With only 8 short weeks left to go before I leave (!), I’ve been trying prepare for my trip, one way of which has been attempting to critically reflect on WHY I’m doing this. When I was struggling to make my decision whether or not to commit, I listed some pros and cons, and I also listed my top three desires for my first year/job out of college. The top three I wrote, in this order, was 1) a small class size, preferably under 20, 2) to live with my best friend, and 3) to be with a supportive church and community. Of those 3, I will get possibly only my last wish. At times, adventurous and excited as I am, I panic and stress a little as I worry about what in the world I’ve gotten myself in to: a class of 28 students, a place in which I know no one and nothing, and very little idea as to what the church/community situation will be like. When those panicky times come, I have realized I need to be personally assured of the reasons I’m going. Although many of these reasons have been vague wishes long formed by my wanderlusting spirit, I’ve been trying to clarify and develop them, so while I am there, and perhaps feeling discouraged and homesick, I can reflect on them, work toward them, and also communicate them to others.
(Short caveat: many of the following ideas are not mine alone, and have been developed and at times directly quoted from other blog posts/articles/authors, all links I will list at the end of this post, and give the name of the author when I directly quote)
Moving to Honduras is not just an end for me, a check mark to be completed on my bucket list, but it is a means to various, complex ends. The most simple reason I am going is to experience a diverse and beautiful creation. One of my favorite hymns is “For the Beauty of the Earth,” in which we praise God and express gratitude:
“For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies…
For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light…”
I am so excited to see more of the diversity of this creation that God has given for our delight! More than that, He has given creation to us to testify of His sovereignty, power, and providential love. Through tasting and seeing and hearing and smelling and touching creation’s goodness, I believe I can begin to taste and experience God’s goodness (Ps. 34:8).
If I were going only to enjoy and experience the beauty of creation though, I wouldn’t be going for more than 2 weeks. Rather, I’d just take a higher paying job in the States that allowed me to travel more often and more broadly. However, I want to not only experience the diversity of the created earth, but the diversity of God’s creation in humankind. As a result of being made in the image of God, humans, too, are creative, and in response to that drive of nature and the cultural mandate, have gone on to create awesome things: art, music, dance, food, communities, humor, etc. There is a richness of cultural diversity out in the world, of which I have tasted only a tiny bit and understood even less. I am eager to finally do more than just pass through a different culture for a brief time, but to live life among and with it. I know there will be times when this new culture will clash with my own cultural expectations, and I know it won’t be easy, but I am looking forward to what I can learn by going out of my white, middle-class American, Reformed Christian comfort zone.
Through the prolonged time spent in a different culture, I expect to be reminded, sometimes in ease, as I delight in the beauty and thrill of zip lining through a tropical jungle, sometimes in difficulty, as I struggle to accept another exhausting day ending without hot water or a Trader Joe’s around the corner, that “I am not complete” (Jeff Goins, “Why You Should Travel Young”) and that my culture is not complete. Mark Twain, in a famous quote from Innocents Abroad, says:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
I hope and pray that I come away from my time in Honduras, however long it may be, as a better person, someone with more humility, compassion, empathy, and gratitude. I believe these qualities can and are cultivated without travel (long or short term), after all the Holy Spirit can and will work sanctification in a person through a variety of means and places, however, I believe traveling and doing difficult things can be especially fruitful in cultivating such attitudes and qualities.
In regards to humility, I want to understand and experience that truth and goodness are found in other cultures, people, and churches. My views are not the only right ones and my culture’s way of doing things is not the only or even the best way. My culture’s commodification of time might hurt us more than it helps us. My culture’s understanding of family could perhaps be broadened. The thing I find simultaneously most intimidating and exciting is the prospect of entering and participating in a very different church from which I have ever experienced. I have benefitted immensely from and appreciate greatly the Reformed understanding and articulation of the Bible and Christianity. It is not a tradition I see myself ever leaving, but in my town in Honduras such a specific denominational church will not be available. I don’t know where this quote comes from, but it is something I will need to keep in mind: “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” I expect to be challenged by what I may see and experience in a new church, but I also am trusting that God will be faithful to me and to His Church—providing a true Church who preaches the gospel, encourages Christian fellowship, and enables spiritual growth, even if it is different from what I know. Different is not necessarily bad, and I personally as well as the tradition I come from can learn from Christians around the world. Specific details may differ, but we are united as one Body in Christ, and I am eager to see what God is doing with and through the Church in Honduras.
My hopes about learning compassion, empathy, and gratitude are closely related, and a recent sermon at my church really helped me reflect on this more. At my church, we’ve been in a sermon series on Proverbs, and examining various aspects of wisdom. This past Sunday, the sermon was on the wisdom of righteousness. Using a variety of verses from Proverbs, the pastor zeroed in on the relationship between righteousness, wisdom, and poverty, saying that “how we relate to the poor is a key indicator of righteousness” (Prov. 29:7 “A righteous man knows the rights of the poor; a wicked man does not understand such knowledge”). Christlikeness does not blend well with apathy. Personally, I tend to be an apathetic person. At most, I’ll have flashes of grief, frustration, sorrow, repentance, and compassion, but often my response goes no further and certainly not to any productive action. After thinking “That’s terrible/tragic/etc” I often move to “Oh well” and then forget about it.
In the sermon, the pastor admitted he had no clear answers for what the Church and Christians should or could do about poverty (which he equates with powerlessness), but he wanted to push us to critically reflect on it, admit our active or at the very least complicit part in poverty, as well as that we ourselves are poor in different ways, to begin to ask what we can do, and then to act upon those Biblically formed reflections. In a similar way, I have no clear answers for what living in Honduras will ultimately lead me to. I know I am unable to go there and somehow become some kind of savior of my students or my community. It would be wrong of me to think that. However, I do expect that living in a third world country will radically alter me, even if I will be blessed to live there on a much higher salary than most of my neighbors. One illustration the pastor gave that struck me related to the popular series the Hunger Games, and how many people relate to, or think they relate to, Katniss, of the poorest and most oppressed faction. As he pointed out, though, most of the American readers of the series at least, are not Katniss or from faction 12, but are the Capital, those rolling in luxurious and at times disgusting, wasteful wealth. Ironically, as I write this, I sit in a cafe, sipping from my $5 latte, and typing on my expensive laptop. Yet how often I have thought of myself as a “poor college student.” I am so outrageously, wonderfully blessed, having grown up as a middle class American citizen, and I take it for granted so often, sinning both against God who has blessed me and my fellow brothers and sisters around the world who live on so much less. I expect and hope my time in Honduras will cause me to be so much more grateful for what I have been given, what I expect and take for granted, as well as give me greater compassion and empathy for those who have grown up with so much less than I. My pastor called us to identify with the poor, and moving to Honduras is a small start to doing that. He also called us to carry one another’s burdens, pointing out that often we think and say, “I don’t have enough yet, but when I do I will be more generous.” However, we never reach a point where we feel like we have quite enough, taking an increase in wealth as an excuse to be “less thrifty,” rather than “more generous.” But the gospel calls us to give, even when, or perhaps especially when, it causes us to suffer. I don’t think being wealthy is, in itself, a sin, but I do believe it is a gift that we are called to use wisely and generously. I hope my time in Honduras will teach and prepare me to be wise and generous in my wealth—be it monetary wealth or a wealth of skills and knowledge I have been blessed with as the result of an American birth and education.
So ultimately, I want Honduras to be more than an experience, but my life. I seriously doubt I will spend the rest of my life in Honduras, or even outside of the States, but I want my life to be a life of meaning and service, of growth in understanding, in humility, in gratitude, in compassion, and in wise, righteous living. I don’t know ultimately the details of how this will work out, and how my time in Honduras will contribute more specifically to future goals, but I do have ideas. I am interested in the idea of a future of education in lower socio-economic areas and how education can be a freeing thing, improving lives and communities. I am also interested in the idea of either teaching Spanish or teaching with Spanish, and so I hope to come back from Honduras relatively fluent. If not using it for teaching, perhaps using it for some other service in the the growing number of Spanish-speaking communities across America. Finally, I am interested in pursuing higher education in special education, and using that to perhaps serve students with special needs outside of the States, in places where there are little or no resources to begin to understand, help, and educate such students. Although it’s clear I don’t know yet how or where I want to serve in the future, I believe my time in Honduras will be good preparation for any of those options.
I have a lot of vague, muddled ideas and future goals and hopes, and it scares me to even type them on paper much less broadcast them on the world wide web, as I have no idea if I will ever attain anything in any of these areas. However, I trust in God with my future—in Honduras and beyond, for He alone knows the plans He has for me. As Proverbs 16:9 says “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” and again in 19:21 “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.” I pray that in all my planning and preparation I will pray for His will and blessing, trusting that He is establishing my work, even when it is frustrating and apparently fruitless. He is working all things to my good (Rom. 8:28) and in Him my work is not in vain (I Cor. 15:58). May He be glorified in my work and in this blog!
Resources that influenced these thoughts, and I highly recommend you check them out!
Resources that influenced these thoughts, and I highly recommend you check them out!
“Moving to Honduras is not just a 'bucket list' trip” http://www.mlive.com/living/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/09/moving_to_honduras_is_not_just.html
“Why Christians Should Travel” http://stillsearching.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/why-christians-should-travel/
“Love Thy Neighbor” http://www.raysd.com/global/love-thy-neighbor
“Why You Should Travel Young” http://convergemagazine.com/travel-young-5278/
“The Wisdom of Righteousness” Sermon by Pastor Geoff Ziegler available here: http://palos.trinitypreschurch.com/sermons#series_13
