Oh the piano

I can’t believe it’s November 26 already.  SO crazy.  I get to see my family in 16 days.  I can FINALLY play the piano.  That is one of the things that I’ve missed the most.  Normally I play piano almost every day, even when I’m busy with school.  It’s fun, it’s a great emotional outlet, it’s a way to worship, and it’s simply an extension of my hands.  I’m certainly no prodigy (believe me, I’m really not) but I have played for 15 years and there’s some amount of ability that comes with that longevity.

This was at a composition festival when I was somewhere between 10 and 13.

Without a piano to play, my hands are often restless, and several times throughout the semester I’ve done some really random crafts with whatever I could find around my room, including folding and taping together a miniature Christmas village out of index cards (previously decorated with Latin America history facts) and hand-sewing a doll out of an old tank top .  I’ve done Sudoku, origami, recorded myself singing very mediocre harmonies with myself, attempted to draw, journaled and prayed, and cried when I just wanted to play.  It’s been good to not have a piano because as hard as it’s been, I’ve been forced to come back to God when nothing else is fulfilling my piano-playing needs.

I’m currently in a middle of an interesting little autobiographical book written by an army chaplain, who took literally the idea of giving thanks in every situation—except he changed it a little bit, and I disagree with his approach.  He gave thanks, and instructed others to give thanks for the negative and hard things in life.  If a soldier came to him because he wanted prayer for his impending international employment and the fact that his wife was suicidal, they thanked God for these unfortunate situations.  For this army chaplain and the people he ministered to, this approach worked.  God answered many prayers by changing mindsets, healing situations, and increasing trust—and much joy was the result.  However, it’s confusing to thank God for the negative things in life—and that’s not what the scripture suggests.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul and friends write:

Be joyful always; pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Give thanks IN all circumstances.  God allows hardship in our lives, and I don’t think He expects us to be joyful that our family member passed away without knowing Jesus, or that our best friend has cancer, or that we got in a car accident.  However, He does expect us to trust that His will for our life is greater than anything we can understand, and He teaches us through our experiences, whether good or bad.  When I struggled with illness throughout my entire spring semester, God taught me a lot about letting my joy be dependent on Him and not on my circumstances.  This semester as I grew accustomed to living in a new place and making do without the things I’m used to, God taught me more about being thankful in all circumstances.

Joy is not a new concept for me :)  Oh childhood.

At home in the US, I have a phone and I can call my friends or my family when I need to talk or have a question.  I have easy access to a broom, mop, and sponge for cleaning, and bedbugs and dengue fever aren’t really plausible possibilities.  I can take a shower without keeping my mouth tightly shut to keep the little buggers out.  I can take the car and drive somewhere.  I always have a piano readily available.  I live with my best friends.  Guatemala has been a wonderful experience, but I’ve had to make do without all of these things.  But instead of detracting from my trip, they’ve improved it—because I’ve grown closer to God in the process, and learned yet again that my joy is dependent only on Him, and He doesn’t change.

PS: The next couple weeks I will have lots of free time and I’m really in a blog-post-writing mood.  So, to my myriad of readers (just kidding I don’t think there really are that many), is there anything you would like me to write about?  I’m assuming most of you already know me pretty well and wouldn’t care to see a “10 things you wouldn’t guess about me” post, and as much as I wish I could write like The Everywhereist, another favorite blog (beware: if swearing offends you, don’t visit), my sense of humor is usually not satisfactory for a comedic post.

But still, I want to write.  And I want to write what you want to read.  So please comment and give me ideas—I’m open to anything!!

An everyday adventure

When I started my blog, I also started to read other blogs and now I follow 10-15 different ones.  One of my favorites is a charming blog written by a family friend who’s currently on exchange in Switzerland.  She uses many different formats in her posts, and recently she’s done a few in second person (and by recently I mean October-ish).  When you read the post, you can imagine yourself having the experience and it’s more personal and interesting.  I love that idea, so I’m going to use it today as I enlighten you all about one of my favorite things in Guatemala: the chicken bus.

It’s 7:30am, but it’s not too early for the Guatemalans.  Everyone is out and about, heading to school or work.  Lots of people walk, but many others, like you, have chosen to take the chicken bus, or la camioneta.  You dodge traffic in the busy 7^th Calle and walk past the big outdoor market, whose stalls are opening as vendors arrive and set up.  Behind the market you find the chicken bus mecca—a colorful parking lot of refurbished school buses that are a very popular form of transportation all over Guatemala.  Each bus is painted bright colors, save the occasional yellow one, and plastered with stickers on the inside and outside, which could include anything from crosses to verses to sexy ladies to bus conduct expectations.  Their destinations are indicated by a large, seemingly handwritten (though legible) display above the front window.  Aided by the ayudantes’ auctioneer-style calls ringing in your ears—“aChimalaChimalaChimal!”  “GuateGuate!”  “PastOres! PastOres!”—you find the bus that’s heading the right direction, squeeze between it and the adjacent bus, and climb in.  Looking around, you find a seat.  The bus already had several people, so the driver pulls out as you dig in your bag for the fare.  A trip to Pastores, a town about 15 minutes out of Antigua, costs only Q2.50—about thirty cents.

The mecca.  This is one of several rows of buses.

The driver of the bus is aided by an ayudante (which literally means helper), whose job is actually quite impressive.  He hangs out the door of the bus calling out its destinations (in a voice that appears to have been specially developed for this particular vocation), hops out to help the driver cross blind intersections or make tight turns, and collects payment from the passengers.  The camioneta duo seem to have some kind of telepathic communication, and you wonder if the ayudante has teleportation powers as well, because they always seem to be aware of the other person’s thoughts and whereabouts, and even when the ayudante jumps off the bus and seems to disappear as the bus zooms forward, he manages to reappear in the doorway before long.  You sit back, enjoying a seat to yourself, when the ayudante begins to walk down the aisle to collect the money.  You pay him, and then look out the window at the beautiful Guatemalan countryside.  You pass corn fields, clotheslines surrounded by plants, and green patchwork hills with cows grazing.  After cruising down the highway for a few minutes you arrive at your destination and as the bus is pulling up you walk to the front, signaling that you need to get off.

Here's a couple buses.  You can see its destination above the driver's window (this one says Antigua Guate/Alotenango)

The day goes by, and when you’re ready to come home in the late afternoon you know that the bus won’t be quite as peaceful as it was in the morning.  You walk to the main road and wait until the bus comes careening around the corner.  Stepping in, you see that it’s already full of people and you sit next to a young woman holding a baby.  You’re soon sandwiched on your other side by an elderly farmer holding a towel in his weathered hands.  After a couple minutes, the ayudante squeezes himself through the people standing in the aisle to collect payment, and you wonder how he can possibly remember who’s already paid and who just got on (except for you, because your white skin makes you look pretty different from the rest of the commuters).  You actually enjoy the crowd of people crammed into the bus, though many other gringos beg to differ.  It’s an authentic taste of Guatemalan culture.

As you come back into Antigua, the bus bumps along the cobblestones, crowding its way through narrow roads and around tight corners.  The roads in Antigua are mostly one-way, except for when a car decides they’re not, and there aren’t many right-of-way rules so sometimes it seems pretty haphazard.  Luckily the cobblestones force vehicles to travel more slowly, and this significantly calms things down.  If you look out the window you’ll see that you’re often heading straight into the path of other cars and getting out of the way just in time.  This type of driving is perfectly common in Guatemala, and while it would be terrifying in the US, somehow you’re not worried.  The bus pulls back into its mecca and you get off, heading back through the market which is now in full swing.  Smells of fried chicken fill your nose and if you’re not careful, gritty exhaust fills your eyes as you glance at the garbage on the ground, homeless dogs skillfully avoiding the traffic, and the row of shoe-shining boys.  You soak it all up, thankful for another Guatemalan adventure.

Relying on my Jesus

I’m going to share a struggle here.  Don’t get too excited, it’s nothing horrible or heart-stopping.  But it took me a couple weeks to get a post written for two reasons: My darn pride doesn’t like it when I admit a struggle in an area that I have experience in (like travel), and I didn’t want to sound like an ungrateful complainer (I still don’t).  I decided this post needed to go up because of the rebuttals of those reasons: Though I fly a lot and have even been out of the country a few times, I am not the experienced world traveler that I’d like to be and I’m still challenged when I venture to new places, and I hope that hearing how Jesus helped me through will be encouraging to others, especially if they’re experiencing the same feelings.

I love living in Guatemala.  My host family is wonderful, Spanish is enjoyable, the other students are great, and it’s just one big adventure.  But most adventures come with some challenges, and late October held a challenging week for me.  I normally eat very healthfully at home, and my diet here is very different, and much more processed.  I’m a pretty messy person (my stuff seems to be alive. I open a suitcase or drawer and a bomb goes off and all my clothes run away and spread out all over the floor) but I like cleanliness.  That sounds totally contradictory, but what I mean is that I like my clothes to be spread out all over a clean floor, I don’t keep rotting food or dirty dishes lying around, and I like counters and surfaces to be sans crumbs, germs, and dust.  My room in Antigua always has dirt and fine gravel on the floor, mold living on one of the tables, and plenty of dust and spiders in the corners.  Finally, the going joke is that I have sangre dulce (sweet blood) because anytime I’m anywhere near any kind of biting bugs, I’m covered in bites.  Well, that’s no different here.

Normally all of those things don’t bother me—they’re part of the adventure.  But I guess I had just had too much.  The food was not sitting well with my body, I was covered in bug bites, and sneezing from the dust.  I missed America.

I had to make a choice.  Either I let these frustrations take over my attitude and complain to my friends, or I gave them to God.   I chose the latter, because this semester I’ve really been focusing on depending on Him one hundred percent—He’s the only one who’s completely constant and completely omnipotent, so why depend on anyone else?  I’m a verbal processor so I like to talk about everything that’s on my mind with my close friends (and anyone else who’ll listen).  This is fine and dandy, but God is the only one who can truly bring peace.  I just wrote that other post about peace and when I put Philippians 4:6-7 in there I realized how much that verse has been exemplified in my life this semester.

Here in Guatemala, I have no piano to play as an outlet.  I have no internet at my house to waste time on.  I don’t have my best friends from school that I’m used to confiding in.  And I have lots of free time.  When I came to Guat, I decided that I wanted to deepen my relationship with God and draw closer to Him in every area of my life.  I wanted to be fully reliant on Him.  I have been making an effort to bring every single request to God and let Him take care of it.  That verse in Philippians says not to be anxious, but to be thankful and in through prayer present everything to God, and we will receive profound peace.

Well, it’s true.

As I prayerfully pushed through the frustrations, instead of becoming grumpy and resenting my situation, God continued to refresh me and I was filled with thankfulness and patience.  The issues didn’t go away, but neither did God at my side.  It was humbling and interesting to wrestle with the unfamiliar feelings of frustration towards a new culture, and because I leaned on Jesus the whole process was much easier.

Postscript:

My friend Heather took some kind of cultural communications class last year and she informed me that the feelings I was experiencing are normal in a progression of phases that occur while living in a new culture, and she experienced them too when she lived in Cambodia for a summer.  The name of the stage I was in was resentment, though I did not resent Guatemala because I let God take the reins instead of my selfish heart.  The next stage is acceptance, and I am happy to say that I think I have passed into that one.  I’m back to being okay with my dusty floor and itchy, bumpy feet.  I am so thankful that I get to live here.  I still need Jesus desperately for patience and fulfillment, but that fact will never change :)

All-surpassing peace

A few weeks after I arrived in Guatemala, I found myself feeling frustrated and a little overwhelmed.  At that point I was still taking 4 hours of Spanish a day, and that particular week I had learned about 200 verbs—my roommate told me I was conjugating verbs out loud in my sleep, and I’m not surprised.  I was still getting adjusted to living with the host family—with three delightful, adorable, energetic, and loud children, and taking statistics and history.  I have a science mind, and I don’t remember any history unless I study a lot, and I have a hard time staying motivated.   I think I was in pre-test mode, trying not to think about how much history I didn't know as I tidied my messy room and listened to the kids play and laugh and cry, all the while watching my door so the ever-curious 1-year-old Maria wouldn’t come in and taste my earbuds, rearrange the things on my nightstand or attempt to write a book on my laptop.

All of a sudden I found myself wondering if maybe I wouldn’t be able to handle a life in the mission field overseas.  If I was feeling this unsettled with noisy kids and a messy room, how would I ever be able to deal with the chaos and unexpected adventures and mishaps that are bound to show up when working in a third world country?  I’ve wanted to go into international missions for a long time, and while I certainly was not set on this idea, I had always thought I would be great at living in a third world country and taking everything in stride.  Why was I feeling so unsettled?

I’m an adaptable and flexible person, and I really do feel at home quickly in new places, especially because my God is the same everywhere I go.  And then I realized, my God is the same everywhere I go.

And so is His peace.

I don’t need to be in my dorm in Michigan or at home or at Cannon Beach or anywhere else.  It doesn’t matter how loud or quiet my surroundings are.  It doesn’t make a difference whether or not there’s hot water, or pressure, or parasites.  The peace of God passes all understanding, and when He calls someone to work in a challenging area (like a third world country) He gives them the strength and the peace they need if they just confide in Him.  In Ephesians it says that Christ Himself is our peace.  Jesus promised us His peace in John 14 and told us not to let our hearts be troubled.  Paul instructs us in Colossians to let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since we were called to peace as members of His body.

Philippians 4:6-7 says “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

After God reminded me of His promises, I was filled with His unconditional peace.  My circumstances don’t need to change for the fruits of the Spirit to manifest in my life.

Hola perrita!

Yesterday I was walking home from the market and as I got to the door the boys came outside telling me to be quiet.  I had no idea why, because even when Maria is sleeping there's no need to be quiet--plus the boys are always loud regardless.  But when I walked into the house I saw Kenneth on the floor with a pile of stuffed animals...

...and a tiny PUPPY.

Meet Burbujita (little bubble) the cocker spaniel.

She is so tiny and soft and squishy.  She slips all over the floor and chases bare feet.

Ella está muy pequeña.  Tan linda!

Of course that's not the only thing that's happened in the last 2 weeks since I've posted on my blog (sorry about that.....) and I promise another post will be coming soon.  But I figured this merited a post of its own, asap.

Folks, we have a puppy.