Talita Cumi Celebrates Santa Cruz

As I mentioned last week, yesterday was Santa Cruz's 200th birthday. To celebrate, Talita Cumi Children's Home threw a great party. For festivity's sake, the kids decked out in Santa Cruz green and white, and the adults dressed as traditionally as we knew how, or could find clothes for in our closets. Once all the guests had arrived, the games began. I've never seen such exuberance to bob for apples, race in potato sacks, compete to eat the most fruit, carry eggs via spoons in their mouths, or slide down a slippery pole in futile attempts to reach the prizes at the top. Boy do they make me feel old, and make me feel love.

One of my friends pointed out a fairly hilarious cultural difference in this pole climbing game. If we were to grease a tall pole and tell small children to scale it in the US, the women would anxiously shout "Be careful, be careful!" However, the tias (or caregivers at the home) here had a different mantra of support, "Sin miedo!" (Without fear! Without Fear!) As summitting the pole proved to be completely impossible alone, the kids finally resorted to a fairly beautiful demonstration of teamwork, and retrieved all of the tightly bound goodies at the top.

Since my Mosaic visitor left a month ago, I've been having fun keeping them in touch with these little huggable munchkins. In early September the boys and I recorded a video birthday greeting for one of the team members. Then a week later, we surprise-Skyped with the whole team at their debrief meeting. And yesterday, for one of the boy's birthday Lindsay sent a video message. With these three video experiences making up nearly his entire history with computers, it was really very understandable, but nonetheless adorable, that he kept trying to talk back to the video, unaware that there was no one there to answer.

The lovely staff at the home is so good to me, letting me hack into their computer systems at random, bring my wild and crazy puppy -- who one day hopes to eat one or both of their parrots, and humoring us with a traditional dance in these sweet costumes. But more than anything, I respect and admire them for their work with these kids day in and day out, as a big warm family to nearly 30 little love-sponges.

March for Jesus

Why not? What better reason do you have to march?

So, I'll admit it struck me as a weird concept as well. But marching for Jesus with about 80 local evangelical churches and associations turned out to be a lot of fun. Bolivians have marches for everything else; to protest anything, to celebrate caranval, to honor the Catholic virgin of every town... So the annual March for Jesus is the protestant Church's response, "we have something worth marching for too."

There were matching t-shirts, trucks with sound systems, bands, flags, signs, banners, refreshments, everything one would hope for from a parade, except maybe huge inflatable cartoon characters. I loved randomly running into other Christian friends from Santa Cruz as we walked along singing praise songs together. But my favorite part was the instant camaraderie among thousands of people in love with the same Savior, and willing to testify of His greatness to the whole city.

I'd recommend getting a Jesus Pride Parade started in the US. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. Ruby, however, thought we could have walked a little faster and demonstrated her boredom by sitting at every stoplight, so you might want to look into better traffic control.

This week we'll take advantage of two other reasons to celebrate: the 200th Anniversary of the city of Santa Cruz and the first day of spring. Thank goodness spring's just around the corner 'cause I'm about ready for some warmer weather, this wintery 100+℉ just isn't cutting it for me. ;)

Children's Church

It seems a strange coincidence that two years ago, I was telling you about how I'd fallen into the position of coordinating Mosaic's children's ministry, and now I find that I've stumbled into the same situation here. My little church now, La Viña, is similar to Mosaic in its youth, its eagerness to replicate the church of the Bible, and the love of its people for each other, their neighbors, and the lost. In many other respects the two are so completely different that it makes me stand in awe of how diverse and beautiful God's Church is, just like its members.

The commonality that is the most ironic is my involvement in the children's department. In both churches my only qualifications for directing the kids' ministries were/are my availability, and inability to say "no." My unqualifiedness meant that, at Mosaic, within a week I was replaced by someone who actually knew what they were doing, but here, as you and I have both learned by now, this is a bit of a different world.

Today, we had our first meeting of Sunday school teachers (pictured above) to discuss what we can do better. I'm afraid, as usual, I learned more than I was able to add to the discussion. Every time I enter a new realm such as plumbing, immigration, diesel engines (all three visited last week) and now children's ministry I get to learn a new vocabulary as well as what a strong emphasis culture has on everything we do. My goal is to keep my own cultural difference out of the way, so that we can all think outside of the box and teach La Viña kiddos some lessons and ideas they'll keep with them for a lifetime.

As you turn 2 tomorrow Mosaic, I want to say Thank You! Thank you for believing in me when it was rarely very sensible and for supporting, loving, and encouraging me in ways too numerous to list. Thank you for the valuable opportunity to lead your children's ministry two years ago, a short-lived, but memorable experience. And thank you for the lovely dolls made by your women's small group that we'll be using with La Viña's niños for dramas and puppet shows as we strive to maintain the kids attention better with messages that will stick with them longer.

Happy Birthday Mosaic!

I have no frame of reference, but I imagine this is kind of how a mom feels on her baby's second birthday!

Surpassing Value

"Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn." Granted, Romans 12:15 is much easier said than done, but in my opinion so worth the effort. In a world where Facebook regularly shares news of weddings and babies so fast that it often seems to beat the news of the prerequisite engagements or pregnancies to my homepage. Leaving me so dumbstruck that I don't have time to remind myself that those who compare themselves with themselves are not wise.

A couple months into the year I spent in Baltimore before making the move "South" I hosted a team of ladies in my apartment to help Mosaic prepare to launch. They were an out-of-state team from a church I didn't know, so we spent some time sharing our different stories. I imagine the conversation was fairly ordinary, what do you do? where'd you grow up? how many kids do you have?; the get-to-know-each-other classics. But the part that stands out to me was a moment late one night when I shared my history of college, vet school, working in private practice, and then moving to Baltimore for the church plant before heading off to missions. One of the women replied, "Wow, you've done all that? but you're so young!" Which was followed by a mother of my same age with three kids responding, "Yeah, but I wouldn't give up my family for any of that." I never for a moment thought she meant any harm, but nonetheless it was hard not to consider; is that what I've done, given that up?

Today, as someone very important to me in the past got married, it was impossible not to reconsider the same question. Did I give that up? Did I choose this instead? Was it worth the cost? But as I'm dwelling on in Philippians 3, "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." And as I spent a perfect evening with the Cristo Viene girls worshipping that Lord, I recognized a glimpse of the surpassing value of knowing Him. I have yet to receive the peace which surpasses all understanding, but I have confidence it exists and I trust it will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.