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Tonight we decorated cookies with a few Salvadoran students who had never spread frosting over a cookie before. We rolled out dough, listened to Christmas music, and talked about snow. I’m from Southern California. I’ve had one snowy Christmas in my whole life. But here I was telling tales about building snowmen and snowboarding. The girls were fascinated though, having never been in real snow in their whole lives.
After we decorated our cookies, we sat around and listened as Selegna, a staff member from Panama, told the Nativity story. Selegna’s version included all the scandal of a teenage pregnancy, a near break-up, and a low-budget birth. I walked in on her telling a bit late, and it took me a couple of minutes to even recognize the story, despite its accuracy.
Jenna decorating cookies.
Vicky, Claudia, Jenna, and Lauren.
Marijke as Rudolph. Bean with frosting cheeks. :)
We (the girls) live in a small gated neighborhood that we affectionately call our compound. We have three streets, and our own little private park. There is one entrance, guarded 24/7 by some very nice men with large rifles. The reality of living in El Salvador is that I’ve surrendered some of my freedoms. I’ve gotten used to a lot of the limitations, but today on my run, I couldn’t help but remember running trails in San Luis. Still, I’m so lucky to live somewhere where it’s safe to run at all.
Here is our street:
And our house:
Ali, with passport in hand.
One of my dearest friends came to El Salvador today. She surprised her boyfriend, my team leader Trevor. Ali and I met in a freshman year English class, after we quickly picked each other out as Christians. It was a pretty rough class, spiritually, and I knew she was serious about her faith just through the kind and insightful comments she always offered. She’s been a huge encouragement in my life. She also introduced me to my boyfriend, Matt, two years ago. Thanks Ali!
She’s also spending a year doing ministry with Campus Crusade, but her time in South Africa starts in January. I know she’s mostly here to see Trev, but I couldn’t be more happy to get to see her before she leaves. Her flight was delayed for two hours, and I was standing on my tiptoes in the airport for 45 minutes waiting to see her emerge.
The first hug--Lauren and Ali.
Trevor’s face grew ever more skeptical as I read the Lonely Planet entry for the restaurant Bean and I wanted to visit:
Don’t let the girlie ambiance–hanging plants, doilies galore, opera classics–stop you from sampling the excellent menu at this cozy restaurant. Light meals, including lots of vegetarian options, make up its core–salads, quiche, empanadas, and even spinach lasagna are all offered.
As we sat down at our mosaic-topped courtyard table with the lovely fern hanging overhead, I looked from Brandon to Trevor and said, “I can’t believe we tricked you into this.” It was even more than the doilies and opera music promised in Lonely Planet. There were Christmas curtains, hand painted signs, dolls. When Trevor opened the menu, he looked skeptical again. But our spinach lasagna was indeed good, even if the German Christmas carols playing in the background were a bit much.
Brandon and Bean at a cute table.
After dinner, we somehow convinced the guys that watching Garden State and drinking cider at our house would be a fun Saturday night activity. They were having fun hanging out with us, but they were also humoring us–letting us pick a ridiculously cute restaurant when they could’ve gone to see that Keanu Reeves movie about the aliens.
Me and Bean by a shelf of cute things.
“This is the girliest night I’ve ever spent with guys who are not my boyfriend,” I told Brandon and Trevor in the car on the way home. “You’re welcome,” said Trevor.
Trevor. Ignoring the cuteness.
Typical country road.
Before we got here, I was really nervous about driving in San Salvador. Actually, not so much worried about driving, I love driving. I was worried about being driven, and about the other cars on the road that might drive into us. It turns out, once you have spent time in Asia, Salvadorian roads are nothing. There just aren’t as many cars here. And the roads aren’t clogged with motorcycles.
Still, I pretty much surrendered all driving duties after trying my hand for a week or two. The roads are stressful enough that it was not hard to turn over the keys to the boys. There are the crazy buses that simply honk before moving whatever direction they please, the missing manhole covers that have been stolen and sold for scrap, and the pedestrians that seem to leap haphazardly into the road. And then there are the “pay attention” cones. The police set up traffic cones across busy roads, leaving only enough space for one car to pass through. There is no warning. Lanes simply end in a barricade of cones, forcing screeching brakes or quick merges. This “safety” measure supposedly roots out drunk drivers who simply run down the cones. Drivers are then fined by the number of cones they hit. Of course, you don’t have to be drunk to be surprised by a row of cones blocking off half the freeway with no warning.
Today on our way to a lake outside the city, we were cruising down a mostly empty freeway, when we reached a very abrupt police barricade blocking the road. They took the driver ahead of us by surprise, too, meaning we both had to make sharp left turns to follow the prescribed detour–the detour that moved us to the other side of the freeway. I screamed as a car barreled towards us from the opposite direction. Thankfully this car was in the next lane over, but it was hardly a reassuring set up. There were no cones, no divider, nothing separating us from the lane of oncoming traffic but the usual dotted white line. We realized, as we merged back onto the other side of the freeway a few miles later, that the only thing warning cars that the left hand lane was now running the opposite direction, was a three cone barricade at the start of the switch. Quite helpful if someone didn’t realize the meaning of those three cones and switched lanes around a curve.
We followed a large truck, so no one was going to run us down unless they hit the truck first. And after that first moment when we thought we might die, we all just laughed, because it was ridiculous. In El Salvador, there are good drivers, and there are bad drivers. And then there are police forces who could use a few lessons in the art of cone placement.
Worshiping together at Matias.
We spent the afternoon today prayer walking at Matias. This is finals week, so the campus was pretty empty. As we enter into the student’s vacation time, we’re praying about plans for next year. We found out today that we may have a few minutes to speak to all the new freshman in each major when the new school year starts. This would be a huge blessing to our ministry. The earlier we can reach students in their college career, the longer time they have with our ministry. It’s so fun to think about all these new freshman starting school!
Marijke and Bean (Christine) praying together.
There are probably about 15 girls who we have some kind of ongoing relationship with on the Matias campus (Evangelica is out for Christmas Break). Aside from sharing the Gospel on campus, we’ve been able to spend more time just building friendships with students. We sit in the cafeteria and our friends find us, excited to talk about their days. Or we visit classes, where professors are surprisingly fine with the disruption of random girls wandering through their classroom.
Two weeks ago, we sat down and shared the Gospel with a couple of girls through the Soularium survey. We started out in our semi-broken Spanish until one of the girls said, “I’m American. I grew up in San Bernadino. I’ve actually really been wanting to meet you guys. I’ve seen you on campus, and my friend Gabby knows you. Every time she sees you she says, ‘Oh! There are my friends! I know those girls.’” Wow. Okay then. I was thrilled at the fact that this girl was clearly all about getting to know us. More than that, we’d been wanting to develop a deeper relationship with Gabby and her friends for a long time, and here was one more connection. It felt like a puzzle piece falling into place.
My teammate Christine (Bean) and I have also been spending a lot of time with Jenny, the girl I mentioned in this post. Jenny was one of the first people I shared with on campus. She met me when my Spanish vocabulary was at about the level of a three-year-old, but with far worse grammar. Thankfully, she is eminently patient with Bean and me. She’s our biggest fan as far as language goes, often reminding me of that day a few months ago when I barely said a word. But she also talks about that day, and a meeting a week later with a national staff woman, as a kind of spiritual wake up call. Bean and I have been meeting with Jenny for two months now, and it’s one of my first experiences at seeing such powerful life change in such a short period of time.
We met for coffee last week. Jenny walked up as Bean and I were finishing our quiet times in the coffee shop. “What are you doing?” She asked, not wanting to interrupt. “Oh, just spending some time with God. I’m done now,” I answered, closing my journal. “Maybe sometime I could do that with you,” she said. “Absolutely you can!” I told her, probably a little too eagerly.
We spend a lot of time talking about life, and God, and how things are looking different for her. She wants to come share the Gospel with us on campus. She is already being bold with her friends. It’s just really, really fun.
