Happy Late Easter

Alternately titled: A Random Day I Don’t Want to Forget So I’m Writing About it Here.

Our last day in Honduras was spent driving to a beach on the Caribbean. Having never seen the Caribbean, I was excited about this adventure, even though it meant three hours of driving and a 4 pm beach arrival. As we drove through the industrial port town where we would be having our “relaxation day,” I realized I might need to adjust my expectations of “an afternoon on a Caribbean beach.” Sure enough, Joe summed up our experience of the beach nicely as we surveyed the less than pristine shoreline: “If someone had told me to imagine the worst beach possible, I still wouldn’t have pictured this.”

Selegna, our staff member from Panama, had other words comparing this Honduran beach to Panamanian beaches, but they were even less uplifting than Joe’s evaluation. We didn’t get in the water.

We spent the night on the floor of an old conference room on a navy base. There was a large rottweiler roaming the base, hardened looking men in camo perpetually flicking the safeties on their semi-automatic rifles, and electric razor wire surrounding the whole scene. Before we headed to “bed” at midnight, the project leader from Honduras warned us to stay on the base. “There is nothing good out there for you,” he said, pointing towards the street on the other side of the fence. “WHY in the WORLD would I consider leaving the base?” I asked Selegna later, completely incredulous. She laughed, and told me that this town was known for its discos, and we were on a trip with 40 college students. Oh.

Regardless, Easter morning dawned. Our 3:45 am leave time had something to do with the Guatemalan border crossing opening at 6 am. I would’ve been more bothered by the fact that my alarm was blaring at 3:30 if I hadn’t passed the night on a peeling linoleum floor. I started out the resurrection celebration like a good Presbyterian, gently shaking Kristen’s shoulder. “He is risen!” I said. “He is risen indeed,” she answered, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head.

I moved on to Jenna. “Jenna, good morning! He is risen!” “PTL (Praise The Lord),”
she said, her voice flat. It’s hard to muster spiritual joy at before dawn.

“Selegna! He is risen!” I said, cheerily greeting a very weary looking Selegna who had forgone sleep altogether. “I’ll pray for you,” she answered, slowly blinking at me like the room had started spinning. I glanced back at Kristen with a confused smile. Alright then. Maybe a nap on the bus, hmm?

“Jeff, He is risen!” I said, throwing my pack into the van. “And so are we,” he answered. Heh.

And finally there was Joe, who closed things out nicely with a rousing 4 am “He is risen indeed!” I guess the Mennonite Brethren clan knows their Easter greetings. Peace be with you, Joe.

The sun rose as we crossed from Honduras into Guatemala. I spent several moments pondering the geography of traveling back to El Salvador by way of Guatemala from Honduras, and then gave it up as one of those things best left to a person with a map and a vaguely functional sense of direction. Instead, I looked at the rows of banana trees slipping by and tried to calculate the probability that I had eaten a banana from any given one acre grove in Guatemala. “I could’ve eaten from that exact tree,” I thought to myself, “Or that one.”

And I sang softly to myself. “Christ the Lord is risen TOday, aaaaaaAAAleluia.” I murmured the words that my grandma would sing with such vigor every Easter, pounding the piano with determination. He is risen.

Spanish to Spanish

Bean and I often marvel at the way we’ve developed our own language with Jenny. She understands our Spanish like no one else does. She barely speaks a word of English, so we’ve been forced to push through again and again. She listens to our mangled words and criminal grammar and gently extracts the meaning we were going for from the start.

Of course, we know her Spanish, too. I’m continually surprised at the way that knowing somebody’s voice makes them so much easier to understand. I may not have mastered this language yet, but I’m fluent in Jenny. I’m also proficient in American voices speaking Spanish.

Today at lunch, our server saw our Bibles spread across the table and came over to investigate. He ended up sitting down with us for a couple of minutes to see what we were doing. He studies at a university where we had an active presence at the beginning of the year. I told him I’d hook him up with some of the students who are still a part of that ministry. We talked easily with the help of Jenny, our Spanish to Spanish translator. He’d say something, speaking quickly, slurring his words. I’d look to Jenny for help. She’d repeat his words in Spanish slowly and clearly. I’d answer in mostly functional Spanish with a few grammatical quirks. She’d repeat what I said in a form that was nearly unrecognizable, meaning grammatically correct.

I was reminded of the kids I babysit. There is a certain stage of toddler-hood where language explodes. Kids start connecting all those meanings in their heads to actual sounds. The language that comes out is ostensibly English, but only just barely. Jenny is like the mother who can take a string of nonsense sounds and tell the waiter that her child is asking for juice. Or, you know, that Vida Estudiantil used to have a semi-active ministry on the campus where you study and we’d love to get your information and help you find a spiritual community on campus.

Points of (Possible) Interest

To make up for my silence in the last month, some snapshots from April:

The Zoo

Last month we visited the local zoo. I wondered before the trip if I would be putting the cost of my admission towards animal cruelty, half expecting cramped, bare cages and plenty of concrete. Instead, I found a perfectly acceptable little zoo. Worn down in places,  but offering large enclosures filled with the appropriate greenery.

In fact, the feeding practices in this zoo are even a bit more authentic than US zoos. As we walked toward the aviary, I saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with yellow fluff. I watched as he paused by the hawk enclosure, reached his bare hand into the wheelbarrow, and proceeded to fill a bucket with…dead baby chicks. I yelped as he tossed the bucket of limp chicks into the cage. Goodness, I know it’s what they actually eat, but I just can’t imagine exposing a three-year-old to the sight of a pile of baby chicks being decapitated by hawks.

I offer mild photo evidence of the practice:

Note the cute yellow fluff.

Honduras

We spent the second week of April in Honduras. I’ll admit that I was completely skeptical of this trip to Honduras, which was a mission trip with students involved in the Vida Estudiantil ministry from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. I had no idea if we would have any students willing to go. The trip was scheduled during Holy Week, and we would be on the road on Easter Sunday. I couldn’t really think of any girls besides Jenny that I could invite. It seemed like a major effort, and I thought the energy could be better spent in other areas. God had other plans.

I asked Jenny two days before the trip if she could make it. She said yes immediately and said she’d ask her parents that night. Her only other plan had been to go to a friend’s beach house, but everyone would be drinking and partying, and she was excited to have another option. We ended up having five students join us. We were split up into small groups while we were on the trip, and stayed with families in tiny villages.

Our group didn’t do all that much. We moved some rocks. We showed half of the Jesus film. (The pastor told us it was getting too late, and everyone was leaving, so we’d show the other half later. We never did. Oh well. :) We played with children. We led a short evangelism training. Actually, Jenny and another student Rueben led the training. They did a great job, and I was practically bursting with pride hearing Jenny explain the Gospel.

At the end of the training Jenny shared that she knew that evangelism worked, because at the beginning of the year, I had walked up to her in the cafeteria and shared with her, and now her whole life is different. Annnd, then I might have teared up a bit. I didn’t actually share with her that day, Selegna did. But she’s right about her life looking very different, and that humbles me again and again.

The whole trip was far more worth it than I could’ve imagined.

Somebody stick me on a Campus Crusade brochure:

Sharing 4 Spiritual Laws booklets with Honduran children.

Bowling

We went to the only bowling alley in El Salvador for a student event. I bowled a…37. My enjoyment of the night was clearly dwarfed by one of our students who noted in her facebook status the next day that bowling had been “THe bEsT NIghT of mY LIfe!!!”

Jenna rocked me in bowling. Not that it's hard.

Weekly Meeting

Our first weekly meeting at Matias was shockingly well attended. We had at leas 50 students there. Free pizza partly accounts for the good attendance, but it doesn’t account for the fact that a good chunk of the students who showed up are our friends. It turns out that we’ve actually developed a lot of ministry relationships over the last couple of months. There were even students from two of the campuses that we left behind. So very encouraging.

I also met a girl who came by herself simply because she saw the signs around campus and wanted to check it out. For the past three weeks, we’ve been meeting at least once a week. We’ve had some amazing conversations about truth and God.

Bible Studies

We now have two weekly Bible studies on campus each week. God shows up when we do work that He wants done that we are utterly unequipped to do. I know this is true, because leading Bible study in Spanish is a whole different thing than meeting with a student one-on-one. It is terrifying, but also kind of thrilling. We started out with a co-ed Bible study. We’ve now added a girls-only Bible study. Last week we had to meet at Wendys because of the Swine Flu. I’m flattered, frankly, that the school considers our meetings large public gatherings. At the same time, it would be nice of them to let us meet on campus again, considering our groups rarely top 15.

There is April. The month when our ministry really started to feel like a ministry. Not a bad month.