September 2007

Sarah, who left Guatemala in August 2007, makes tamales with her host mother.

Where is God calling each of us? Not only geographically, but where is God calling us into relationships with ourselves, our neighbors, and with God? This is a question I try to ask of myself frequently. I certainly felt a call when I decided against a career in industrial engineering and became a volunteer and then a mission co-worker in Central America, but I understand more every day that one turning toward God isn’t enough. It needs to be repeated over and over again.

I thought at some level that living in Guatemala would keep me reflecting about what’s important in life and keep my lifestyle simple. But still I get bogged down by everyday busy-ness, too many things collecting in my house, and worries of the future. I need to remember to pause, listen, reflect, and continue to hear God’s call, over and over again.

Leslie, who left Guatemala in August 2007, learns how colorful carpets and blankets are woven in the Mayan town of Momostenango.

Luckily, I coordinate the Young Adult Volunteer program, and so I get to reflect with them as they work through their year of blessings and pains living with Guatemalans. I also get to take part in the joys and sorrows of Guatemalan life that the YAVs experience. They go through intense relationships in a context of poverty, injustice, oppression, but which also contains beauty, spirit, and laughter. They are able to pause, listen, reflect, and hence feel strong new calls to careers, to ways of being in relationship, to simple and reflective lifestyle. I am blessed to accompany them as they begin to sense of how God calls them. And I am reminded to continue to listen to new, often small ways that I am called as well.

During the three years I’ve been in Guatemala, I’ve seen a YAV suffer beside the sick and injured—common among those with scarce resources—and wonder how she can live her life to help these problems. I’ve seen another YAV return from her year in Guatemala to feel a strong call to do clinical psychology with the Spanish-speaking population in the United States. Almost half of the YAVs over the last few years have begun seminary a year or two after returning to the States. And all of them, through the challenges of living in Guatemala for a year, have grown tremendously in their knowledge of who they are and who God is for them.

Lindsey, a previous volunteer in the Mayan Kanhabal area, wearing "traje," the traditional Mayan dress.

This is the part of my work that I most love: facilitating transformation. I try to help create space for the volunteers where they can hear God’s voice. Many family and friends of the volunteers are most interested in knowing what the volunteers do. How they are going to help? These are important questions, but much more important is knowing that they are going to feel pulled in a variety of new ways, they’re going to have space to figure out for themselves what’s important in life beyond busy-ness and consumerism, and they’re going to have time to reflect on what vocations may bring them passion and joy.

Coming to Guatemala for a year isn’t the only way to pause, listen, and reflect. I’d challenge you, too, to pause and hear God’s call. Take an hour, a day, or a sabbatical away from your busy-ness. I’ve learned in Guatemala that one way to pause and hear God powerfully is to be in relationship with those in need around you: the poor, the undocumented immigrants, the mentally ill, those with depression, the elderly, the excluded and marginalized. Through them often you will hear God’s voice. How are you being challenged? Are you called to speak out against an injustice? Are you called to work, as Jesus did, caring for those around you?  Called to ask someone who is lonely how they’re really doing, and just listen to them? Called to live more simply or be a more conscientious consumer? Called to reach out to a certain person or group in pain? Called to a new vocation?

This is what mission is about: encounters that transform. I’d challenge you to be in mission wherever you are and to pause, listen, and let God transform you, over and over again.

As a final point, I hope that your church has heard about Mission Challenge ’07. During October, 47 PCUSA missionaries will visit 80 percent of the PC(USA) presbyteries to tell about the work we’re all doing in the world. Whether or not your presbytery is scheduled to receive a speaker, a letter will be sent to all pastors and clerks of session in September informing them of the October event. Then, in early October, a box will be sent to every church with bulletin inserts and a DVD. I hope you’ll encourage your church to pick a Sunday in October to show the video pass out the bulletin inserts. It’s a chance for every member of the church to give to support missionaries like me. Please continue to remember your missionaries through your prayer and support!

The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 63