Email: Allison Lee-Villanueva

Dear Friends and Family,

Last month on my trip to Ghost Ranch in New Mexico my roommates and I found ourselves lost on a hike. Our intensions had been to make it up to Kitchen Mesa, which was the highest point you could get to by foot, but the more we walked the more apparent it was that we were traveling away from our destination and not towards it. Instead of turning around we decided to continue on the trail we were on, thinking that it would lead us to Box Canyon. However, our research for our excursion, or lack thereof, did not inform us that the path for the unplanned hike was really a creek bed, and we were therefore once again, put off track.

Our attempts to find an actual path through the trees, lead us to the waterbed time and time again (you would think that we would have gotten the hint). Since we did not believe this to be our path the only other option we could see was to forge our own. In the end we reached no intended destination, but many of our attempts to reach those destinations allowed us to see perspectives of the mountains that we would not have viewed otherwise.

During the two-hour hike that day, I came to the realization that life often works the way this hike did. We have a plan; mine was to complete four years of college, take a year off for missions, and then go to med school.

But those plans can quickly change. Somehow, the path through college did not seem that clear to me. I guess I felt as if I had to forge my own instead of follow the creek. This led me to Homestead, Florida.

Homestead is not the home of anything a middle-class American would consider big, other than a NASCAR speedway. In fact, only recently was there a movie theater and new-car dealership built in the area of town in which I work. What it does house is a diverse, culture-filled community that so desperately needs to be loved.

Open House Ministries

On my first night at OHM, Wanda Ashworth and Leah Crowley, my supervisors, went over my duties for the year. They included tutoring during Wise-Up, our Monday and Wednesday after-school program; establishing and co-coaching OHM’s soccer club, Lightning, on Tuesdays and Thursdays; entertaining children during thrift store hours on Tuesday nights; helping lead JAM, the teen program, on Thursday nights; and lastly, my personal favorite, “tasks as otherwise assigned.” Since this list was established, I have also added the Family Literacy program to my Monday and Wednesday mornings and a biweekly pen-pals program that connects our elementary school girls with Bryn Mawr College’s varsity volleyball team. When we attempted to brainstorm a title for this job description no word we used seemed to encompass it all, so the title “counselor” was written above the list and decided to be “good enough.”

Only recently have I realized that the title “counselor” is truly appropriate. The work that I value the most isn’t in getting through another afternoon of child care; it is when a child and I share a small but powerful moment together. I have noticed these moments when I am tackled by five different girls during free time, when Cinnimon’s huge smile appears upon her face because she just completed a work sheet, or the joy in Citlali’s eyes when she is kicking a ball during soccer club. I even witnessed these moments when I saw the terror on the face of a middle school girl as she told me how she and her friend were hit on by a drunk on a bus ride, or when I consoled a broken-hearted fifth grader because she has to wait thirty minutes for a family member to pick her up from soccer club for the third time in a row. It is in these moments, both the joyful and the sad, that I feel the most accomplished and in touch with God’s work here.

The current purpose of my life is so different from what it was in school. In college, success was measured by a mere number, your GPA, but here it is hard to quantify. Since being down here, I have noticed that different ministries have tried to come up with ways of quantifying their success.

Some do it based on the number of kids that were “saved” at events. Others on how much children’s grades improve over the year. And others based on the number of kids served. From an administrative standpoint, these statistics are important, but the fact is that there is a high possibility that I will never know the full impact I am having on these kids’ lives.

Although I currently find myself off the normal young adult path through college, this experience is giving me a whole new sense of purpose. The people I work with are so real. They may try to put on a mask to hide their vulnerability, but unlike middle-class America, they are forced to take it off because of their living situation. It is heartbreaking to see families who believe in the American dream struggle just to support themselves, when so many who were born into that dream, myself included, are so unaware of how good they have it.

I hope to remember this next year when I find myself battling the academic world once again (if I don’t, someone please refer me to this letter). As much as I love what I am doing right now, I can only imagine how much more useful I will be once I have a degree in my hands. I know that my path through my young adult canyons will once again lead me to college and maybe next time I will understand how fortunate I am to be on society’s “normal” path. For the time being I am very grateful for the time I have now with the people in Homestead. They have already taught me so much about the realities of this world, but I know that there is a whole lot more to come.

Prayer requests

• For all the new relationships that are forming.
• For my house, and that my relationships with my roommates will continue to grow.
• For all the immigration issues that becoming more real every day.
• That Penn Pals first meetings will go well. 

I love and miss you all,

Allison

I also have a blog that I am trying to keep up with.