stupid. I banned the words 'no le puedo' (I can't do it) and 'pero es dificil' (but its hard (said in a really whiny voice)) from coming out of his mouth. We would work for almost two and a half to three hours each day, most of that time being spent on making him focus on me and what I was saying. It doesn't help that I'm having to speak Spanish, a language I can hardly use, to teach math, a subject that is hard to teach, to a kid that can hardly focus. It got a little frustrating because we spent a lot of time and got very little results.

But recently things have started changing. He's speaking about himself more positively; his rhetoric is changing; he's acting more susceptible to what I'm trying to say. I haven't heard him say he can't do math. Woot. What encourages me about this is that it seems to be more of a reflection of changes going on internally. Like a lot of our kids here, Solomon has hurts that run far beneath the surface and deals with situations he can hardly imagine being otherwise. It seems that the time spent with him has, if nothing else, helped whatever junk is lieing beneath the surface. Or so I hope.

Is he any better at math right now? Eh, probably not much. But does he display potential far beyond what he thinks he has, to not only do math but do life in the way God's calling him to? H yes. So please, please pray for Solomon, for his mind, his learning and his focus.

Gotta love the healing power of math. Bless the good Lord for giving it to us....yup.

Factoid: I played in a soccer tournament at the home today against a bunch of loco Guatemaltecans. We had a team of white people. We lost our first game 10-1. But that 1? Mine. Then we played the team with kids from the home. We lost 7-4 but I think only because they felt sorry for us.

O and I've been doing handstands again, but don't tell my mom. Or my roommates.

Deseparecidos

I wrote this a while back. It's weird. I didn't know if I'd use it on the blog. Welp, here it is:

The abuse of power is not unfamiliar to this world. Those that have regularly oppress those that have not, or even those that have less. This is not political. This is not propaganda. This is a statement. A statement about what exists. A statement about abuse. Abuse that stands as a monument of the human condition, both past and present. Who do we find at the heart of abuse but man himself; man too consumed with his own desire, his own will, his own ability, his own power, to see beyond the only perception he knows: his own. Here we find selfishness.

Recently my fellow interns and I went to an art exhibit in Antigua dedicated to those that have disappeared during the political turmoil of Latin America for the last half century. The Deseparecidos they are called. Here I found my tribute to abuse, my monument to the human condition.

Enter the first room to find a movie playing of a giant head, singing praises to God for delivering him and his brother through a massacre that occurred in his village. It plays on a loop, going on and on, forever singing praises, forever singing hope into what seems hopeless. The next room features a succession of pictures then mirrors, pictures then mirrors. The pictures are of women and men. Women who were pregnant at the time of disappearance and the men that loved them, also disappeared. As you walk from picture to picture reading about the children that should have been born or the lives that should have been lived, you catch glimpses of yourself in the mirrors. But now the reflection is not just of yourself, it’s of a life that has been lived, a person that is still here. Your reflection begs the question, “you’ve read about the lives that were not, so now what do you do with your life that is”. Moving into the next room you find paintings, sculptures, and various pieces of art all crying out silently against the evils of abuse. On a wall there is a mural of faces etched out of stone. Scattered in between the faces are victim’s accounts of torture, of different body parts they had burned or severed, of different ways they suffered. In another room there is a row of seemingly normal pictures. Below each picture is a seemingly normal sentence. It’s not until you put the picture and sentence together that you feel the revulsion of the violent message it portrays. There is a picture of a necklace wrapped around a dirty finger, below it reads, “Her fragrance lingered on”. You read the sentence, “time became a razor”, and look up to see a brick wall smeared in blood.

The exhibit goes on with more pictures that are hard to look at, more stories that are hard to read. At the end, after having made it through the show, I couldn’t help but think what has to happen next. Do I continue to look at my reflection in the mirror and can I still see myself the same? What about the life that is now? How can it not remember the lives that were not? Do I let the depictions of torture numb me? Can I help but feel cynical? Everything’s going to crap, governments suck, people suck. No, cynicism is easy. Will time be a razor for me? Well my life's pretty easy, how about an anesthetic, slowly numbing me to pain in this life? Or could my life possibly be like that song, forever playing on a loop, over and over, despite the wars raging around me or the world going to crap, still singing praises to God for his faithfulness, his love, and his hope?

At the heart of abuse we find man. At the heart of man we find selfishness. And as the only answer to selfishness, we find God.

That’s my song.

Corri!

So today I sprinted.

That's not really something noteworthy until you consider the fact that its been almost 9 weeks since I was able to run. My ankle had started to get much better over the past week and I started kind of jogging 4 days ago. It's incredible. On an obscurely related note, its been impressive how much my Spanish has improved since returning from language school. Whereas before I could not even participate in a conversation, now I can understand a lot of what people say and respond halfway intelligently. But...I'm actually trying to have a conversation in Spanish right now with a guy and I realize I speak like I'm seven. But at least I'm speaking.

So all that was to say that God's been good. He's answered prayer. I asked some people so specifically pray for the ankle and lo and behold what happened. I also have been telling people to pray for the language barrier. It impressed me how fast I picked up what I was learning in language school. So really all that was to say thank you for the prayers. I know a lot of you have taken a few minutes to talk about me with God. It's helped in a practical way. I really do appreciate it in more ways than just being able to run. It's helped me further understand what it is to say God is good.

Story of the week: We have a garden at the home that has a tree with edible leaves. I was, uh, peer pressured into eating a leaf straight off the tree. Its a well known rule of thumb here that all fruits should be washed by a disinfectant to kill the maladies on the outside. I figured that didn't apply to edible leaves. Wrong. I got parasites. In my intestines. I had the skitters. It only lasted a day, but it was an epic day. Now that it's all over, I'm still kind of glad I did it. I liked the leaf, it tasted like zesty lettuce.

Hogar

So I’m back at the children’s home. We got back last Friday. It’s been incredible. I feel fairly at home here. Thus far I’ve played with kids all day. I’ll actually do work soon-ish. Tomorrow I get to work in a clinic at the orphanage with a doctor that only speaks Spanish. If it sounds like a bad idea, it probably is. That’s why I’m excited.

I also have realized I’ve never given actual information about what I’m doing. I did this because…I didn’t actually know what I’d be doing till, eh, today-ish. I’m working at a children’s home. Surprise! There are 52 kids here from ages 5-25. It is a large place; it has a school that 400 kids attend, a clinic, and a dentist’s office. I work with five other interns…who all happen to be girls. Hurray. (It’s actually been great, I’ve just started using words like “cute” and “adorable” slightly more than I used to, which was never). My official duty as an intern is to be a facilitator of the way of life the home tries to teach the ninos. We show them the love of Jesus. It’s an interesting role. Someday I will expand on that thought. My official duties are planning events for the kids, working in the clinic, and tutoring in math and science. A few of my favorite things.

So the loro is gone because I’m back at the home. I’m really kind of sad. We grew close. Yup.

Something that made me angry: I did laundry when I was in Antigua. I lived in an 8 x 10 room. It had very little furniture and nowhere rogue pieces of clothing could hide. I came here with matching sets of all clothes that require matches…like socks. When I got my laundry back I had two mismatched socks. Two!!!! One is ok. Two is dumb. I’ve probably had at least one mismatched sock in every load of laundry since I’ve been in college. I thought for sure I could keep track of my clothes living in an 8x10 space. No. No I can’t. Now my socks are gone.

Loro

So, I don't really have much to say today. I've been putting in 8 hours at the escuela (as opposed to the normal 4) because one of my fellow interns was sick for a couple days and was unable to use the hours she payed for. I, naturally, am mooching off of her unused hours for more time at the school. It was a good thing, I think it helped. 8 hours is a long time to do anything, however, but it was worth it. I now know 6 tenses and have been introduced to the compound tenses...so it will soon be like 10. 10 tenses is a lot. I suck at all of them. But it'll get better. Poco a poco como mi maestra dice.

Anyway with all the school, my mind has been thinking about nothing but Spanish and its hard to think of entertaining or deep blog material when I can hardly tell someone how old I am or what my favorite animal is...

Segue. I did want to update those concerned about the Loro situation. We have been getting along better. He does, however, still let out this moan when he wakes up. Our house dad told us he one time ripped off the beak of a smaller bird they had, so its possible the sound could be an imitation of his latest victims dieing scream. He's not very nice evidently but I like him. I took some pictures. If he looks evil, its because he is. I couldn't get too close because I would like my nose to stay on my face, but we are friends, really.

We return to the home de ninos Friday. I'm ready to take a few days off of school and help some people. Best kind of education there is.

Viajo.

So I'm still in Antigua, still learning Spanish. I've recently acquired a new linguistic goal that is a little above the level of a 10 year old. I need to be able to talk to a doctor. There is a clinic in the children's home that I will be able to work at, except the doctor only speaks Spanish. One of the other interns also works there, but she speaks the language just a tad better. The doctor lets her help with minor surgeries and delivering babies. I'd love to do that, but I'm afraid the doctor would like...hand me a newborn and tell me rock it gently and I think she'd be saying to dunk it in a tub of water. So there's yet work to do.

Today we took a trip to a volcano called Pacaya. It was incredible. There is a dried up lava field that still has little streams of lava running down the side. We could walk up next to it and poke it if we so desired. I wanted to poke it and fully intended to, but as I was walking up to it our tour guide started yelling that it was time to go. I turned around and went back, but I regret doing so. Now I can't stop thinking about what the consistency of magma would be like.

I have met a lot of interesting people walking around Antigua and traveling and such. Its been incredibly interesting and has kind of made me think. I've met a lot of young, inspired college kids like myself that are traipsing around Guatemala eager to either live life to the fullest or change the world. I met a Canadian studying to be a physical therapist, a quad-lingual Swedish girl teaching school in a small Guatemalan town, a couple of Notre Dame students, one minoring in poverty studies, and missionary after missionary working in different clinics, children's homes, and social work organizations around the country. A lot of these people remind me alot of myself in their thought process, and the way they live life, their desires and goals, even their rhetoric. We also recently toured a macadamia nut farm. The tour itself was like 10 minutes long and the lamest thing I've ever seen, but the man that owns the farm happened to be there and talk to us about all things not-macadamia. He's an old man with a pride issue, but he runs a very successful farm and has a lot of green farming projects going on to help save the world. He was incredibly interesting and kind of a jerk all at the same time. The speal he gave us was about changing the world and doing things that matter and he gave all sorts of examples of how he was doing that. The best way I could describe the feel of it was humanistic and selfish. The problem was, it also sounded a lot like me. I want to change the world and make people's live better, like he was talking about, but there has to, I thought, but a difference between me and him. There is a Difference - and it has to be capitalized. To solve a disease, like the world's problems, you don't just treat the symptoms, you treat the source. Everyone agrees about that. What people disagree on is the source. To the old man people were the answer, not the problem. We were the ones that had to fix things, we were fighting against this cold, hateful universe. We were the beautiful product of elegant evolutionary processes. That carries a lot of responsibilities. I, however, tend to not think that highly of people. Looking inside myself I seem to be fundamentally flawed. The deepest part of me isn't right. Any problem I have directly comes from stuff inside of me or inside of someone else. So it seems the stuff in people is what we are fighting against. Change the people, change the problems. Thats the Difference. So this incredibly long paragraph is really about wasting life. Its easy to be inspired and try to battle the evils of the world. Many college students, like the ones above, are like this. The difference comes from what you are battling. I don't want to battle the wrong thing.

If you've read this far you are obviously a faithful reader and are also obviously wondering how my relationship with the parrot is. Well, he's still waking me up, but he's been nicer about it. He likes to yell the spanish word for parrot, "loro". Its really kind of cute. Things are looking up.

Some pictures are on my facebook.

Escuela.

So I'm in language school. Aprendo espanol. I learn Spanish. It's in a town called Antigua which is a about 45 minutes away from the language school. Its snuggled up right next to a dormant (I think) volcano ironically called Agua. I'm here for two weeks and then I'm thrown back into hustle and bustle of a thriving underprivileged children's home. These two weeks are muy importante because my ability to help and affect these kids lives seems to hinge on the all important communication barrier. All I need to be is proficient enough to talk to a 10 year old and I'll be great. It seems like a long way off. I'm working hard though, it'll happen.

I've been thinking that its weird that there is all this stuff that must be taken care of before going about the business of the Lord's will. Then I thought, well gee , I suppose this is the business of the Lord's will. I'm here to affect some kids, I thought, but it turns out I'm here to serve wherever I am with whatever I am doing. The Lord is constantly about going ten thousand miles an hour, he can be praised in the tranquil as well as the busy. This time of chilling (by chilling I mean studying Spanish for 6 hours a day) is my preparation, my 40 days of fasting before my ordained time of ministry. Except a little Guatemalan woman serves me food and the devil only makes fun of how I speak Spanish. But...He won't give me more than I can handle, ya? No se, pero I'll praise him even while learning language.

Three of my fellow interns and I are all staying in a house together. Its a quaint little Guatemalan casa. Its like half outdoors. Theres an office, 4 bedrooms, and a kitchen that surround a little outdoor courtyard with a drain in the middle because it rains everyday. So, I walk out of my bedroom, and I'm outside. In the kitchen there is a table with a piece of glass as its tablecloth. In the morning the sun reflects off it and I can see all the scratches from the glass plates that we eat with. I feel sad for the poor table. I'm real careful with anything I pick up because the table...cries out in pain every time I set anything down. I swear its going to shatter after I take a drink one day. There is also a parrot that lives right outside my room. He doesn't have a cage, he just chills in the house, which is actually outside. He likes to yell. He's woken me up twice by yelling. There is a little 11 year old boy that lives in the house and when I first was woken up by the yelling I thought it was the kid right outside my door. I was going to get up and say stern things in English to him, but then I realized the yelling was coming from my roof. I asked the parrot today to stop yelling. We'll be friends eventually.

Anyway I don't really have access to the internet at mi casa and I'm writing this post in the biblioteca at my school. If its a little disjointed I apologize. But yes, life is good in here. I've got 9 more days to become comparable to a 10 year old. Oh and I've taken pictures. One day I'll post them...sorry mom and dad.

De Guatemala

So. I'm in Guatemala. I'm here to do the Lord's will. I'm at an orphanage called New Life Children's Home that has 52 kids and an incredible ability to help their lives become something worthwhile. It also has a school that over 400 kids attend and a clinic that provides services to the community for little to no money. Its an incredible thriving community. And how I fit into it? Mmm, I mostly make funny faces and weird noises right now till I get the Spanish thing down a little better. On Sunday three other interns and I take off for two weeks of language school which, good Lord willing, will vastly improve my speekin' skeelz. It's ok though, because I make really good faces. Anyway, I'm here to do the Lord's will.

Guatemala is an interesting place. Breathtaking beauty walks down the street hand in hand with abject poverty. Hundreds of thousands of people live in ramshackle housing thrown all over the sides of tired hills struggling to cope with the burden of their lives. When mother nature gets violent, people die. Mudslides are a common occurrence that routinely kill thousands of people at a time. The government, of course, is too preoccupied with their own internal power struggles and schemes of killing their next political opponent to worry about the lives of a few million people. Organized crime and gangs are prevalent. I don't get to walk down the street to the store because I'm white, which obviously implies I have money, and an easy target. Though, for all its problems, Guatemala is enchanting. God's working here; it's become obvious to me he speaks Spanish well. I get to be some small part of that work. So yeah, I'm here to do the Lord's will.

On a similar note, I ate some sort of chicken casserole today that was held together by solid mayonnaise. Seriously, it was like a glue. It could have turned into an arts and crafts project had I brought glitter. Luckily, even though I hate mayonnaise, I hate glitter more so I was happy when it didn't turn into an arts and crafts project. Going off that segue, I'm going to post pictures of this place..as soon as I take them. One day I'm going to use my camera, I won't promise it will be soon, but one day.