From Claremont to Cochabamba

Thank you for reading my blog.  I have to admit, I am doing this just as much for myself as for all of you.  I did not keep a blog in Honduras, and it is something I wish I had done.  I am going to keep a journal as well, but this is a good way for me to get my thoughts out too.  I can go back and read my posts when I get home (home, a foreign concept at this point).  I never thought I would be a blogger, but I also never thought I would be living in a Bolivian orphanage taking care of Bolivian children.

No one just decides to become an overseas missioner.  The process of getting here is lengthy, so I won't explain every detail, but it all started when a good friend of mine suggested I teach Confirmation.  She waited until she knew I was ready to delve deeper into my faith (which is why she was so good at her job).  I started teaching Confirmation and that led me to volunteer with the youth group at my parish in Claremont.  From there, I started going on retreats, helping out with the midweek Bible Study.  Through my volunteer work, I was invited to be a pilgrim in Turkey and attend World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia.  In addition to Turkey and Australia, I have been to Europe twice, one time I went to mainland Europe and the other time I went to the United Kingdom.  You would think all of this traveling would be sufficient, right?  I thought so too, at first, but as soon as I would come home I would have a longing for something else.  I wasn't quite sure what that was, but the longing was constant, to the point where I was waking up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

In 2008, I was invited to be a Just Faith participant.  I had no idea what Just Faith would do to me.  Just Faith has changed my life forever, no exaggerating. Just Faith is a thirty week social justice study, where I learned about Catholic social teaching and people such as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.  While in Just Faith, we talked about what is really means to be a missioner. Does it involve leaving your country to live in rural Honduras or a Bolivian orphanage?  Of course not.  You can be a missioner without leaving your own city.  I used those thirty weeks of Just Faith as discernment for what being a missioner meant to me.  For me, at this point in my life, it does mean leaving the United States and moving overseas.  The longing was there for a long time, but it was Just Faith that brought that longing to the surface. 

In between all of my volunteer work at my parish in Claremont and Just Faith, I have been fortunate to know both domestic and overseas missioners.  When I say this has been a process, I mean it.  For as long as I can remember, I have known people that have done mission work, both religious and lay people.  Through their stories, I began to get ideas of what it would really be like to live overseas.  I had plenty of time to let this concept sink into my head before I actually started applying.

My first thought was to go into the Peace Corps.  After a lengthy application process, I was accepted into the Peace Corps (no easy feat by the way).  My gut instinct was telling me I belonged in Latin America, but at that time my Spanish wasn't good enough.  The Peace Corps wanted to put me in Eastern Europe, a place I would like to visit one day, but I did not feel called to live there for 27 months (the standard Peace Corps commitment).  I went back to the drawing board, so to speak.  I came across a website called Catholic Network Volunteer Service.  It hit me like a ton of bricks that, duh! I needed to be with a Catholic community.  How could I leave my country for an extended amount of time and not be able to celebrate my faith?  Thank goodness that website exists.

After searching the website, I came across the organization I was with in Honduras.  While the experience in Honduras was not what I thought it would be at all, I absolutely do not regret it.  In fact, as I type this blog, there is a pain in my heart for Honduras.  Even though I did not like my job in Honduras (which turned out to be quite problematic for all involved), there were certain aspects of my time in Honduras that I absolutely loved. I know that is hard to believe given how many times I cried while in Honduras, but not everything was awful.  There was an unconventional beauty to the city.  It was in Honduras that I truly learned how to live in community.  My roommates should receive a medal for how patient they were with me.  It was in Honduras that I started running, something I have kept up with very nicely.  It was in Honduras that I really started speaking Spanish. I had a decent understanding of Spanish before I left for Honduras (there are one or two Spanish speakers in CA).  But prior to Honduras, I had never had a lengthy conversation with someone in Spanish.  By the end of my service in Honduras, I was praying in Spanish. I would conjugate verbs in my head while running. I had dreams in Spanish.  I read a book of poetry in Spanish. I could understand the homilies better at Mass.  More importantly than any of that, though, I listened to God.  He told me it was time to come home in March, which was heartbreaking.  It was the best decision at the time, but not an easy one to make.  In fact, the decision was pretty much made for me, I just picked the exact day I would leave.  Coming home from Honduras left me with a huge pain in my heart, one that still exists.  I don't know when it will go away, but I can close my eyes and see the house I lived in and see the school and the church.  Again, that may be hard for some people to believe given how miserable I was, especially at the end, but I had never wanted anything so badly in my life. Before I could blink my eyes, I was at the Teguc airport with my luggage feeling completely defeated and lost in life.  I didn't belong in Honduras anymore, but I didn't belong in California either.  It was a terrible feeling, one I hope to never experience again.  I learned the meaning of man without a country.

Thankfully, ten days after I came home from Honduras, were Youth Day and the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress.  Congress, like Just Faith, has been instrumental in forming my faith.  It is the only thing I can see myself coming home for my year in Bolivia, but flights are too expensive so it probably won't happen.  However, if some airline happens to run a great deal for a round trip flight from Cochabamba to LA, I'm at Youth Day and Congress in 2012!  I'll keep checking for a good deal on flights.

As I said, Congress was shortly after I arrived home from Honduras, thanks be to God. It was the best possible place for me to be.  Seriously, I can't imagine a better way to try and heal from the pain of leaving Honduras. There is so much stimulation at Congress; a person can't dwell on anything for too long, at least for the weekend.  After Congress, I had a renewed sense of purpose in life.  It wasn't like a magic wand had been waved and all of a sudden I was healed from Honduras, but Congress gave me the strength to put myself back out there, so to speak.  I knew I would not be a good employee to anyone, so I lived off my savings while looking for the next volunteer assignment.

I should mention that my cousins took me into their apartment at this crucial time.  I remember writing on Regina's Facebook as I was getting ready to leave Honduras that I was a five foot ball of tears.  Who wants that in their house?  But they took me in, no questions asked.  And I was indeed a five foot ball of tears some days.  Thankfully, baseball season was right around the corner, a welcome distraction to my pondering.  I would sit and listen to VIN and read about various volunteer organizations.  A tiny bit of light was peeping through the darkness that enveloped me when I came home from Honduras.

I went to Colorado for a few days to visit some good friends who live in Fort Collins.  I had never been to Colorado before, so it was a new adventure.  While talking with my friend in Colorado, it became absolutely evident that I needed to go back out there and try to volunteer again.  My friend lived in CA for two years, and we met through an online group.  The group hiked, so that's how we got to know each other.  While we would hike, she would talk to me about her upcoming wedding, and I would talk about my desire to volunteer abroad.  Going to Colorado was such a relief because I knew when I got home I wanted to hit the ground running on my volunteer applications.

Hit the ground running I did.  I had received a book from Congress that lists various Catholic volunteer assignments. I started going through the book and began applying to organizations that had openings in Latin America. After Honduras, I knew I wanted to keep up with the Spanish.  I worked too hard to learn it, and it is such a relief to be able to enter a country already knowing the language.  I can make connections with people right away, rather than months and months into my volunteer assignment.  This is how I came across the Salesian Lay Missioners, the group I am serving with in Bolivia.

Everything fell into place. I had two phone interviews, and after the second phone interview I was invited to attend a discernment weekend.  There had been a discernment weekend in Berkeley in March, which obviously would have made the most sense for me to attend geographically.  But I missed that one, so I got to make a whirlwind trip to South Orange, New Jersey in June.  Everything happens for a reason. If I had not gone to the South Orange, New Jersey discernment weekend, I would not have met Judy (who is my partner in crime in Bolivia).  We clicked right away, and the Sunday morning of the discernment weekend she just came right up to me and asked if we could serve together in Bolivia.  Of course, that made me happy, that someone wanted to serve with me.

I came home from South Orange, New Jersey with a lot of thinking to do.  I had to discern if serving a year in South America was the right decision for me.  Even though the discernment weekend went well, no decision could be made by any party quite yet.  So here I was, trying to discern if serving in South America would be the best thing to do at this point in my life, and I actually got to go to South America to do just that.  To backtrack a little, when I went to Congress in March, I saw an advertisement for scholarships to Peru for an immersion experience with the Columbans.  Having just come back from Honduras with my newfound Spanish abilities, I applied for the scholarship.  There were three scholarships available for much more than three applicants, but I ended up receiving one of the scholarships.  I came home from South Orange, New Jersey late on a Sunday night and left for Peru the following Friday.  

Peru confirmed what I was pretty sure of, but couldn't verbalize during the discernment weekend with great clarity.  The two weeks in Peru went wonderfully, so I said yes to the invitation to attend the month long Salesain Lay Missioner Orientation in New York.

After officially being accepted with the Salesain Lay Missioners, I booked my round trip ticket from LA to NY for Orientation.  The Salesian offices are in New Rochelle, New York, a train ride away from Manhattan.  The first Orientation stop was in Ossining, New York.  Ossining was the site for our MISO training (Maryknoll International Service Orientation).  After Ossining, we were off to Port Chester to work at two summer day camps.  After Port Chester, I was off to Stony Point for a weeklong retreat.  But I was not about to travel all the way to NY without going into Manhattan, something I was able to do several times during the month I was East.  Andy and I had been in Manhattan when all the lights went out on the Eastern Seaboard (an experience in and of itself). Even though I had been to NYC before, it was still exciting to spend some time in Manhattan.  Between the Orientation and my time in Manhattan, I was exhausted but filled with excitement for Bolivia.  I met incredible people during my Orientation.  Even though we are in different countries now, we are still in each other's hearts. Orientation was an intense experience, one that prepared me well for Bolivia.  I appreciate any organization that has you go through an Orientation.

When I turned on my computer tonight, I thought I would delve into my life at the Hogar. But I would like to be here more time before I start sharing reflections on how I feel about Bolivia, the girls, the culture, the Hogar and my role here.  I arrived safely on the afternoon of 9/23, after spending one day in Miami.  My first week in Bolivia has been spent trying to learn the schedule and how to do laundry by hand without completely destroying your clothes.  I can say that it is already not at all what I pictured, but that's not a bad thing in the least.

While I don't want to talk about the Hogar quite yet, I will share one story.  I walk the three kinder girls to school every afternoon.  One afternoon this week it started raining (it is spring in Bolivia).  I had done laundry that morning, so my clothes were outside drying.  I thought I would have to run out and bring everything in as soon as I got back to the Hogar.  To my joy, the girls did it for me.  Instead of running out to get their own clothes of the line, they ran out to get mine.  Not only did they do get my clothes off the line, they hung up my clothes inside instead of leaving them in a wet heap.  They could have saved their own clothes, but they saved my clothes instead.  Entonces, me voy.

Gracias por leer mis pensamientos.  Es importante y necesario para mí a compartir mi vida aquí con Ustedes.

Paz,

Ángela Marie