MOUNTAIN
After breakfast yesterday we went the near by mountain to look over the city. The path up the mountain is also the way of the cross. They have all fourteen station on the way up to the small chapel.
Each year on good Friday 20,000 people make the walk.
At the top is a beautiful little chapel that from time to time Padre takes youth on retreat two. For there you can see the whole city (400,000 and no building over 6 stories), the bay, the islands at the edge of the bay and all the fishing boats coming and going. There is also sand and nothingness as far as the eye can see.
A FIRST FOR ME
After a stop for lunch on the way back to the church we headed in to homes. We were broken into small groups and each group had a local social worker with them. The social worker took us into a home to see how the people in the barrio live. Thatch wall, dirt floors, sharing bed rooms, a radio, cooking with charcoal that is toxic.
You can´t call moments like this good, or fun, but it was eye opening.
Then our group visited a battered women´s shelter. Three rooms. Two had families (mothers and their children) and the third had a thirteen year old girl. She had the sweetest smile, was a little embarrassed that we saw her unmade bad. You wanted to just hug her.
Then in a moment it all struck me. Her full circumstance. 13 and no were else to go. It wasn´t that she was receiving poor care (the care was great), but that she had to be their.
It was the first moment I almost lost it into tears on the trip.
CHICOS
The students we travel with continue to do great. They are mixing well with each other, and good fun to be with.
The main reason I came on this trip was to see (and maybe help) their transformation. But I wonder if my expectations are too high.
One moment they are getting it. We are walking out of a house in which we have learned that for $180 the family would get a stove and burner so that they would not be cooking with toxic bricks. By the time we are back to the church they have a plan to raise the money.
The next moment they are commenting on how much money an artist made off them today, when he came by to make paintings for them. Almost as if they were taken advantage of (the painter received $60 for a days work).
In those moments I know I need to catch myself. I need to remember I am still learning. Need to remember that I don´t have all the answers. Need to remember where I would have been at 17 in this context.
The hope of a trip like this is to change perspective a little. To open the eyes just a little.
If that happens, then maybe we will all be open to acting with a little more love the next time we are confronted with Body of Christ, not just in poor, but with everyone in our lives.

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