Just Different

My super great kitchen! 

It’s hard to believe it’s already June. Wow. Almost 6 months since I made the decision to come to Colombia. 4 months and 3 days since I moved to Bogotá. 3 weeks since I moved into my own apartment.

When I think about, well everything, I have no complaints. I lack nothing that is necessary. I am very blessed and thankful for all that has been provided for me.

That said, were I to write a glowing report about my life right now, with a rosy perfect glow on each aspect, it would not be true. This is not to complain, or whine, but just trying to realistically describe how I’m feeling at this moment.

The YABs committee

This past week I returned from a Young Anabaptists’ Committee meeting in Akron, PA. It was an amazing time with my friends on this committee, and wonderful with the other MWC people who were meeting at the same time. I enjoyed being back in North America (went swing dancing!) and connecting with these dear people from all over the world.

Always love my maté

Still there were some things that were a little weird, not bad just different. This was my last meeting as the North American representative on the YABs committee. I knew that was coming, and I feel like this move to South America was the right thing to do. But it was still hard to step back from something that I’ve been so involved in for the past 4 years. And coming home to Bogotá was also, well, different. After every meeting I’ve ever had with MWC I’ve always gone home to BC, to friends and family who were waiting for me, to my church family always excited to hear about my trip and experiences and to my youth group who wanted to know how it was. And this time it was different. I came home to a MCC community who care, and I’m really thankful for, yet still it just felt so different.

My living room, which now has a table and chairs! And the blanket I'm making :)

In my head I know I have so much to be thankful for. Yet this past weekend it was harder to feel that. I just felt sort of down. Thankfully some friends went furniture shopping with me and I finally got a table and chairs (no more awkward meals over a tiny end table)! It helped a lot to go out and do stuff with them. And I did have time to rest this weekend, which was great after not getting too much sleep during our meetings in Akron.

This week has its own busyness to it. The rental agency didn't pay last month’s gas bill so on Saturday I received a message that the bill is overdue and they will shut it off at any moment. This means that I got to get up early (for me) and go wait in line to pay it off as soon as possible (thankfully it all went well this morning). The owners of the apartment also still have to fix stuff in the apartment, so someone’s supposed to come over Thursday morning to do that. And there’s the whole issue of not having internet yet, which I really miss. I don’t like talking in the phone on Spanish, because it’s a lot harder for me to understand. But it’s what needs to be done. Hopefully the calls will have positive results.

That’s an update on how I’ve been. Everything’s ok, I’m just still getting used to many things that are just different.

The first magnet on the fridge, something to keep remembering.

All by myself…

The past month was rather crazy, hence only one blog. But let me rectify that today! What’s the news? This past weekend, on Saturday May 11 to be exact, the big transition happened… I moved into my new apartment in Bogotá!

It was a really full day. I started by calling a taxi and moving the rest of my personal belongings from my host family’s place to the new apartment. I got the keys for the apartment on April 30, so I had been slowly bringing stuff over, but the majority still needed to be moved. After I got my stuff inside the day really got going.

Several co-workers and friends from the MCC/MWC office came over to help me set up. Some had already helped me clean, and move in some heavier stuff. On Saturday, they came for a “curtain hanging” party! Everyone said it was time attending this kind of party. My new apartment has great big windows, but nothing to cover them. It was also missing lines to hang laundry, and there was a bed frame in pieces that needed to be put together. So that’s what we worked on. It was fun to do this with friends, and everything worked! I am the first to admit that I have no idea how to do this on my own.

Beautiful curtains!

I’ve always relied on my dad, brother and other friends for help with “handy” things around the house or at the church where I worked. So I know basically nothing about any of this stuff that was needed to get done and I really appreciated my friends’ help. Two people went with me to a local hardware store and helped me buy what was needed. Others brought tools with them, or extra chairs to use in my very empty apartment. The guys were great at drilling in the curtain rod hangers, and even showed me how to do it, so that I installed one of the hangers!

This blog wouldn’t be very interesting if I missed saying that the day was not without its hiccups along the way.

Putting the bed frame together we realized one of the bolts wasn’t the right fit, so after a return trip to the hardware store it was finally put together. That meant I had my single mattress and my single bed frame all ready to go, except… the mattress is about 4 inches longer than the bedframe! No one was expecting this. Both the frame and the mattress came from the MCC office, so we all assumed they would fit. Haha, not quite. So for now I’m sleeping with the mattress on the ground resting on some wooden boards with the bed frame sitting on its side.

My bedroom

While others were working on the curtains and laundry lines, some of us started working on breaking the styrofoam, from the new fridge that had been delivered earlier in the week, into small pieces that would fit down the garbage chute. The only info I’d been given about garbage was put it in the chute, so we did. But (you knew this was coming) we didn’t make it small enough and jammed the chute! This was an embarrassing moment, that included me calling the lady below me, who does the administration for the building. I ended up going into her apartment, and from her chute pulling out every bag we had put in. At least it all came out! She also showed me where to put big bags of garbage downstairs and was pretty nice about it.

The wall that now is lacking tiles...

While we had the problem of the chute filling up, some tiles on a wall decided to start falling off. The space to hang up laundry lines was on two walls covered in ceramic tiles. When holes were drilled into the grout half of the tiles on the upper part of the wall started to move! While I was looking at this they started to fall off. So I quickly threw my hands up to hold them in place while a friend started taking them down. My hands weren’t big enough to cover all the tiles and three fell before we were ready, but he caught 2 and I managed to catch the third while basically hugging the wall to keep the others in place. It’s hard to describe in writing, but I feel like it would have looked really funny if we had caught it on video. It worked out ok because we got all the tiles off intact, so the rental agency can send someone to put them back up, and I shouldn’t be responsible for buying new ones.

So after all this, and a great pizza lunch, I was alone in my new apartment. I will have a roommate, but she won’t be living here until September, so I have four months on my own. This is actually the first time I’ve lived completely on my own, so in some ways I wonder if this will be a bigger adjustment than what I’ve faced so far coming to Colombia. I’m all by myself here. But on the other hand I’m not. I have a great community here with MCC and MWC, great new friends who jumped in to lend a hand when I needed help.

The view of the mountains from my room

I must say that so far so good. I’ve had comfortable nights, and been warm enough with the three blankets on my bed. I’m still figuring the shower and the hot water out, one cold shower so far, but the next was better. :) This place has a really big kitchen which makes me so happy, but it’ll be even better when I get a table and chairs (hopefully when I get back from a meeting, aka early June) so I can sit and eat comfortably! And the thing I’m missing the most right now is internet. I really miss connecting with people online in the evenings. Hopefully that will be worked out sooner than later so I can Skype with all you great people who know me!

The Jungle Book!

The road to church

I have officially been in Colombia for over 2 months! Crazy! It doesn’t seem like that long, yet at the same time it also feels longer in some ways. I’d like to write about some experiences over semana santa (Holy Week… aka Easter), and also how life is going in general after being here 2 months. But first, my ‘adventure’ while I was in Chocó!

The Sunday when I was there we all split up into small groups of 2-3 to visit different Mennonite Brethren churches. I went to one that was in a very small community about 1.5 hours away in moto-taxi from Istmina, where we were staying. We left around 7:30am to get there for the 9am service. There were 4 of us, the pastor of the church, Pastor Nelson from Bogota, Carolina an MCCer serving in Chocó, and I. We squished into the moto-taxi and were off.

Flat tire #1

About an hour into our trip (I had no watch on so I’m guessing) we got a flat tire. So we stopped, put on the spare, and continued. About 100m down the road the spare went flat. When we looked at it, the tire had come off the rim and the inner tube had a huge gash in it. There was no saving this tire. Then our driver, Carolina and the pastor all got on their cell phones, trying to find a way to get us to the church. We ended up waiting on this dirt road for half an hour.

Flat Tire #2

You could hear the sounds of a mine in the distance, working on one of the countless rivers in Chocó. Our only visitors were a truck and a dirt bike that drove by without stopping at all. Then another dirt bike stopped and they were friends of the driver and trying to help him out, but there was nothing they could do. Finally the pastor got ahold of someone at the church, and they were going to send some people to pick us up on dirt bikes and take us to the church. So the four of us started walking to meet the guys who were coming to get us on dirt bikes.

Waiting with Carolina and the pastor

Walking

It was a really beautiful place. The green jungle was all around us, it wasn’t raining, and with a few clouds in the sky the sun didn’t seem too strong. After we walked over the top of a hill close to the taxi, we didn’t see any signs of any other people for our entire walk. No noises of cars, or dirt bikes, just birds and bugs buzzing around. I never imagined that part of my trip with the delegation to Chocó would end up being walking with this small group through the jungle.

After about 20 minutes of walking the first dirt bike reached us. It was decided that both Pastor Nelson and I would go on it. So I got to be the third person on the bike, sitting on the metal rack. Keep in mind that this is with me wearing a skirt! Thankfully I had shorts on underneath! We drove like this for a few minutes, then 2 bikes passed us to get the other 2, and then a third bike came and stopped. I switched bikes, so there would only be 2 of us on a bike. Then I was doubled like this for another 15-20 minutes or so until we got to the church. We drove through several creeks and rivers, and it was really good I was wearing sandals. At one point, my feet on the foot bars were completely submerged in the river! So it wasn’t just small creeks we drove through.

One of the rivers we rode through

Later on, others asked me if I was scared, and I could honestly answer, that no I wasn’t. Since I was a kid my family has had dirt bikes and I loved getting doubled for a ride by my brother, dad, uncle or cousin. For me the biggest difference was that I wasn’t adequately dressed for dirt biking. Normally I’d wear long pants, long sleeves and helmet in case you fall. Here I had my legs and arms exposed and no helmet. I knew that if we were to fall on the gravel it would really hurt, but I trusted the driver knew what he was doing, and he did, so we didn’t fall.

After all this we arrived at the church. Pastor Nelson was somewhere else getting changed, so I walked in on my own as my driver disappeared. I was greeted by this wonderful lady who was super nice and led me to a seat in the front row. Eventually Pastor Nelson and Carolina joined me, but it took them awhile to get there.

Pastor Nelson preaching

The church service was great! It was super loud music, and their passion was incredible. They sang and clapped their hands and praised God. The kids were seated close to the front and were dancing and jumping around. It was such a blessing to be a part of! Pastor Nelson was their guest speaker and he gave a passionate sermon that was very interesting, and I was actually able to follow! After the worship service they gave us a great lunch of cheese soup and we spent some time walking around their community and hearing their stories.

This MB church is the only church in the small community of under 400 people. And even though not everyone is a member of the church, they all participate in some way and want to help the church, because the church cares and helps the community. Last year when they were building a new church building everyone from the community came to help, and some non-church members were even saying that they (as in all of them together) should be doing a better job! They took ownership of the project and wanted to serve this church that means so much to this community. We heard other stories that were very impactful, but I’m not sure how much I should share here in a public space.

Getting back was another adventure, since our taxi didn’t come with us all the way, it couldn’t take us back. Thankfully, one of the 3 vehicles in the community was driving back to Istmina and he loaded up all the passengers he could take, I think around 12-13 in one jeep!

Visiting after the church service

As you can tell nothing bad happened on this trip, we just had to make some changes to transportation, but it all worked out ok. Later on that day, when we were back in Istmina, I learned more about the context of where we were, and learned how great God’s protection of us was. The road we were traveling on went past several mines, and mines are protected by paramilitary groups, who don’t necessarily want outsiders there. Pastor Nelson and I are obviously outsiders. However, we were traveling with an MCCer and a local pastor, both of whom are well known in the area, and it’s much better and safer to travel with locals. There’s also the fact that we were in the jungle for a while with no vehicle, and there are wild animals around. And again, God protected us, we never saw any animals.

For me this did feel like an adventure. It’s the first time I walked through the jungle! But more than that, it was a witness to God’s protection. While I am so thankful for this protection, I am now also more aware of the dangers and struggles that the people here face every day. Yet in the midst of this they worship with joy and hope in Jesus Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, who is here! He is here with them, and I am so thankful for the opportunity I had to join with these brothers and sisters for this Sunday. And who knows, maybe there’ll be another opportunity to go back to Chocó soon!

Incarnational Living

Once again two weeks have passed since I wrote, and a lot has happened! I wanted to share about some other parts of Colombia that I have gotten to visit, and mostly about the people there and the incredible ways they are living out their faith.

Part of what MCC does in Colombia is host learning tours, helping people from other parts of the world understand, learn more about, and support the people in Colombia, their joys and their struggles. I was blessed to accompany a learning tour of MB pastors and leaders from Canada who came here to connect with Colombian MB pastors.

This is the walk some people have to their house in Cazucá

My first day with them we went to Cazucá, a neighbourhood in the municipality of Soacha, just south of Bogotá. We visited an MB church there, which is also running a school. It was amazing to hear the testimony of the pastoral couple working there. This is a neighbourhood, where 90% of the people there have been displaced from other parts of the country. (Colombia has the highest number of internally displaced people in the world.) For those who can’t afford to live in Bogotá, they’ve gone to the outskirts of the city. This is a neighbourhood of houses built on the side of the hill, which was empty land before. Walking through the neighbourhood, we saw where a landslide had destroyed many homes before, and where other homes where slowly falling. The people of Cazucá face many challenges; including living the midst of a violent context, yet still there is hope. The MB church has grown in 10 years, and the pastoral couple and the 2 MCCers living with them, are the only Mennonites working in Cazucá who also live there. What a testimony, what incarnational living.

Hearing about the Chocó region by the Atrato river.

I also got to visit Anabaptists in the Chocó region of Colombia. There are 10 MB churches there and the first was started by North American missionaries. However, these churches have not received visitors from MB churches in the North America in over 20 years. So it was a big deal for this delegation of MB pastors and leaders from Canada to visit. And the Mennonites of Chocó welcomed us with open arms. Their hospitality was tremendous.

The Chocó region is one of the poorest in Colombia. They have poor infrastructure and no water system.  It’s one of the wettest places on earth, lots of rivers, and lots of humidity, which makes it super-hot. The people there are primarily Afro-Colombian, and the music and church services were lively and full of energy! There is a lot mining going on here, and also continued violence and threats of violence from armed groups. Guerilla groups, para-military, and the Colombian army are all present. On the drive to the city where we stayed we went through territory controlled by each of these groups.

Yet in the midst of these challenges and struggles the churches enthusiastically welcomed us, with many smiles, hugs, and kisses on the cheek (the typical Colombian greeting). They were excited to share with us their ministries and how they were living out a holistic gospel in their communities. Every church we heard of was striving to minister to the needs of the people around them, spiritual and physical. They asked for our prayers, and shared their joy to have relationship with us, to know that they are not alone. It was very powerful to hear of how these churches are living out their faith in the midst of this difficult context.

Pastors and church leaders from Chocó

We were in Chocó for 5 days, and 4 nights, and a lot happened! There were some adventures, and a lot of amazing people. I’ll some more about this soon, as this post is already long enough!