dame tus ojos.

Dame tus ojos quiero ver (give me your eyes, i want to see)
Dame tus palabras, quiero hablar (give me your words, i want to speak)
Dame tu parecer (give me your image)

Dame tus pies, yo quiero ir (give me your feet, I want to go)
Dame tus deseos para sentir (give me your desires so I can feel)
Dame tu parecer (give me your image)

Dame lo que necesito (give me what I need)
Para ser como tu (So I can be like you)

Last night at our house church we sang these words. We sing this song often and I like it. I like the melody. I like the words. But never has it touched my heart the way it did last night, moving me to tears. Because last night the words felt so much more literal.

E is 18. I've only know her and her family for about a month. Her mother and siblings are victims of domestic violence. E and her siblings V and D all have a genetic disorder that has left them nearly blind. Only their younger brother has gone to school because he presents as "normal" and the school would accept him.

D is pretty much mute and cannot answer simple questions such as What is your name? Their mother, J cares for all four of her children plus the youngest, a two year old, who is actually E's child, the result of being victimized. My heart breaks for this family.

As we worshipped last night E flipped through the song book but could not find the right song. She asked me to open the book to the right place and then she opened D's book to the same song. E held the song book really close to her face and tried to follow along.

Dame tus ojos quiero ver.

D held the song book but not knowing how to read or speak just swayed along to the music ever so often turning to me and smiling.

Dame tus palabras quiero hablar.

Never have the words been so real. And so I sat fighting back the tears and praying that God would hear our prayers. That he would give them his sight and his voice.

Dame to parecer.

And that he would make me more like him.

So far we have been able to give them food and a two members of our church are allowing them to stay on their property rent free as well as have given J work at their panadería. They are also a part of our new health project and have seen a doctor but finding people to do genetic studies and fund their eye exams and glasses. We are in contact with a government agency that helps victims of domestic violence so please pray with me that God would hear our prayers and lead us to the right services and assistance for this family.

Déjame ver lo que tu vez (Let me see what you see)
Dame de tu gracia, tu poder (Give me your grace, your power)
Dame tu corazón (Give me your heart)
Déjame ver en tu interior (Let me see you deeply)
Para ser cambiado por tu amor (So that I will be changed by your love)
Dame tu corazón (Give me your heart)

tales from the camión

i left my house at 7am with what should have been plenty of time to make it to tapo to catch my bus to oaxaca which was scheduled to leave at 9am. it was still dark when i left, however that didn't mean that the bus from my community to el centro would be any less full. i hopped on the bus with my little rolling suitcase, messenger back and travel mug full of earl grey only to find that i was the first unlucky person of the morning. every seat was full which meant i had to juggle all of my things and head to the back of the bus for a bumpy and frustrating ride. fifteen minutes in i was dripping sweat, cursing my need for caffeine as i struggled to keep vertical with only one hand holding on to the bar and my bag had tipped over hitting a lady in the leg, gaining a dirty look from that mujer and was now being graciously held onto by the man in the seat in front of me, the man in which i was ungodly close to.

the bus was stuffed and forty-five minutes later i was still standing but now sausaged in between students in their school uniforms, men in business suits and dealing with a major case motion sickness. when a seat finally opened up at the very back i threw my jacket that i had somehow wiggled out of whilst extreme sweating as if to claim my territory. i wobbly waddled over to the spot and put down my messenger bag and then waddled back for my suitcase thanking the man who was still holding on to it for me. finally, i sat and a seat on the bus never felt so good! until, a very large man in a suit and tie and the hairiest fingers i have ever seen, who had been eyeing me for the last half hour claimed the seat next to me that had also opened up. he wedged himself in taking up his seat and half of mine.

he was already awfully close, so close in fact that at one point i thought, "is this dude, smelling my hair...creepy?!" but no, he was not, instead dude let a huge snore. he was sleeping and every time he would fall asleep his large hairy hand would slowly start slipping from the bar on the seat in front of him and is it would, he would slowly start leaning over on to me until he would wake up with a start and wrap his chubby fingers around the bar once more. i wasn't the only one who noticed and the young guy on my other side moved a little bit over so that i could get out of harm's way but for every scoot to the right i made, big man just fell a little bit more to the right as well until finally more of his weight than i could handle caused me to literally yelp. and that's when the guy next to me and i looked at each other and lost it laughing. and i looked at him, "like is this not the most ridiculous situation ever?" and he looked back at me, "like yes, yes it is the really freaking ridiculous, except when i tell this story and i definitely will, my rendition will include not only a huge, snoring man but also a strange little yelping white girl on a two hour bus ride in which i have never seen a foreigner before."

the large man eventually woke up and got off...two hours after i first got on, so did i, but not before my bus to oaxaca had already left the station.

a.

i bobbed and weaved through the chocolate like lakes that had replaced our streets,

past the chicken vendor, the catholic church, the huge and ominous santa muerte alter,

i knocked on her door and was greeted with a warm hug and customary kiss on the cheek.

as we sat down with our cafecitos, she just looked at me and began to cry,

"my life is in chaos" she said wiping away tears with scented toilet paper while chain smoking.

cancer, appendicitis, marital troubles, debt, kids, work...

what to say? really, there was nothing i could say

so i just made eye contact, listened, and silently prayed.

for an hour and a half, i made eye contact, listened, and silently prayed,

until her son came in a told us they found their pet bunny had been killed by a stray cat.

more chaos. l. cried and cried. a. told her that she should have been more careful with the bunny.

after the momentary chaos had settled, we prayed together. we prayed for peace, for healing, for the presence of god in their home.

i left just after receiving another customary kiss, bobbing and weaving and slipping in the mud, past the santa muerte alter, the catholic church, the chicken vendor, the little girl in the bright pink dress.

i prayed for peace, for healing, and the presence of god in my home.

reflections on la influenza.

(i wrote this for the SP staff newsletter and i thought since i have not been very good about the whole blogging and keeping in touch thing i'd post it. i really want to be better with writing, so hopefully this is the start of a more regular sharing of my life and thoughts in mexico city.)

It started out on a friday morning as a bit of a mystery. There was a flu going around in the city and they had shut down the schools as a precaution for a few days, was all we knew. Shabrae, our team leader, bought some face masks for us and we had a good laugh as we put them on and snapped a few photos. On Saturday and Sunday, I started getting my first phone calls and emails from friends and family. “Are you okay? Do you have any flu like symptoms?” my mom wanted to know. “No, I feel fit as a fiddle,” I replied, “No need to worry.” This virus was starting to get international attention. We cancelled our weekend programs, the kids club, the youth group and our house church to be in accordance with the government’s mandate of avoiding groups of people and we were on lockdown.

I told my family and friends not to worry, but the swine flu felt like a snowball rolling down a mountain toward me, getting bigger and bigger the closer it got. As I walked through my community to get water one morning, with my face mask on, of course, I noticed that only about one in five was wearing a similar mouth cover. The paranoia was sinking in and I felt like at any minute some sort of invisible mist was going to sneak up behind me, tap me on the shoulder and say, “swine flu, tag you’re it!”

Our team was taking all of the precautions. We have hot water and soap and were washing our hands like we were doctors scrubbing in for surgery. We had vitamins and anti-bacterial hand gel, face masks that we bought before the entire country “sold out”. But our neighbors, many don’t have hot water, let alone running water. And some because of the mistrust that comes with being burned one too many times by their government, felt that the H1N1 virus was nothing but a government conspiracy and refused to take any precautions.

So as the days stuck inside were adding up and more and more of our home visits, meetings, and church services were cancelled, we began to realize that this was a prime opportunity to reach out to the community and help spread awareness and aid to our neighbors rather than simply waiting it out. After all, what is a youth leadership training program, if we don’t first act as leaders in the community? What is a church built on the foundation of God’s Shalom, if we do not first embody the values that we teach of service and of love?

We started right away planning our outreach strategy and contacting stores and donors. Thanks to many generous donors we were able to give away bleach, soap, and face masks to almost 400 homes during stage one and antibacterial hand gel and vitamins to over 700 homes during phase two with the help of members of our church and other project volunteers. We gave the remaining soap, bleach, and hand gels to the two neighborhood schools to assist in disinfecting the classrooms and keeping all those little niños’ hands clean!

As life started slowly getting back to normal, classes resuming, the city waking up from its long nap, I resonated on two major lessons I learned during this time. The first was that we can think big. We were shocked that we were able to knock on every door in our community in just four hours. And as we figured out the number of people impacted by the outreach, we were amazed to realize that over 5,000 people had been directly benefited throughout the three phases. And finally, as Tendisai and I led the evaluation with a few of our volunteers from the community, I was struck by their words. Each one of them said that they loved going out and serving the community, they loved the way in which we all worked together, supporting one another, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company, but what they loved most of all was that we were putting into practice what we had been learning on Sunday evenings in church, to be the hands and feet of the Lord.

Although it was a frustrating time with many of our projects having to be postponed and rearranged, we were able to use it to serve our community in a new way, learning that we have quite a few neighbors who we can really count on to partner with us in the process of reaching out and caring for the community, we were able to strengthen relationships those people, and alongside them we were able to show the community a little more of God’s heart. Praise God, for his hand of protection over our team, our community and over Mexico City.

four more days

as the deer panteth for the water

feeling thirsty

and in a dry place.

CONSIDERING

resuscitating.