As I sit here with a ginger tea and a cough drop, I reflect over my past couple weeks. Last night, we had a Fourth of July/Despedida (good bye) celebration for Nate and Mary, fellow FMS missioners and good friends who will be leaving tonight for Carmen Pampa to work (a.ka. volunteer in "mission" words) at the local university. Yesterday morning, Nate, Hady, and I (along with Allison, Carlos, and Caitlin from another cheer station) cheered on Mary and Joe as they ran a half marathon...complete with race bibs that said "Cochabamba 'Unsponsored' Half Marathon." Why "unsponsored?" All this time Mary had been training, just to find out the race date will be in July after she has already left, so we "created" a race! In two weeks, we will be celebrating the wedding of Allison and Carlos (friends and former Maryknoll missioners). This will be our second Bolivian wedding, as we were also blessed to attend Nora and Alvaro's wedding (Nora is a former FMS missioner). Last weekend, Hady and I went to a quinceanera to help welcome a young lady into a traditional Latin American rite of passage, and "the girls" had a pre-wedding celebration for Allison with a traditional Bolivian sending prayer service. Since I have been in Cochabamba, I have been blessed to attend birthday parties with my host family and fellow missioners, a baby shower to welcome Andres (baby brother of Santiago, pictured in my first blog), the fiftieth wedding anniversary party of my host family, and despedidas (good bye celebrations) of which there will be many more. I can't believe that I have only been here six short months, and already my calendar is so full! Between two ministry sites (and a third less official site - Salomon Klein), I can be pretty tired on the weekends. Sometimes, all I want to do is curl up with some hot tea and a Skype call, but I really do look forward to the social events, too. I realize how blessed I am to be surrounded by caring individuals, and how God always finds a way to show His love, even when you are thousands of miles from your friends and family. This makes our weekly house chores and doing laundry by hand seem less like hard work, and more like a time to reflect and realize how to be thankful for having so much, even when it seems like you have so little. I remember recently reading about the different types of poverty, and how living without many things is not always the worst kind of poverty: spiritual and social poverty are oftentimes even worse. Please keep your eyes open for opportunities to help those around you, in any type of poverty, including the less traditionally thought of types. As evidenced by the love and support that you continue to show to me, I know that you are capable of great things!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorValerie Ellis, who is in alignment with the Black Lives Matter Movement and everyone whose life is impacted, now or before, by times of social injustice. Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|