Let It Be

 Sunday. M and J were here for many hours tonight. They told us of things I’d wished I’d never heard. Blood-curdling tales from their adolescent years when Peru’s then-premiere terrorist group dominated and destroyed isolated native communities. In J’s village, bodies of live women and children were piled into covered holes in the dirt for hours-- babies and toddlers drugged with tree and leaf extracts to silence them— to save them. Quityoncari! Quityoncari! Red. Blood red. Ema first taught me this word in Yarina Isla, pointing to the blood of a dead animal. Now I think of the blood of slain Ashéninka and I shudder.


Wednesday. Nathanael, Michael and his Ashéninka language helper, whom I affectionately call the Professor, spent the hottest part of the afternoon with their machetes hacking away at waist-high weeds. Michael’s hands were bloody and blistered and he, Nathanael and the Professor were all dripping with watery mud when they came in for lunch. The girls and I had baked lemon-garlic chicken with plantain and poured it over white rice with a green herb sauce. The professor ate all of it with such enthusiasm and thorough attention to every bit of the chicken bone, Julia and Abigail and I were just delighted.


Friday. The neighborhood goat is now followed by her brown little ones just like her. They were feeding on the newly cleared land beside our front porch this morning while Profesora and I were studying some translated hymns.

Crystal with her language helper outside our house.

We sat on the front porch, and rocked and sang in Ashéninka, and I learned more grammar patterns. Inintaperoeyacaeni. He loves us. Anintaperoeyerini. We love Him.

And commands.Pomampaacotyaari Pava. Sing to God!
And praises. Noquimoshirevenaquimi. You make me happy.

Somehow foreign words spill out more easily in song, so we did a lot of singing today while we watched the goats.


Saturday. The carpenter came by. Out of the blue, Michael had called him to build a workbench area in the shed, but he seemed hesitant over the phone. Upon seeing him, we knew why. H’s face was shadowy with eyes sunken back toward his forehead. Emaciated, he sat down to talk.
The woman he’s been living with sat in the moto-taxi for quite some time while the men talked on the porch. H fears for his life. He thinks he’s dying and is cursed for rejecting God. He’s afraid. And angry. He’d come to ask us to buy his land. Or did we know anybody who would buy his land so He could go to the capital city for medical help?

I went out to the moto-taxi and asked the woman to come and sit in the shade. She declined. So I brought her water then left her alone. I walked in the house and watched her from the window. Minutes later, she was handing me a plate of smoked meat and yucca through the window bars. I gave the food to the children and went to the moto-taxi and asked her to tell me a little bit about what was happening to H.

She cautiously began… and her story unfolded, which was his story, too. She said she once followed God but did not anymore. She was sad, but did not know how not to be. I asked her if I could pray for H with her. She agreed. Together, we asked God to reveal Himself to her as she accompanied H through a great valley.

When we finished, I saw H, his chin in his chest, praying with Michael.
…The Lord is the strength of my life… (Psalm 27:1).


Sunday. Instead of a church service, there was a funeral today. The casket was cut from smooth wood and painted nearly black. On top of it were three plastic soda bottles cut off at the middle to make flower vases stuffed with colorful wildflowers beside taper candles sitting in their wax melted on splintered planks. It was hot. Our bodies were all stuck together on uneven benches. We sang choruses and children played with a puppy and picked each other’s heads.

Someone passed out plastic cups filled with cold, red cola. We looked at the casket. Then they asked Michael to come up and say something. He stood beside the black box. His voice broke. In the casket was the body of a nine-year old girl, Abigail’s friend from Sunday school. She’d been tree-climbing. And fell.
He spoke few words from Psalm 84 through the tears caught in his throat.

My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God…

Blessed is the man whose strength is in You…
As they pass through the valley of weeping, they make it a spring;
They go from strength to strength…
O Lord… blessed is the man who trusts in You!

Jose's 5th birthday with a yummy Leo cake!

Saturday. While everyone was playing volleyball in the field beside the corner church, I hopped across the way to visit Leo. Michael suggested I order one of her chocolate cakes to surprise Jose for his birthday. She told me of her dream to own a cake-shop. For now, she bakes out of her house which is mainly brick and mortar without windows or doors on a muddy lot. Her baking tools are neatly covered in fabric, and shelves are stacked with pans and spoons and chocolate bars from Lima. She washes her dishes outside. It is thoroughly enchanting. She sent me with a chocolate baking bar and made me promise to return with whatever I made. I’m thinking about fudge for Thanksgiving.


Friday. It was after 4 when Nellie started singing, signaling the start of another study. While she sang, someone banged a rock on the gate. It was Anali with three other indigenous women beside her. I assumed they were all together, though I’d never seen the three before, so I invited them in.
I went to get some bananas for the crying toddlers and when I returned, the room was full but all the women were silent. That wasn’t normal. So I asked Anali, Do you not know each other?, referring to the three women with her. She nodded. No.

Apparently the women were just walking by, and they weren’t sure why they were now sitting in our front room. So I told them I would be telling a story if they’d like to stay for a bit. They agreed.

I told the woman-at-the-well story—how a rejected woman drawing water heard how she might never thirst again. We talked about our hungry hearts that seek satisfaction in a myriad of mildly-satisfying, short-lived pleasures. And of …Christ who is our life… (Colossians 3:4). I shared examples of things I’ve groped at, vainly hoping to feel fully happy only to find that Christ is all and in all (Colossians 3:11), and He who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), is also The fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 17:13). Our Maker, who finally and ultimately satisfies us completely, does so because we are His.

When a rejected woman at the well heard about living water: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14), and that its source was found in the One who spoke I… am He (John 4:26), she believed. And was satisfied. And could not keep silent.

When our time finished, the story was more alive to me than before, and I wanted to tell it again and again because each time I do, I believe it more.


Sunday. M and J and his cousin decided it was time we visit the caves. Our families hiked in flip flops through layers of everything green and red and grey. Mainly mud and trees. Nathanael spotted an enormous carcass of some creature … Huge femur bones and a jagged skull, something akin to a creature we read about in Job: See now, his strength in his hips… he moves his tail like a cedar; The sinews of his thighs are tightly knit. His bones are like beams of bronze. Indeed the river may rage but he is not disturbed…(Job 40).

We sank to our calves into pottery-making red clay, then bare footed through fields of wildflowers and underbrush. For lunch, there were noodles with spinach and basil sauce in a lemon grove. And mosquitoes. In a cold, clear spring, the children painted their bodies with red mud.

Found the cave. Into the earth it wound. (I know only because I looked at pictures). Michael and M, his cousin and a boy from an indigenous community disappeared into the darkness armed with flashlights, pocket knives, and a green string by which to find their way back out.

In one of the spacious areas of the cave with a pool. Are there any creatures in the water?

Some areas included sliding down chutes of mud.

Too many for a spider, too few for a centipede

J and I talked while the children hung from vines in the trees and the dog chased insects and whatever else he was barking at. The men re-emerged after some time, covered in mud, elated. They saw animal tracks and a spider-look-alike with a dozen legs…on each side. The kids begged to be lowered into the entrance. We heard screams of gleeful terror. Bats. But night was falling, so we followed the carcass-laden trail to where the truck was parked beside a stream. Following the stream led to a river, and we jumped in, commencing headstand contests and mud-scrubbing from clothes and bodies.

Smiles, screams, and laughter marked an underground adventure!

At home, I stood under the hot water apparatus until my skin burned. Through the window and barbed wire, the black sky and gauzily clouded moon yielded just enough light to see flat, waxy leaves reaching into the sky. Complete and total beauty. And my soul was lost in it entirely.

Lord, your constant love reaches to the heavens;
Your faithfulness extends to the skies.
Your righteousness is towering like the mountains;
Your justice is like the depths of the sea.
People and animals are under your care.
How precious, O God, is your constant love!
We find protection under the shadow of your wings.
We feast on the abundant food you provide;
You let us drink from the river of your goodness.
You are the source of all life, and because of your light we see the light
(Ps 36:5-9).

Tuesday. I’m going through a lot of pen and ink learning about the sovereignty of God. How one nation rises and another falls. How some people are rich and some are poor. How some know severe suffering and others do not seem to. How one thing is right for one person and certainly not for another. But so much of what I observe is only a seemingly sort of observation, a dimly-lit, sorely-lacking view of what is true.

This only seeing what seems-to-be has made me really uncomfortable. It’s much more fun to be confident and certain of most anything and being a know-it-all has always come quite effortlessly to me. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). Yet this is what is real right now—dimness. Seeing dimly reminds me not to lean too heavily on my own understanding, but to work through these matters of following Jesus humbly: God resists the proud, but shows favor to the humble (1 Pet 5:5) and with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12b). What joyous liberty then is this matter of seeing dimly! I get to hurl myself humbly, headlong, and free into the One who loves me in a way I now only dimly see! O, but when I see Him face to face, I will know! I will know His love and I will know and understand the promise He made to the woman at the well.

O let it be!

Jungle Journal

Wednesday

January 19, 2011

Late afternoon, just after climbing the hill from the river

Yoselin spent most of the afternoon crushing lemon halves against her head. Her hair was laden in pulp and I wondered why. Quilmer said it was for relief. Citric acid kills lice. So now I know.

Thursday

The rain did not stop all day. I did not want to leave the mosquito net because of tiny, stinging gnats, so Jujee, Abby, Nano and Chloe joined me. We read our books together, worked through math, memorized facts and listened to the rain. When I saw Alejo chopping firewood in the fury of the downpour, I assumed they must’ve run out. They needed to eat.

Minutes later, he and little Christian were dumping armfuls of slender logs on our platform. He was cutting wood for us.

I remembered how Jeremy said to chip away the top layers because the inside would not be wet, and with a little diesel fuel and trash wrappers we could count on a strong fire in little time. We did, but the in little time part did not work out as planned.

Starting fires in rain that slants sideways is nearly maddening.

Friday

The rain that wouldn’t stop, didn’t stop again through the night. When we woke this morning, the river had risen some 20 feet and the hill above the river that winds to our hut was under brown water. Everyone was saying these kind of floods happen every 5 years or so. Hyoni’s canoe is gone, but all the motors are safe.

Saturday

Abby Gracie brought me the oil for frying platano. One of us didn’t screw the lid on tight. It was not worth trying to expose the culprit. It might’ve been me. Nevertheless, Black ants were floating in that oil-- the precious oil! I figured we’d fry the ants with the plantain and no one seemed to mind.

Sunday

We made a list together, all of us huddled in the crudely painted wood church at Yarina Isla. 18 passages that pertained to God’ promises to us: I have overcome the world. Be of good cheer. I will never leave you. Michael scratched them in chalk and we all copied them into our notebooks.

The men carry hand-woven bags to these Sunday services. Women carry the children. Many people have torn-up, weather-beaten Bibles, chewed pens and dirt-covered notebooks they’ve bought downriver. We sit on wooden slabs in the dirt. Men in the front-- women and children in the back. Sickly dogs and sometimes chickens come and go. We sing heartily. There was a guitar today, but it didn’t seem to be playing the same songs we were singing. And the drum. Someone generally plays a drum. Sometimes people are barefooted, sometimes not. Yesterday Nellie, in her sixties, wore two different flip-flops. They might’ve belonged to the same foot.

We were quite satisfied to have compiled such a list of promises and nearly everyone was copiously note-taking. It made my heart happy. I made sure to take copious notes, too. I wanted to be just like them.

Tuesday

Excessive rain makes it nearly impossible to dry clothes. We wash them in the rushing mud, then hang them on a line if the sky is not threatening rain. Within minutes, however, a sudden, unsuspected downpour is feeding the earth and dancing on the trees, and I see Manuela run for her clotheslines. This happens over and over… I am in language study, sitting on one of those hard benches with Ema, and it makes little sense to stop.

Michael and Julia and Abigail race for the clothes and hang them along the fence around our platform. There is also zig-zagged rope from the our wooden ceiling constructed under the Yarina thatches, so when my talking watch says Son las tres en punto , (It’s 3 o’clock) I go to the hut to see what has become of wet laundry. Re-hung along the half-walls, zig-zagged lines are drooping under the weight. 3 days and the same clothes are still wet. Chloe is wearing Abigail’s stretchy pants again because every one of hers is wet on the line.

After class today, Julia and Abigail boasted of their newly-constructed pulley system which hoists clothes to and from the roof to dry, with seemingly little effort. They were elated. I was distracted. I find that I am often distracted.

Thursday

I can always hear Alejo and Ema singing and worshipping long before sunrise. Their voices are always first to arouse my consciousness. I wake while it is somewhat dark to read and study. After my heart and mind are full, I leave the mosquito net to start the fire. Some mornings it is easy and takes little effort. Others, when the wood is wet and my ambition sags like those weighted clotheslines, a simple fire is a massive undertaking. So much work for oatmeal.

After oatmeal, the girls and I fill three large round bowls with water and wash the dishes. Nathanael sweeps the floor and feeds animals. Left overs are thrown out to woeful dogs and Mother hens with their trailing, devoted broods. Osito, the monkey, can never wait for leftovers, and always shares a bit of whatever Julia’s eating. She feeds and cleans up after and cares for Osito, and he sleeps with her every night, unfailingly entrusting himself to her.

The first four hours of the day Michael spends in language study. During this time, the rest of us do school, too. Sometimes under the mosquito net, Sometimes sprawled out across the floor. Every book and pencil and notebook is lugged back and forth in a water-tight bin between Yarina Isla and Pucallpa.

The thought of studying along the riverbank was always so intriguing to me, but we’ve found it thoroughly impossible to accomplish anything. We must be in our family quarters with the door shut. Even then, little eyes poke through the slats, and toes squish under the door. Neighborhood children sit on our platform waiting…

Que vas a cocinar, hermana? (What are you going to make, sister?)

Ya has terminado tus clases? (Have you finished your classes already? )

They wait and wait and wait…

When we’ve finished, it’s time to start another fire and prepare lunch. We might peel and boil yucca or make soup. Nathanael and Chloe gather cilantro and peppers along the shed. Julia finishes copying a passage from one of the books she’s reading. Abigail details aloud every transaction of whichever story she’s reading…

We eat. I leave for my four hours of language study across the dirt path…

When the talking watch says Son las cuatro en punto (it’s 4 o’clock), I close my notebook and turn the recorder off. We gather our buckets, soap bars and laundry and head to the river. The children are racing and tripping and squealing… we wash clothes and bathe. Michael jumps from the bank into the cold mud. Abigail follows him with Osito on her shoulder and the puppy swimming at her side. Nathanael swims to catch up, and Chloe calls from the hillside, “Wait for me! Wait for me! Daddy, hold me! “

When the sun slips behind towering trees, Michael hauls three 5 gallon buckets of water on his shoulders, from the river or the brook. Those are poured into a big trash can and serve as our water supply for the next day. Some is poured into our water filter, while the rest is used to wash dishes and hands and cook.

As evening falls, the fire is warm and we gather around with other families to share fish caught in the net, rodents from the trap and details from the day’s events. I bring rice. We eat until our bellies are full and moan about the deliciousness of it all, lounging in the hammocks. The children entertain us with their stories and antics and we laugh until our eyelids are heavy when someone says Amayeve Ashéninka for We’re going to sleep. Everything stops… and the day has ended.

It all sounds so easy.

It is not.

These first six months living in Peru, I’ve often found it difficult to say what I’m thinking, partly because I don’t know what I’m thinking much of the time. Learning to live differently than I lived before has been more demanding than I could’ve predicted, but I’ve a sneaking suspicion I might be creeping out of this dense fog of complete shock…starting to form ideas, measure observations...

The stark nature of my person-ness, who I am and what I believe, has been violently stripped from me without my even knowing… Like a mummy wrapped in 50 pounds of cloth, it is as if someone found where that strip of cloth ended and has been pulling on it for 6 months. I’ve been

spinning

spinning,

spinning

… at so fast a speed, I thought I was standing still—hadn’t moved. And now—everything has stopped. In my mind I am standing completely still and it is really so!

The sweetness of following God into a dense, viewless fog is less-frightening than I had thought. Being loved by Him, and led by Him, talking with Him, and listening to Him makes the unseen an adventure. It makes not knowing and not understanding alright. I don’t have to know. I don’t have to understand, or be good at either of them. I’m just following.

Where there is nothing to prove, there is nothing to lose. All the world is before me, and yet does not depend on me. The world does not revolve around me after all… I think Michael will be especially glad to hear this.

Like Ema’s Smile

Rain pelts Yarina palms, whipping and beating at the thatch-roof. I feel no water. Remarkable the way these dry, layered palms cinch in pairs with long strips from tall trees. They are as a fortress.

Night has fallen. We are snugly tucked under the mosquito net. It looks nothing like the ones in department stores back home: wide and long, it’s like a cube of airy netting tucked under the slab of foam that supports our sleeping bags.

Above the mosquito net, I hear bats. Children left uncovered awaken with a stream of blood trickling from their scalp. Exposed heads are open targets for such flesh-biting, darting, winged creatures. Being that their homes are tucked among the thatches overhead, this white cube of netting provides sure relief.

I have heard that snakes enter mosquito nets rather effortlessly. Better not to think about snakes before bed. I dismiss the thought, and smell the rain instead.

As if we are under a waterfall, it whips and sloshes through the mud surrounding our hut. Down the hillside it rushes. Through Aunt Dena’s tidy rows of pineapple, drenching her mint and lemongrass which stretches out of the brown earth, the water follows a predestined trail carved by machetes through hard dirt. A hungry stream groaning toward the rising river.

These same machetes hack deadly snakes, slash pineapples and hoist hands of banana from their lofty places. It cultivates the earth, clears the weeds, and carves trails through fierce, raging undergrowth which wars to dominate every path: from one community to another, from gardens to huts.

Time for laundry. After scrubbing fruit and charcoal stained clothes that have been soaking in rankish river water, with a pasty, turquoise laundry bar, we dip the clothes into the current, watching as cloudy white suds disappear into the cold, moving mud. I close my eyes, face turned up toward the sunshine. I suck in a deep, contented breath of soap and mud and wet sand. The sun, the blue of the sky, and the green of everything growing above the river is intense and alive. And it seems the blue is holding everything together.

In language study, I learn there is no name for the color blue. There isn’t a concept of blue? But what of the sky? I resolve to ask the question again when I may string together a few more vocabulary words in Ashéninka. No blue? There are words for black and green and red. One color for red is basically translated raw. The raw that describes a freshly slaughtered animal. No blue-- but raw, blood red. I note this observation in my notebook, feeling somewhat important-- like an anthropologist. I am very satisfied. I close the notebook, and hold it up to my language tutor, Ema. Red, raw red? I question in Spanish-- is raw red the color of my notebook? No, she insists raw red is purer and my red notebook is really a sort of pink. Names for shades of red, but no name for blue.

I watch Ema. I record her voice that I may wake to her words each morning, at the push of a button. It’s as if she is with me when she is not. Such a tiny, barefoot wonder. Few teeth to speak of. Coarse, unruly hair. Does she own a shirt without holes, or shorts that haven’t been crudely stitched in odd places? I have yet to see either.

I stare at her as she speaks into the funny little box I hold near her mouth. Oh my, but isn’t she beautiful! Content. Wise. Laughing easily. She possesses peaceful resolve. Neither time nor person can steal that certain, impenetrable beauty that is hers alone. And when she smiles! Is there anything so lovely as her smiling contentedness? I include this in my notebook. Ema’s smile.

I often think of her smile at unusual times. It depends little on the ease or predictability of circumstances, for she has neither. Clearly perplexing is that smile, when she launches hushedly into her sagas… her 20-something daughter having died, her own debilitating sickness and those speechless fits of fever, death hovering. Her voice is nearly hoarse as her stories unfold, as if she were looking around to see who might hear…

So cautious they are-- and skeptical-- especially of us. Our skin is a different color. Our feet are so big, and we stand a head taller than most. We are dangerous. There are stories of the white man, and every person seems to know the same one: White Man comes to slice, then peel off their faces, rendering them unrecognizable. He who cannot be recognized can never be found. The white man steals their children and peels their faces, too, then sells their organs. We are the foretold face-peelers.

But not everyone thinks this way. In the clustered spread of huts that is Yarina Isla, we are surrounded by a loving Grandfather who is from another tribe, and his son, Hermano Hyoni (Yoni) who is married to an Ashéninka woman. They have four children, three girls and a boy. They are believers.

When the children have all bathed, and cleanish clothes are all strewn about, darkness begins to settle over the river. Everyone is hungry. I make an extra large pot of soup. The whole eggs have been carefully dropped into a boiling broth, and when they are hard, it will be ready to serve: a fat pot of potatoes and peas and bit of corn in a creamy broth. The fire hisses and sputters when soup spills over the side of the blackened pot.

Behind the potato-pea-corn and cream soup is another toppling pot crowded with slivers of freshly-cut yucca. Every meal must include yucca. A dug-up root, it is still earth-encrusted when the rough, brown bark is hit with a machete, peeling away two layers of protective bark. The starchy center settles into tepid water.

Little MacDina comes toddling toward the fire. Her face is layered with runny nose, caked-on dirt and smeared plantain. Lice crawl from her head. And still, she sparkles, eyes twinkling while she babbles jibberishly. I tell her to sit down and wait for the soup. She throws her doll on the floor and screams. She hits the monkey with her doll. Then she obeys.

Hermano Hyoni is sprawled in the hammock, while his daughters, Laura and Yoselin are pushing him. Baby Caleb is crawling toward a whirring bug that has hit the floor, and is his to smash in-hand. Hermana Manuela gathers some bowls and tells the children to call Abuelito. The soup is ready.

Candles resting atop cans of tuna and evaporated milk are spread throughout the hut. We eat soup by candlelight. Sometimes we are silent. Sometimes everyone is talking at once. Sometimes Hermano Hyoni is playing a guitar, and other times Manuela is preparing the bird or the rodent or the fish he’s caught. Other times we are praying together, or studying the book of 2 Peter. We sing and laugh and listen to one another. And always, there is a certain sweetness in the mysterious clashing of our different worlds. This melding is at times uncomfortable. Awkward. Complex. For them, and for us. But without fail, it is always something beautiful. Like Ema’s smile.

To see more pictures from our latest adventure click here.

Christmas in Puntarenas

Black, silty sand. Bodysurfing the warm Pacific by moonlight. Plates full of rice and beans and fresh mahi mahi. A grass fire Miguel fought in sandals with both water from the pool and the ocean. Marshmallows roasted on crude driftwood found along the shore. Late game nights with ice-less tea. Drying sheets along a concrete wall while large, iguana-like lizards scamper over the fresh laundry. Sunburned, freckled children—content to sleep and wake in the same swimsuit. Bus rides from one station to another crowded with sweating travelers. Christmas in Puntarenas.

Finals are finished, grades are in and our intensive Bible-Storying conference is over. Now that 12 piles of laundry are folded and stacked, we grab full backpacks and wind through the streets of downtown San Jose to a crowded bus station, with our blue tickets. The autobus sways alongside seas of coffee beans and wild fruit. When the bus stops, we follow Michael through the backstreets of a small, barb-wired community, to our home for the next week: an ancient, white house settled in a palm grove along the waterfront. Christmas in Puntarenas.

Here, I learn how to peel and de-vein fresh shrimp. My legs swell up like stuffed sausages, and the skin blisters and cracks after falling asleep under the tropical sun. Michael braves furious waves under a midnight sky, until some large sea creature brushes up against his legs. Chloe falls into the pool necessitating a rescue effort which renders Michael with a bruised collarbone and sore, beaten knees, while part of my leg: purple, yellow, and red covers a lump which makes sleeping painful.

There’s a fire to the left of our lot, whose flames leap across the wire fencing until Michael and the boy who lives there, armed with 3-gallon drinking water bottles, begin to drench the property. When the fire truck arrives, shovels full of the black sand are used to extinguish flames. Nearly empty beer bottles under the hot sun fueled the afternoon venture. The pool has a fine layer of ash, and our rooms smell smoky. No one is burned. Christmas in Puntarenas.

Meanwhile, the ladies in the kitchen teach me which vegetables they finely chop to boil into black beans, and how orange achiote paste makes especially delicious arroz con pollo. They stuff boiled, yellow potatoes with ham and cheese, and layer the platter with green beans from the market.

After Christmas Eve dinner, we gather with 3 other families and our Costa Rican hosts, for worship. We eat cake. We sing and listen and laugh. Much of it is in Spanish. Four months ago, I would've been completely lost. But tonight, we understand many things. We can even pray in Spanish together. Tonight is a time to rejoice: It's quite extraordinary, really, to learn to hear and speak another language. This is something God is accomplishing on our behalf, and we are celebrating this Christmas in Puntarenas.

To check out photos from our adventure, check out the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=46585&id=1334529821&l=9e6bdb354f

Learning Love

Gauze-like clouds sit atop the green mountains, surrounded by a sea of sky. Slight wind is soft and warm, while I'm sitting against the wall on the speckled-like-a-bird-egg floor in the mint room. This little "closet" is tucked away in the library whose door you can shut. There is a big window which overlooks the street beyond the white lace curtains, blown by the warm wind.

Enough reviewing reflexive verbs. I am sitting on the speckled-like-a-bird-egg floor enjoying the wind, when I could be sitting in the wind. I stuff what remains of my hastily-scribbled paper piles into the backpack and race down the stairs and out the door, to find a flimsy, plastic green chair.

I sit down. I close my eyes. The sun is warm on my face. I pull out my favorite white notebook, the one I just stuffed with loose papers, and flip to the tab that contains daily musings, for I want to capture the moment in the white book. But to do so, will mean I forfeit the moment, for I will have to write, and I want nothing but to sit beside this cluster of lavender flowers and absorb everything I'm surrounded by. The white book remains open in my lap. Untouched.

Today is Thanksgiving. I'm only half-conscious of this fact because the sun absorbs most every thought... until the bell rings. It is time for Fonetica with Dona Gabi. We will mimic her like adoring little parrots repeating each phrase after her and being repeatedly corrected until our accents aren't so thick.

There are four of us in our little cluster which herds from room to room for each different class.

Ruth the valiant, who just scuba dived and nearly drowned last weekend: Adventurous mother of four, venturing to Venezuela next summer. Ruth invents things: Like ingenious ways to carry an over-sized umbrella, by turning it into what looks like a weapon, slung across her back. Ruth is from Texas. She bakes these sensational little cinnamon-sugar cookies for her neighbors and anyone else who might enjoy them. She's an athlete: the one whose always at the ping pong table during breaks, competing with ease. The one who can hop on a bus and find her way to wherever she wants to go with little care for the fact that she never really knows where she's going.

Then there's Rebecca, the overcomer, who was orphaned in Colombia as a small child, and later adopted into a family in Minnesota. An artist and musician with wide brown eyes and a conquering spirit, Rebecca has Lupus. Last month, Rebecca contracted an infection in her hand which crept into her bloodstream, nearly claiming her life until she was hospitalized. When we went to visit her, she looked fragile and weak-- her eyes heavy with concern--how would the hospital bill be paid?-- but her Bible was beside her bed, and she, though alone, was not without hope. She was still laughing. Rebecca had three different hand surgeries, and is now back in class. She does not quit. Rebecca the overcomer.

Susan is the Detailed one. Mother of two, beautiful teenaged daughters, whose family is on their way to Peru. Verb conjugations pour out of Susan like water from a pitcher. One afternoon, when Dona Alejandra handed back our tests, my heart was bursting with pride when I held in my hands that which I assumed to be the best grade in the class, only to have Dona Alejandra apologize and hand the test to Susan. It was hers. And it was her piercing blue eyes which met me outside of class one afternoon with a bag stacked with delicious food for my family. She noted my exhaustion and that I had been sniffling. She knew Miguel felt poorly, too. So there she was smiling with dinner in her hand while she whispered, "Look in the bag, there's a little something just for you." That's Susan, anticipating needs, and rising to meet them with whole-hearted attention to detail. During our last grammar test, it was Susan who was walking around to each desk placing a few candy corns. She knew we could all use a little taste of home.

These are my co-learners and my teachers. I listen to them with awe: How did Susan manage to get that out so quickly? My, Ruth reads in Spanish with the voice of a radio announcer. And Rebecca pieces everything together verbally without a hint of accent...

We watch each other and laugh. We listen to one another's mistakes and giggle. It's like being a child again in so many ways only this time it's different. We're grown-ups. Time is wasted when I want to be better than my amigas. This time we know that if we have not love, we are nothing.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
but have not love,
I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and
though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains,
but have not love,
I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned,
but have not love,
it profits me nothing.

(1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Without Fall

Painting Coconuts, Hanging Spiders

Julia is painting coconuts. Pumpkins weren't an option. However, one smart mom brought a pumpkin cookie cutter from the states in her suitcase, and we all enjoyed the fruit of her foresight: delighted third graders spread homemade, orange frosting on those pumpkin-cut sugar cookies. Crowned with dried cranberries and chocolate chips... It was like stepping into fall for an afternoon, in that lively little classroom, complete with a couch, floral curtains, and layers of Miss V's creativity.



Life Without Fall

Alas! There is no Fall. Living a bit closer to the equator means living without the change of seasons. Gladly though, missing one thing always means embracing another. Shortly after classes were underway, Christmas lights began to sparkle in store fronts, and now the department-type stores have their window displays in full glory: trees dripping with tinsel and adornments of turquoise and gold and red and lime green. It's truly sensational. Without harvest festivities or Thanksgiving to enjoy, it is only reasonable to begin preparing for Christmas.

So as if Fall was only for a sweet afternoon with Miss V, and with our first 8 weeks at the Language Institute behind us, we've started a new quarter with reviews for Miguel and I, report cards for the little ones, and a frosted pumpkin cookie to share. We've managed to slip into the weekend almost smelling roasted pumpkin seeds...

It is true that though seasons are not as I've known them, and this October I'm not walking into my Mom's kitchen smelling her pumpkin, cream cheese roll being lifted from the oven... there is a steady flow of God's goodness in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar sights and smells. I'm growing comfortable with unfamiliarity and finding in it a cause for rejoicing.

Lettuce Leaves, Uninvited Guests and Grammar

Lettuce Leaves
I am waiting for Miguel to return with the lettuce. The sky is dark and the rain does not relent, and somewhere between our casa and the Jumbo supermercado, he and Nathanael are braving the storm to bring home lettuce and eggs and laundry detergent.

When he does return, the lettuce is a warm, wilted mass. Being that they have braved the downpour on foot, I decide not to question the wilt-factor. Instead, I let the offering soak in the sink. The water is clean and cold, and I am hand-leafing through the layers.

Next, Julia Noel and Abby Gracie and I are shaking cold water from green leaves in the laundry room and laying them over the top of the clothesline. Hours later, when the lettuce is dry and crisp and ready for a grilled chicken tomato salad, the wilting is forgotten.

Uninvited Guests
Each time we open our pantry, a small cupboard above the stove, I'm noticing a seige of tiny cockroaches racing from the light. Large ones have been easy to spot and easy to say goodbye to. However, their offspring are great in number. Though not as quick as their parents, they seem to prefer communal living. Opening the cupboard always provides great amusement to everyone 8 and under. And so, for now, every bit of food is ordered into neat stacks in the darkness of a cold, sealed refrigerator.

Grammar
And so the weeks have slipped by, one after the other, until today, when they seemed to stand still.

I am sitting in our warm, quiet classroom. Our desks, forming a half circle, show only the tops of my classmate's heads. Our grammar exams are before us. I look around the room and pray for each dear friend to think clearly... then I look at my own paper.

I look, yet it's as if there is nothing familiar there. I blink. Thinking, perhaps, if I turn the fan on, things will improve, I get up for a moment. I sit back down again. I can feel my clothes starting to stick to me. Then my forehead is wet. I am seized with a deep, maddening sense of exhaustion.

I look at the articles and the demonstrative adjectives. I glance through the perifrases, searching for somewhere to begin, but this time, I don't know where to begin. So I start writing my sentences using particular verbs in their particular places, until I re-read the instructions, only to learn I'm not following them, and while I am waiting for Eddie to tap me on the shoulder and say it's my turn for the oral part of the exam, I realize I am paralyzed.

I make it through and express my sincerest apologies for my lack of presence of mind, to the most excellent Dona Alejandra. She is gracious. I walk across the way to Language and slump into my seat. Not long thereafter, I am looking at the white board, then my professor. His face is kind.

"I can not speak. I wrote wrong answers. I studied so hard. I'm studying with my children for their Spanish tests and their other tests, too, and I'm so exhausted," and with that, I lifted my notebook in front of my face and wept.

I don't recall weeping in a class before. I suppose I could've excused myself. But I didn't. I just sat there and cried.

It's a strange thing to be empty. No ideas. No words. No recollection. I studied. I was prepared. I was even relaxed. And then, I was exhausted.

In my weakness, God's Spirit is mighty. He has brought me low. He has humbled me, that I might exalt Him. Jesus' death, burial and resurrection has secured my every victory. But victories do not always appear as I might expect them to.

Today, my most fervent efforts have been reduced to crumbs. I humbly offer those crumbs to Him with my whole heart.

Odds and Ends

The Newspaper

Most mornings I'm waking up before the man on the motocicleta throws La Nacion between the bars. So he remembers where to deliver, Manolo has a clever system of spray painting an N on the sidewalk in front of each La Nacion house. He also paints a white arrow on the ashpalt. This way, in early morning darkness, the newspaper's sure to land beyond the right bars.


Trash

When it's time to throw trash away, there are no trashcans, though a very robust system, nonetheless. We place our crude piles of various multi-colored bags in a heap on the sidewalk, grass, or even in the street. Anyone who'd like to sift through the trash is welcome to. Men ride on the back of those familiar trucks, and haul away whatever is left curbside. I'm always delighted by the lack of restrictions. I can place anything out there! There's a possibility it will appeal to someone, but if it doesn't, it will be gone when the truck comes.


Rain

Last week, I was walking up the hill with Nathanael and Chloe after school. The clouds grew heavy and dark. Then there was gentle rain, and we were glad to have an umbrella. As we reached the top of the slight hill to turn right onto our la calle, we looked beside us, hearing steady, thumping. Chloe and Nathanael stared in sheer bewilderment. On our left hand side, a violent downpour erupted out of those groaning clouds. Nearly 100 meters across the street, the rain was furiously climbing the hill, and before we could brace ourselves, it was our turn to experience her fury, which mostly collapsed our umbrellas.

I stood at the gate desperate to get the right key in the right place and thrust the porton open for some relief, but my key would not open the gate. I laid the useless umbrella down. Hardly able to see the keyhole through the rain and the wind, I continued to struggle, until mastering the right manipulation and within seconds, we were under the second story of our home, laughingly watching the water pour.

This week, however, it didn't rain. The sky was blue and the wind was warm, and our classrooms whose window slats were open, were full of warm light... This alternative was amusing, for throughout the day and into the nights, electricity would come and go. Our street guard, German, (Air-maun) lamented over our desperate need for rain since we receive power through a hydro-electric system...


Without Water

Last weekend, there was a time without water. Turning the faucet on yielded only a spitting noise. So I had been especially grateful for our big brother family, whose foresight left us with a stash of water gallons (saved for such a time as this) in our utility room.

I used one gallon to disinfect vegetables from the market, and the rest was off limits until a real necessity came up. After a bit, the water was back on again, and what came trickling, then busting out of the faucet resembled rust. Intrigued, we filled our glasses.

"Look at this! It's water," Julia was enamored.
"No, it's clearly mud," Abby Gracie insisted.
"It's awesome," said Nathanael-- resolving the dilemma.


The Library

Miguel and I start each school with LIBRE (freedom)! Our first hour at school is a study period. He enjoys sitting on the terraza working through conjugations with the boys. I go to the library and sit beside an open window, whose gauzy, white sheers blow with the wind. The smell of old books and journals, anthropological findings and yellowed missionary biographies is perfect. I lay out my pages of construction paper conjugations and definitions, and begin sifting through the lists with hushed, forced pronunciations, saying them over and over again...


Carrot Cake

Carrots in La Feria (Saturday morning market) are stunning. Brilliant in color and giant in size, we've become accustomed to finely shredding them into messy heap, then throwing them into our carrot sheet cake batter. Each child helps, one at a time, with food prep. There is much of it. Their favorite is always with carrot shredding, making orange batter. Generally, we have everything for the cake part, and nothing for the frosting part. So we eat our cake without frosting.


Saturday Morning
September 12

Abigail, Nathanael and I land on a marvelous, tiny Pulperia. Located on a neighborhood corner and painted mustard yellow, we stop in this little haven after our trip to La Feria. I love it at once.

From the ceiling to the floor, every shelf is loaded with stacks of different now-familiar groceries and housekeeping supplies. They even have a bar of cheddar cheese. One end cap has plastic bags stuffed with spices, and another aisle is fully stocked with little flour packages and pasta bags and beans and rice.

In my meager Spanish, I asked what to do with the things I want to buy. The gracious owner insists I load things on the narrow counter space before her. We do. Finding each supply on our list, my helpers put their discoveries excitedly on the counter, like little scavengers on a hunt. When finished, we loaded them into our bags from home, and are off to follow the smell of roasting chicken on the fire.

Eventually, we find a store front whose giant open oven has massive tree branches for the fire, spinning golden rotisserie chickens, dripping with juice. We fit one into our bag...

Now the bags are weighted with produce, supplies and chicken, and there is still much walking before we are home. I take a deep breath and prepare for the final laps, all before the afternoon rain pours. When it does, we are listening to her beat the tin roof, safely home.