Lake Day

We actually go on exciting adventures on the weekends now because we have friends! This weekend we went to the lake with the same family that took us to the coffee plantation last weekend.

The cute child we took with us.

Evangelica

As promised, better pictures of one of the campuses where I work:

Edificio cuatro. The building where we have our large group weekly meeting.

The cafeteria where students hang out.

Awning that runs the length of the very steep hill we climb multiple times a day.

Overlooking the cafeteria.

Systems Efficiency

On our second day here, we went to a store that sold household goods. Our group of ten descended on the cramped aisles packed with trash cans, pots and pans, dish towels, and baskets. That’s when a store worker came over and tried to take my items away. She smiled, spoke very quickly in Spanish, and took a set of wooden spoons out of my hands.

It turns out, the store’s check out system goes something like this:

• Patron grabs items and puts them in basket.

• Store worker takes items and puts them on a table in the back of the store.
• Patron finishes shopping and finds their pile.
• Patron waits for worker to go through pile, totaling the cost of each item with pencil, paper, and pocket calculator.
• Store worker hands cashier the total, with the name of the patron written on the top.
• Patron waits in very long line, then waits as cashier sorts through slips of paper for the one with the correct name.
• Patron pays.
• Patron goes back to the table holding purchased items and waits while store worker packages them up.

We lovingly refer to this store as the “Chaos Store.” The Chaos Store was my first exposure to systems inefficiency in Latin America.

Our staff team spent Tuesday praying on a mountain. Campus Crusade has two days each year fully devoted to prayer and worship. Every staff team around the world spends the day in prayer. During the prayer times that were focused on local ministry, a lot of the prayer requests centered around finances. Campus Crusade is very focused on raising local resources. Local resources enable sustainable ministry and increase ministry ownership. Developing local resources means avoiding large financial gaps between “national staff members who know Americans” and “national staff who don’t.” Local resources are a big part of the reason that Campus Crusade’s ministry is so far reaching. Still, it’s hard enough, and scary enough, to raise support in the US. Raising support in a developing country…is just another thing altogether.

Even setting aside the fact of poverty itself, there are still more complications than I even began to think about before I came. And this is where we get back to inefficient systems. El Salvador doesn’t have a fully functioning mail system. I mean, letters will get where they need to go…eventually…probably. But the reality of crime in El Salvador means that very few people actually use the mail system for business purposes. Businesses rely entirely on courier services. No one sends money through the mail. People pay their bills at banks, or at the office of the business needing payment.

Campus Crusade’s current donation system relies upon one man, Carlos. He drives around at the end of each month to the houses of all the donors in order to collect their gifts. If people live outside the city, staff members must drive out and pick up the gift on their own. This is a time consuming job. Sometimes it’s dangerous job. It sort of boggles my mind that this system has managed to work at all. When one of the staff members first described the system to me, I stared at her.

“…but…is that dangerous?”

“Yes, sometimes it is.”

“…but…doesn’t that take forever?”

“Yes, it does.”

Like the Chaos Store, I’m missing a big chunk of the story. How did this system start? Why was it necessary? What parts are still necessary? I know there is more to it than I get with my limited understanding of the situation. But sometimes, I look at the way things happen, and I want to stamp my foot. Sometimes, it just feels frustrating to be waiting in a line that shouldn’t even exist.

Coffee Plantation

Where do you end up when a friend says they want to take you out for coffee after church?

In El Salvador, you end up here:

Campus Life in El Salvador

Every college campus needs a cow skeleton. At least I didn't include a picture of the cadavers I'm subjected to every time we pass the anatomy lab. More flattering pictures of the campus coming soon.

Language

“How’s your Spanish?” was definitely among the top five questions people would ask when they heard about my El Salvador plans. My response was usually, “Not great. Ask me at the end of next year.” It is encouraging to see how quickly language comes in an immersion situation. After just over a month here, I can already understand most conversations, or at least pick out the important words. I can hold my own in restaurants, taxis, and shoe stores. Even on campus, talking with students, I can get pretty far in Spanish. Still, the word “immersion” feels so appropriate for the way it feels like everyone is talking underwater. If I work really, really hard I can understand, and make myself understood. But it is tiring work that can feel relentless.

One of the ways we share the gospel with students is with a tool called “Solarium.” It’s basically a set of 50 pictures that students use to answer five questions. The questions are things like, “Which three pictures that describe your life right now?” “Pick three pictures that describe what you would want your life to look like.” “Which picture would you use to describe God?” It is so interesting to see which pictures get picked over and over. There is a picture of little girl running through a park with a bunch of balloons in her hand. Everyone loves this picture.

Solarium is great on a spiritual level, because it seems people will tell you anything if they have a picture to pair it with. Art students tend to have especially deep and soulful answers. But it’s also great on a practical level, because if a student is holding the picture of the old couple walking hand in hand, they probably aren’t talking about their struggles with faith as a child. So, I sit there and listen with such intensity that sometimes it feels like I can hear my brain trying to process the words. I grab onto the phrases I know, and try to fill in the blanks quickly enough to nod in the right places.

I’ve learned to hide the fact that I’m usually only understanding half of any given response, depending on how fast the person is talking. It bothers people to be misunderstood, and when the national staff were still on campus with us, students would simply direct all conversation to the person who clearly understood them better. As soon as I started faking it, acting like I understood what was happening even if I had no clue, girls started opening up to me as well. If I really didn’t catch any of it, I could ask them to repeat it more slowly. Or I could simply say, “bueno,” and let it go at that.

This morning, I led a small group Bible study with six girls. As I fought through with terrible grammar, limited vocabulary, and awful pronunciation, I felt embarrassed and exhausted. These girls are studying engineering at the top university in the country. They are smart and well spoken. Not only that, they have cute clothes. And I can barely string a sentence together. But I’m learning that sometimes it doesn’t matter what I can’t say. In fact, sometimes it’s better when I don’t speak. I have a Bible in Spanish, and I know how to say, “Here, read this.” For now, that’s enough.