God is good.
He has brought me here with great purpose and redeeming love. I have reached near-fluency in Spanish and can easily understand and share with everyone around me. The language has such different sounds and expressions, and I am sure, having learned in this community of Maria Auxiliadora, that I have developed a distinct personality and cultural identity in this new atmosphere.

I myself have come into a new harmony with God and, accordingly, with the people in the neighborhood. For all this I consider myself blessed among the blessed. Growth in faith, sustenance by grace, intimacy with my savior, embracing fresh and beautiful realities: these have marked my trip and will remain written on my heart in the years to come.

On Friday I was enjoying supper with Tracy and Travis. I mentioned that I can now relate to how she has trouble with the Myers Briggs test. The thing is: trans-cultural missionaries enter into a new church, a new family and a new circle of friends, who define them and understand them in different ways. For this reason, they acquire a new concept of self, significance and belonging that causes them to act and react in different ways, as relevant to God’s Kingdom but also as it relates to the dominant worldview of the country. For example, I would consider myself strongly introverted, but here I have discovered an extroverted side.

Tracy was excited, adding that this is a good empirical result of the Bonding Method, which TEARS encouraged me to use. The idea is that you dive in and live with the people the way they do, learn the language and get involved in the culture, growing to depend on a core family and develop a sense of acceptance. I added that I could be the new TEARS poster boy, like Subway’s Jared, but with a bowl full of rice and beans.

I received a new camera recently, and I have been tearing it up photo-wise. Travis and I, along with about a dozen youth from the barrio, visited an awesome spot in the river valley near Guai-Gui, enjoying the water and heaving rocks to try and impede the current (this seems to be a popular guy activity). Everyone was jumping off rocks and pulling all kinds of stunts- it was a good time.

This journey has been a walk of faith: every day I find myself at a new place on the path, impacting the hearts of new friends, or stumbling upon the unlikeliest of stories, with God’s guiding hand of grace beneath it all.