For the last month, Antigua, Guatemala has been my home. I don’t have a house, I don’t have a job, I don’t have a plan for my life when I get back to the states, I just have a passion to be in other places. Being in this place has been so full of life, language, people, learning. Yet the path I have been on living here in Antigua is going to change, and not just geographically.
Tomorrow I am moving to Magdalena, a small, poor, rural village about half an hour into the mountains. I will be living with a family there, eating what they eat, speaking their language, and learning their life. My internship is in social work in the near-by village of displaced people, El Gorrión. These people had their whole village wiped out by a devastating landslide, and were relocated by the government and kept in poverty, not able to own their land and dependant on trucks bringing in water each week. Where I fit into this is something I am going to be finding out over the next two weeks. Yesterday , after our group bible study, I was able to speak with the head of the social works in El Gorrión, and when I asked about what I was going to be doing exactly, I was given the answer, “you will be going to people’s homes and hearing about their problems.” Perfect. I am a relational person, and I don’t have anything special to give to these hurting people other than my time and understanding. Yet another reason why I am so thankful that my Spanish is really taking off.
This shift with be quite the culture shock: from the touristy and comfortable quaint-ness of Antigua, where I was just starting to make some local friends (you know you are in when you get the Guatemalan cheek kiss), to the unknown, rural life of early mornings, devotion, and pouring out that will take place in Magdalena and El Gorrión. I am excited to live in this new place, and be taught so much about God and relationships from there people who live there. So here is to the comming paradigm shift — may I be prepared as I can, and flexible for what is to come, open to learning and relishing this other side of Guatemala.
Take What You Need From The Words I Leave 