8 days spent in any country is by no means long enough to drink in your surroundings, process the sights, smells, and sounds experienced, nor is it a long enough to begin to process the questions that begin to arise when put in a new environment.
El Salvador was as beautiful as it has ever been. The mosquitoes were at a minimum, the heat while still annoyingly humid was not completely oppressive, and oh how my mom, friends, and I were welcomed and embraced by the people.
My time in El Salvador was a blink of an eye, almost as if it didn't happen. A day ago I was lying on the tile floor of my sister in law's house trying to find some relief from the heat, now I'm sitting in my little office at home with a fan pointed towards me, writing. I am happy to be in a dry place where I am not constantly sweating.
A day after arriving in San Salvador I thought to myself--I can move here. I can find a life for my family here, I can truly see it working out. That was a shocking moment for me because I fought that idea 2 years ago for the entire three months I lived there. I have always thought that I could return there to live as long as I was "called" from God. Is the fact that I am somehow more at peace with the idea such a calling?
I wrote previously about being nervous to return to David's country as his wife. All those feelings were quickly overturned when my sister in law threw her arms around me upon seeing me and threw my 2 year old niece in my arms who was born the first time I visited. She talked rapidly as we drove home catching me up on two years of having been gone.
Maria Rosa and her husband had taken off work that day to pick me up from the airport and spend the day with me. To us, that may not seem like a big thing. I can take off work whenever I want for the most part and still get paid for it. My family however does not have that perk. They don't work, they don't' get paid...Financial life is difficult there as well. They gave that up to be with me.
I took along a few books with me when I went. One was a Nouwen book. He writes:
Increasing prosperity has not made people more friendly toward one another. They're better off; but that new found wealth has not resulted in a new sense of community. I get the impression that people are more preoccupied with themselves and have less time for one another than when they didn't possess so much. There's more competivness, more envy, more unrest, and more anxiety. There's less opportunity to relax, to get together informally, and to enjoy the little things in life. Success has isolated a lot of people and made them lonely.
For being the wealthiest nation, America has a high concentration of miserable people. I have no hard stats to prove this, but perhaps the rate of depression meds that are handed out speak loudly enough, or the suicide rate, or the drug consumption levels of residents. Any time I have traveled to a third world country or a developing country I have witnessed people who work harder than I probably ever will but they know how to find joy in life.
El Salvador offered me a very special time with my mom who accompanied me on the adventure. My mom who has traveled a bit had never been to a country quite like El Salvador. It was a blessing to have her witness my husband's roots, sip coffee with his sisters, make tortillas with his aunt, and be able to climb into bed with her the night I had a fever and could not stop shivering. I think it was a bit frustrating for her that she never quite new what was going on or what we were going to do next, but that is the beauty of stepping outside one's own culture.
Jim Wallis writes in his book, Faith Works, "You won't really know yourself if you stay in the carefully constructed boxes of your life. Getting out of the house is actually the first step on a spiritual journey."
This idea of stepping out is very true to my own life. I can trace dramatic shifts in my thinking, priorities, and overall view of God back to moments of stepping into a world foreign to my own comfortable surroundings and ideologies.
The importance of the elderly is abundantly evident in the culture. David's grandmother, though in her early 90's, is very much the matriarch of this family. The mother of 9 or 10 (or maybe 11) children (I always lose count) and grandmother to innumerable more, she is adored and cared for by her children. She spends her days in a wheelchair in the outdoor courtyard as several of the 4 and 5 year old great grand-children who live with her run around. Her face has a thousand wrinkles that each have some story behind them. Her long grey hair is worn in two braids. When she talks about David she begins to cry as she tells me that her heart is not complete with him so far away. She likes to tell stories about how she cared for him as a kid and how much she stile loves him. For a culture that has undergone so much turmoil in the past century and seen so much death and destruction, for a country whose economy is slowly being sold to multi-nationals and life is a daily struggle to think of something creative to sell in order to make a living, people live a long time there. It is not rare to see old people well into their 90's and even 100+ years old. It seems that the elderly here slip into non existence even while still alive. Do people live longer there because of the strong family unit surrounding them?
El Salvador was as beautiful as it has ever been. The mosquitoes were at a minimum, the heat while still annoyingly humid was not completely oppressive, and oh how my mom, friends, and I were welcomed and embraced by the people.
My time in El Salvador was a blink of an eye, almost as if it didn't happen. A day ago I was lying on the tile floor of my sister in law's house trying to find some relief from the heat, now I'm sitting in my little office at home with a fan pointed towards me, writing. I am happy to be in a dry place where I am not constantly sweating.
A day after arriving in San Salvador I thought to myself--I can move here. I can find a life for my family here, I can truly see it working out. That was a shocking moment for me because I fought that idea 2 years ago for the entire three months I lived there. I have always thought that I could return there to live as long as I was "called" from God. Is the fact that I am somehow more at peace with the idea such a calling?
I wrote previously about being nervous to return to David's country as his wife. All those feelings were quickly overturned when my sister in law threw her arms around me upon seeing me and threw my 2 year old niece in my arms who was born the first time I visited. She talked rapidly as we drove home catching me up on two years of having been gone.
Maria Rosa and her husband had taken off work that day to pick me up from the airport and spend the day with me. To us, that may not seem like a big thing. I can take off work whenever I want for the most part and still get paid for it. My family however does not have that perk. They don't work, they don't' get paid...Financial life is difficult there as well. They gave that up to be with me.
I took along a few books with me when I went. One was a Nouwen book. He writes:
Increasing prosperity has not made people more friendly toward one another. They're better off; but that new found wealth has not resulted in a new sense of community. I get the impression that people are more preoccupied with themselves and have less time for one another than when they didn't possess so much. There's more competivness, more envy, more unrest, and more anxiety. There's less opportunity to relax, to get together informally, and to enjoy the little things in life. Success has isolated a lot of people and made them lonely.
For being the wealthiest nation, America has a high concentration of miserable people. I have no hard stats to prove this, but perhaps the rate of depression meds that are handed out speak loudly enough, or the suicide rate, or the drug consumption levels of residents. Any time I have traveled to a third world country or a developing country I have witnessed people who work harder than I probably ever will but they know how to find joy in life.
El Salvador offered me a very special time with my mom who accompanied me on the adventure. My mom who has traveled a bit had never been to a country quite like El Salvador. It was a blessing to have her witness my husband's roots, sip coffee with his sisters, make tortillas with his aunt, and be able to climb into bed with her the night I had a fever and could not stop shivering. I think it was a bit frustrating for her that she never quite new what was going on or what we were going to do next, but that is the beauty of stepping outside one's own culture.
Jim Wallis writes in his book, Faith Works, "You won't really know yourself if you stay in the carefully constructed boxes of your life. Getting out of the house is actually the first step on a spiritual journey."
This idea of stepping out is very true to my own life. I can trace dramatic shifts in my thinking, priorities, and overall view of God back to moments of stepping into a world foreign to my own comfortable surroundings and ideologies.
The importance of the elderly is abundantly evident in the culture. David's grandmother, though in her early 90's, is very much the matriarch of this family. The mother of 9 or 10 (or maybe 11) children (I always lose count) and grandmother to innumerable more, she is adored and cared for by her children. She spends her days in a wheelchair in the outdoor courtyard as several of the 4 and 5 year old great grand-children who live with her run around. Her face has a thousand wrinkles that each have some story behind them. Her long grey hair is worn in two braids. When she talks about David she begins to cry as she tells me that her heart is not complete with him so far away. She likes to tell stories about how she cared for him as a kid and how much she stile loves him. For a culture that has undergone so much turmoil in the past century and seen so much death and destruction, for a country whose economy is slowly being sold to multi-nationals and life is a daily struggle to think of something creative to sell in order to make a living, people live a long time there. It is not rare to see old people well into their 90's and even 100+ years old. It seems that the elderly here slip into non existence even while still alive. Do people live longer there because of the strong family unit surrounding them?
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