To Speak of the North

Weary and—in a strange way, i suppose—wary do i approach this update.

Reasons myriad for hesitancy… perhaps i am intimidated to further endeavour to convey my opinions or feelings about Choco. Perhaps i am uncertain of what i have to say for myself as pertains to the week and a half which has passed since my last update.

Out of the loop, out of words, out of rhythm, out of touch… out of inspiration, out of confidence, out of assertiveness… out of balance, out of passion… out of excuses.

i suppose that as a simple exercise by which to try to begin to open my mind to the prospect of writing once more… i will detail the time since my last update.

It will do no good to try to talk at any greater length about the time before the AweStar team came… that was never any subject matter to begin with, and then i wrote page after page about them… so i will start with last Sunday… July 13, perhaps?

i suppose that for those who don’t know what “the AweStar team” is, the previous paragraph could seem a little bit confusing… so while i feel like just about everybody who comments on my blog knows about AweStar and the AweStar teams and such… i feel like i have been told that there are others who read without commenting who may not know.

Comment!

Excuse me… did i say that? You don’t actually have to comment… but i would certainly be thrilled if you did. Even if (particularly if?) i have no idea whatsoever who you are.

All those tangents covered… AweStar Ministries is a mission organization based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. i have worked with them extensively in the past, and they had a team in Peru this summer. This team was led by two of my closest friends, Brent Higgins and Kristen Lockwood (until August 2, when she becomes Kristen Adams… but even when she’s Kristen Adams she will continue to be one of my closest friends, i hear), and included a number of other people with whom i am good friends.

So on Sunday (July 13) i woke up at 3:30am to meet this team at the bus station. i spent the next week following them around and translating for them as they worked with Pastor Tito Sevilla in pursuing the building of a foundation upon which to start a church in Huamachuco.

On Wednesday the team and i left Huamachuco for Trujillo, where they worked for another several days, and on Sunday (July 20) we parted ways—the AweStar team to Guayaquil, Ecuador, en route to the USA, i to Piura in order to… uhhh…. I’m still working on that one.

For a more detailed blow-by-blow account of my time with the AweStar team, go to www.awestar.org, click Trip Updates, and click Peru.

My aim is not—and never has been, i feel, although at times perhaps my practice has been—to give a blow-by-blow account… but rather a taste of my personal impressions and feelings as this summer passes. So i will provide a couple of those… and maybe eventually come back for more specific anecdotes from this past week and a half… or possibly i will just leave this time never to return. i do not know. Maybe you do. If you do, then you are quite gifted.

Every morning i would wake up to get coffee with the leaders of the team. Sometimes all that we were able to scrape up was very shady Nescafe (Brent and i are world-famous Nescafe lovers) instant coffee… sometimes we would stumble upon gourmet cafes with fine coffees… but regardless of the quality of the liquid in front of me, the company was always of the finest caliber. Such times were true blessings to me… to have the company of Brent, Kristen, and at times Laura Oksol and Tyler Martin, two other of my friends with whom i have shared experiences overseas prior to this trip and who helped lead the Peru team, was tremendously refreshing. An unpretencious, vulnerable time when no airs needed to be put up, when we could speak our hearts—no matter how sober or how lighthearted—and know that they would be received by other hearts who shared the same desires and the same burdens and the same passions.

As pertains day-to-day affairs involving the rest of the students as well… i merely made it my goal to make things as easy for the leaders as i could… sometimes that meant that i was translating, sometimes it meant that i was arguing with Peruvians, sometimes it meant that i was eavesdropping on Spanish conversations, sometimes it meant that i was talking through Scripture passages with students, sometimes it meant finding a corner and making myself as non-present as possible… and never did i do well enough what i was asked to do… but perhaps my presence was a means by which a Peruvian will have inherited the Kingdom of Heaven during the past week and a half… or perhaps a means by which such a thing will happen ten years for now… or perhaps a means by which a student on the team was affected in such a way that leads a revival among an African tribe in 25 years… i will never know as long as i live, i desire only that i would be faithful with the time and opportunities given to me.

On my first day with the team i was asked by Brent to talk about what i have experienced so far this summer… i threw together a PowerPoint that included about 85 of my pictures, stuck some Aradhna in a playlist on iTunes… and proceeded to ramble for perhaps an hour and a half.

Certainly longer than i had expected to spend… but somehow it seems that most of the people on the team feel that they profited from it… some may even have enjoyed it. i am not quite sure how… but i know that having people who cared what i had to say—or at the very least pretended very well to care what i had to say—was a real blessing to me.

i have been struggling to take pictures lately. Really struggling… it has been three and a half weeks since i last took pictures with any sort of consistency. Consequently… i once more don’t really have any fresh material to add. i don’t even know how much fresh material i will have before i come back to the USA in 19 days. This is not how i would have chosen for things to go… and yet it seems to be the way that things have gone, so i will try to be faithful with what is left to me… But i can only force things so far.

So back to Choco, i suppose…

i said that this post would be reserved for some close portrait work… which i suppose is easy enough for me. This portrait series was all taken during preparations for the party. Hopefully you don’t hate them.

This man’s name escapes me… but he was one of the men who worked on erecting the… big thing that they built. i’m still not quite sure what to call it.



And… the same thing, in fact, could be said of this man. So i offer another typical Choco-ite.



When in doubt, shoot the kids… so was one of the themes of my slide show for the AweStar team. Beginning to lose inspiration with the adults, i turned to the kids… so quick to drop their self-conscious airs and acct in the relaxed and dynamic way of one with nothing to prove.



And that, i suppose, is where i’m going to leave things for this update… Mediocre, i feel… but at least an update. i’ll try to do better next time, but i make no promises.

For there’s nowhere here, but there it was.