I’m sorry I’m not keeping ya’ll updated more often. I’ve been super tired lately and the last thing I want to do is stay longer at school to blog. Forgive me.
I have a new teacher in the afternoons now. Her name is Pati and she’s got this crazy new-agey way of teaching. It’s hard to explain it so I’m not going to even try. I’m not learning new things, just learning to apply the things I already know that are hard for me. It’s been great and extremely helpful, but it’s insane how exhausting it is. Mainly because it’s in the afternoon and my brain is always just dead in the afternoons. I can’t ever concentrate after lunch. All I wanna do is sleep. So it’s been a challenge because this new way of teaching is real intense and I really have to be thinking hard the entire 2 ½ hours. But I’m enjoying the challenge seeing as I feel like I haven’t used my brain at all in a few weeks.
To add to my exhaustion, I’ve been running every morning at 6:00 with Eva in La Deportiva (the Central Park of Chihuahua). It’s really amazing to wake up and start running when it’s freezing and still dark, and then watch the sun rise over the mountains and stretch warm orange streaks along the grass through the trees as my breath lingers visibly in the cold air. And the cooing of a billion pigeons is almost overwhelmingly soothing. I actually really love it. But damn it’s early. And 2 laps around the Deportiva takes 40 minutes.
I realize the more I live here that we really are in the high desert. Although it’s cold enough for me to see my breath in the morning and to bundle up before heading out to run, in the afternoon I find myself sweating while walking to the bus stop in a t-shirt and jeans. What’s that about?
I went to Parral last weekend to visit 3 of my JBU friends who are teaching English there at a Christian school. I really loved being there. I took the bus, by myself (a huge step for me here in Mexico) 3 hours south. I found the small city of 100,000 quite charming. It was much smaller than Chihuahua and had much more hills and cerros (as they call them in Spanish—basically giant hills). We walked EVERYWHERE. Sometimes half an hour just to get to one place. I took a taxi for the first time in my life and got over that fear. It was really great to be there and have a weekend of fellowship with people who understand where I’m coming from, and whom I can talk to in English. It was really fun too because all 4 of us are bilingual and so most of the time we’d switch the conversation back and forth between English and Spanish. Now that I think about it—that’s pretty cool to be able to do. I was also told by multiple people that my accent is amazing. Maybe because they’re used to hearing Spanish with an American accent from Kristen, Billy, and David…cuz people never tell me that here. I spent the weekend battling envy because the 3 of them have such a great community down there. Billy was telling me that he doesn’t really miss being at JBU because his JBU community was replaced with his co-workers and friends from church (the school is connected to the church). Which explains why I miss JBU so much. I don’t have a community down here… I stayed 4 days and came back Monday night, a little sad to be leaving. But I actually caught myself thinking, “It’s good to be home…” when I arrived back in Chihuahua. Weird. I’ll be going back to Parral in 2 weeks hopefully. And who knows….maybe I’ll end up teaching there too in a couple of years. They’ve already offered me the position…ha. J
Well…I’ve saved this for the last paragraph because I know you’ve all been anxiously awaiting what I’m about to say. I regrettably inform you that the orphanage thing is not working out. Perhaps this is why I’ve delayed so long in replying. I haven’t heard a word from them. Granted, I haven’t tried calling them. Mainly because the day I left, when I talked to Mama Rosy, it seemed by the tone of her voice that they didn’t really need me there (which is hard for me to understand because what orphanage with 120 kids and only 8 on staff doesn’t need more help?) I’ve been praying heavily about what to do with the rest of the semester and I’ve come to my conclusion: God brought me here to learn this language. To do language school. And that’s what I’m gonna do all 16 weeks. Seeing as I feel like I tried all semester to get into an orphanage and then when I do and want to stay there, they don’t need me—it would seem that the missions thing is not in God’s plan for me here. You can only do so much right? I’ve prayed about it fervently, and I just don’t feel led by the Lord to pursue it. Sorry. L Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s in His plan for me here.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I always have to have a conclusion; I always have to make sense of things. How many times have I asked the question, “Why am I here?” I think God brought me to Mexico to get over Mexico. And by that I mean to get over the whole missions abroad thing. I’ve decided that the Lord calls people, strong, selfless, determined people to minister to strange and foreign countries abroad. I am not one of those people. Now I’m not ruling out the option of teaching English here or in another Latin country…I’m just saying that it’s equally as important for us to realize that God actually calls people to have “normal” lives and “normal” jobs in “comfortable” cities in the U.S. Where their mission field is not a tiny village in the jungle or secret underground churches of an Asian city, but the street they live in, or the floor they work on. Ya know? I’ve struggled with it in the past because I always perceived it as the “spiritually strong” people who got called to be missionaries—like if you weren’t called to be a missionary it was because you weren’t strong enough. And I always wanted to be that. But it’s just a matter of where God is calling you. There are just as many unsaved people wasting away their lives in the suburbs of America as there are in the ravages of third-world countries. And maybe it is an issue of comfort. But I’ve come to accept while being here that missions abroad is not where my life is headed. Granted short term mission trips are fine, but full-time…it’s just not for me. Since being here, for the first time in my life I’m actually extremely ok with the idea of just being a teacher or even working as a translator for some business. I’m ok with the idea of having a “normal” life. I just don’t have what it takes to live abroad for long periods of time. I think the Lord brought me here to come to that realization. I always made it out to be much more romantic that it is. I needed to get over it and realize that that’s not what He’s got planned for my life.
So folks, I’m dreadfully sorry to disappoint you, but I will be continuing my studies here in Chihuahua for the last 4 weeks of my time here, and will hopefully be fluent when I return home one month from today. After all…that was my main goal in coming here.
But let's face it, it's not gonna work out. 
