Some (random) thoughts

Merry Christmas! Coherent narrative storytelling/reflection just isn't going to work today. Sorry.

An official YAV newsletter will be coming soon. I promise.

I preached in Spanish twice this past week, with barely any notes (I was told that if I "read" my sermon, no one will listen). I'll upload a video on youtube later, although anyone who wants to watch me incoherently ramble in Spanish for fifteen minutes about the meaning of Christmas is certifiably insane.

I went camping on the beach two nights ago, watched the sun set over the pacific and slept on a blanket under the stars.

Evaporated milk is probably the most popular item at every single supermarket and in an average Peruvian family's home. On an unrelated note, I personally think evaporated milk is disgusting.

A group of us from Santa Isabel church took used clothes, 20 loafs of paneton (Peruvian-style fruitcake) and a bunch of soda up the hill to share with some of the very poor squatter families that live there. It was one of the first "service" events that I've participated in with a church here, and I loved it. The best part is that the church members all felt really good afterward and want to make community service a more important part of their church life.

At 5:40am on Friday I leave for Cuzco for two weeks of vacation that will include Macchu Pichu, Lake Titicaca/Puno and Colca Canyon/Arequipa. I have a hard time explaining to my Peruvian friends the difference between this "real" vacation and the "work-related" retreats/reunions that the YAV group takes every 6 weeks or so to various touristy beach/mountain locales.

Peruvians celebrate Christmas at midnight on the 24th with hot chocolate, fireworks, presents (new clothes are the normal Christmas gift) and a huge turkey dinner. All the TV stations play a Christmas countdown, much like on New Year's Eve in the states.

On New Years, they do the whole thing all over again. But with less turkey and more champagne. And with the added tradition of using all of the family's old clothes to dress a homemade mannequin and then setting the clothes on fire to symbolize leaving the old year behind and starting the new year fresh. I assume this is why people first give each other new clothes for Christmas. Apparently it's also good luck if you wear yellow underwear for new years.

I don't have a car here. And I don't even miss it. How long will it be before people in the US actually become convinced that walking, public transportation and massive carpooling is DEFINITELY worth it?

I've officially finished 1/3 of my YAV placement. That was fast.

"Crash" was on TV the other night ("Vidas Cruzadas" is the title of the dubbed Spanish version). I watched it with my host family and remembered why it's my favorite movie ever.

Remember, if you want to see photos, they're all available from the "Picasa" link on the left side of the page.

Starting in January, I'm going to be preaching a lot more in both Santa Isabel church and Kilometer 13 church. Let's hope my Spanish extemporaneous public speaking skills improve.

Slowly, I'm starting to feel more spiritually fulfilled by the worship services here. The "sociologist" in me is finally getting bored as I've gotten used to a lot of the differences between here and home. This is allowing me to take in the spirit of community and presence of God here on a personal level.

I'm still long overdue on making a boring, overly intellectual/pretentious-sounding blog post that reflects on the political/theological differences between "evangelical" churches here and mainline denominational churches in the US as they relate to respective differences in social/economic realities. But of course the real objective is to try to use big words to impress you and make you think that I'm SO READY to go to seminary and single-handedly fix the problems of the church/world.

I know this is looking WAY far ahead, but when I come back to the US I don't even want to SEE a grain of white rice or a beet for at least 3 months.... Except for the "beet" part. I don't want to see a beet again, period. Ever.

Ceviche and Tallerin verde with carne de res, however, will always be favorites.

Some days I find myself speaking spanish so well that I forget that I'm speaking a foreign language, and later on when I chat online with people from back home it's hard to remember certain English words. Other days it seems like I can barely form complete sentences in Spanish, and when people talk to me I ask them to repeat themselves at least 3 times before I eventually just say "ohhhh!" and then nod my head and pretend I understood what they just said.

Two years ago, if you told me that right now I would be spending Christmas Eve with a host family in Lima, Peru while working as a Young Adult Volunteer for the Presbyterian Church, I would have suggested that you seek psychological counseling....

Well, probably not. But I most likely would have laughed excessively and said "really?"

I missed Christmas Vespers at Trinity. I going to miss spending Christmas morning with family and relatives back home in Decatur. I'm going to miss spending New Years with more family and relatives at "home" in Montreat. And I'm going to miss the Montreat summer staff reunion and college conference during the New Year, too.

Fire and Brimstone

This past weekend I went to a wedding in Chincha, a medium-sized desert town about 3 hours south of Lima. According to the invitation, the wedding should have started at 7:30. When we got there at 7:30, we discovered that according to the official wedding program, the ceremony was scheduled to start at 8:00. So naturally, everything got started at a little after 9. Such is life.

The ceremony started with a few upbeat praise songs before the pastor got up to preach a sermon. I haven't been to all that many weddings in my life, so I'm no expert, but I think it's safe to say that I witnessed the angriest, most depressing sermon/reflection/message ever delivered for a wedding. Yes, EVER. Throughout all of history (what are the chances, right?) Seriously. The pastor stands up after the praise band is done, welcomes everybody and proceeds to read one of the "classic" wedding scriptures in the bible. No, not Corinthians 13 (Love is patient, love is kind...). Nor Colossians 3 (Love binds all virtues together in perfect unity...), Genesis 2 (God makes woman to be a companion for man) or even Ephesians 5 (man leaves father and mother to become one with his wife). Nope, this particular pastor instead chose the old reliable Exodus 20:14: "You shall not commit adultery."

My jaw literally dropped. At 9:30 on a Saturday night, I had to sit through a 1/2 hour sermon railing against fornication and infidelity ... during a WEDDING! And this guy was angry too! I couldn't believe it. I've gotta say that I was actually kind of offended and saddened for the couple from Santa Isabel church getting married. Here we are at what should be the most memorable night of their lives and instead of a reflection celebrating marriage as the closest humans ever get to loving each other as God loves us, the pastor criticizes our generation for sexual promiscuity, lack of commitment, and estrangement from God. He said that Christians need to be defenders of marriage and family. You would think that a conservative/fundamentalist preacher would be the LAST person to make marriage/weddings all about sex, but that's exactly what this guy did. The sermon was all about sex, but instead of praising what he saw as the "good" kind of sex - monogamous and pure, within the commitment of a heterosexual marriage - he instead just blasted all the "bad" kinds of sex: lustful, instant gratification, outside of marriage etc. I just hope the couple was still able to enjoy the gift of the "good" kind of sex that night for the first time, because the sermon was definitely a mood-killer. To top it all off, after the sermon was over, he was explicitly clear during the vows that the husband is the head of the household and the wife must SUBMIT to him. No questions asked. To love your husband is to obey and faithfully follow him till death do ye part. And accordingly, the organist (who was actually just playing an electronic keyboard) was playing an eerie sounding, slow tune slowly crescendo-ing and building higher and higher by half steps, like during an old-fashioned horror/suspense movie right before disaster strikes. It's almost as if the message to the bride was "are you SURE you want to go through with this?" (and fundamentalist Christians wonder why people don't want to get married any more...)

The only thing that kept me sane was the conversation I had afterward with my host family and some other friends from Santa Isabel church that were in attendance. I'm not sure how quickly they would have brought it up themselves, but after the ceremony was over one of the first thing's I said was that I thought the sermon was awful and angry-sounding. Luckily, they agreed with me. I'm not sure what I would have done if they told me that such sermons were normal in Peruvian Christian weddings. They said that even though they agreed with the pastor that the state of marriage is in trouble, it was disrespectful to use an actual wedding ceremony to launch an angry diatribe against "fornication."

Beginning Again

Things have changed in the past month. Most importantly, I am now living with a new host family. For reasons that I don't feel comfortable discussing on a public blog, I had to leave the family of Daniela, Juan Carlos, Giulia, Juan, Damaris and Dayra. It was an extremely difficult decision to make, but now I am finally at peace with it. I'm happy to be living with my new host family, who are members of Santa Isabel Church. I live on the second floor of a 2-story house with my host parents Javier and Raquel. It still feels strange to call them host "parents" because they actually don't have any biological children, and they're barely 10 years older than I am. Javier and Raquel got married about 1 1/2 years ago, and Raquel is now 3 months pregnant, so before I finish my placement here I will have a new baby host "sibling!" The rest of the family, Blanca, Roberto, Kelli and Manuelito, live downstairs. Blanca is Javier's mother - she's very warm, friendly and animated, not to mention a great cook. Roberto, Javier's brother, is a huge Beatles fan and probably knows more about US culture, arts and politics than I do. His wife, Keli, is quiet and stays busy at home as a full-time mom, taking care of her and Roberto's 3 month old son Manuelito, who's the cutest, chubbiest baby I think I've ever seen.

One of the hardest parts about switching host families has been the fact that my new host family is definitely much more
"well off" than my old one. In my new home I actually have an internet connection in my room (which maybe I shouldn't have shared -- now you know that I have no excuse for not keeping in touch...), as well as a cable TV and DVD player. And not to mention I have hot water for showers! (Even if it is one of those electric heaters that warms the water up right as it's coming out of the shower head. Which I luckily haven't been shocked by, yet...) The reason I say having all of these familiar comforts is one of the "hardest" parts about staying with my host family is that I expected my YAV year to be all about the challenge of living simply, like the majority of the world does, without modern distractions like the internet and cable TV. I basically just felt like living here, with my new host family, wouldn't be "hardcore" enough, like it's against the principles of the YAV program. I mean, that's what we're trying to get AWAY from for a year, right? I didn't want to get sucked back into my old college habits of wasting countless hours with internet and TV.

But as my fellow Peru YAV Sean says, the YAV program is not about "martyring yourself." It's not a hardcore contest. I've realized that my guilt over not living in a mud hut without electricity or running water speaks volumes to my own extremely western/privileged attitude towards the whole experience. I mean, how "cool" would I be when I came back and told all my friends that I spent a year taking cold showers while living in poverty in South America? I definitely didn't realize how much I had been romanticizing the "idea" of living simply. And now that I'm complaining about being in a more comfortable situation, what will everyone's response be? "Oh poor Alex" they'll say "his noble ideals are being challenged because he has to suffer through another year of having access to cable television and the world-wide web at his fingertips."

I obviously haven't discussed any of these issues with people here in Peru. I somehow think they would have a hard time understanding why I would WANT to live in the most miserable, impoverished situation possible. It's not going to help me rack up "cool" points with them like I was secretly hoping it would with my fellow white, middle class American liberal Christian friends. Without even realizing it, in my self-righteous crusade to try and understand the way the "rest of the world" thinks, feels and lives I developed attitude that would probably leave those same people utterly dumbfounded.

OK, now that I've sufficiently bashed my old way of thinking, I'm going to take a moment to justify the initial aversion I had to my old living situation. Because I've been missing my friends, family, old habits etc so much during the past couple months, I think being able to get on the 'net 24 hours a day creates a significant obstacle to forming genuine, meaningful relationships with my friends, partners, family, "brothers and sisters in Christ" or whatever you want to call the people around me here in Peru. Instead of spending time talking, laughing, learning and growing with my host family, it's all to easy to retreat to my room, close the door, and be virtually transported back to my US life in an instant with email, instant messenger, blogs, skype phone calls, world news ticker updates, facebook, youtube etc. I don't know if I am willing to admit that I'm "addicted" to the internet, but I think most people who know me really well will tell you that I am, well, addicted to the internet. The only reason I'm hesitant to admit that myself is because for the 2 months I had with my first host family, when I would just spend an hour or two 3 days a week in the internet cafe, I was doing just fine. I'm a very adaptable person, and not having internet access wasn't too big of a challenge (like it should be if I'm really "addicted"). It was fairly easy for me to find other things to do. I had other ways to entertain myself, and I would spend the time that I would normally use to read blogs about the college football season and write on peoples facebook walls to instead hang out with my host family. The problem comes when the internet is easily accessible and available. That's when I have a hard time not doing anything else.

More than "martyring yourself" by living simply, I think the YAV program is about learning to play the hand that your dealt. Because of a situation largely out of my control, I've been dealt a hand that has put me in a living situation that's quite comfortable and in many ways, not too different from the one I was used to back in the good ol' U.S. of A . And instead of pouting about not being challenged with a scenario that pushes me further outside of my comfort zone, I need to be thankful for what I have. And I still have plenty of opportunities for personal growth. First off, I've been given the opportunity to be much more honest with myself, and in the process I've admitted the secretly selfish motives I had behind my supposedly self-less intentions. I also now have a wonderful opportunity to learn some self-discipline. If I really want to learn how to live simply and free myself from my mindless internet addiction, having to force MYSELF to learn how to moderate and optimize the time I spend online will go a lot further to this end than simply being forced to do so by outside circumstances.

I think that's about all for now. There will definitely be more blog entries to come about the details of my new family and the experiences I've had with them (I've been with them for nearly a month now). If you're curious about what exactly happened with my old host family, send me an email and I'll fill you in. Finally, my new address is:

... available on my facebook page! If you're friends with me on facebook, you can see it. If we're not "facebook friends" and you want my address, email me and I'll give it to you.

Christmas letters are welcome! Thanks for reading and keeping in touch. Please continue to keep me in your thoughts/prayers.