Bona Fide Tropical Storm Isaac

When I first moved here in November 2010, it was the tail end of hurricane season. Hurricane Tomas had just passed through the Caribbean, and left a whole bunch of crap on our beach. I resented the cleanup, but as a storm-loving Midwestern boy, I was not-so-quietly hopeful that maybe I'd get to see one of them in my time here. With 2010's season having drawn to a close, I looked forward to 2011.

Last year, we did get a brief visit from Maria. The storm migrated north of Puerto Rico so I took my big, heavy storm shutters down and left them on the ground outside my bedroom window. That night, Maria grew a tentacle that dangled down and swept across Puerto Rico from west to east while the rest of the storm floated north into the Atlantic. As I was laying in bed, the wind picked up and sprayed rain through my windows and kicked around the storm shutters outside. Mostly, I objected to the loud clanging and scraping of metal on concrete at 3 in the morning.

The next morning, we found that the awning in front of our dining hall had been picked up and heaved into our playground. Boom, no more monkey bars. I picked up the storm shutters behind my house and took a mental note that they were to be kept up in any storm threat, lest I lay there and shudder in the mist and hear them clang around again someday.

I had missed out on Irene, which came a few weeks earlier while I was in Michigan.

And that was it for 2011.

So in 2012, by the middle of June, I was checking the National Hurricane Center website everyday, wondering what was coming, trying to get psyched up for a good storm, secretly hoping that I might get to see one.

Fast forward to August 23, 2012. Enter Isaac. He was born just off the coast of west Africa, and within a week had rumbled across the Atlantic and declared himself a legitimate Tropical Storm. (Tropical Storms in progress, for the record, have fairly detailed Wikipedia pages.)

With my time in the tropics winding down, I decided that a bonafide Tropical Storm would be A-OK. Less cleanup, less potential for death than a real hurricane, but with all of the spectacle of something as yet unseen for me.

There are no hurricane sirens here in PR, from what I'm told. I guess they'd be redundant since as soon as we're in a potential path, we're all talking about them and facebooking them and stuff. We get all worked up, and the night before they hit - by then we know if they're close enough to do damage - people pack the grocery stores to stock up on the basics. The paranoid, conscientious Midwestern boy I am, I was well supplied days ahead of time. Remember, I'd been watching since June.

The day before, we put the storm shutters up, and I caulk the gap underneath my back door where rain loves to seep in from even an average rainfall. I can only imagine what it's gonna do with a tropical storm. It's weird, you stand out there and watch the waves lap up onshore, and the sun is shining, and there's this impossibly humongous beast lingering just over the horizon, ready to mess up your world, and you'd never know it.

Then the big night: Nothing happens.

I wake up the next morning. and the sun is shining and the birds are chirping. I brew some sun tea. I would have done the crossword, if I'd had one. All of Puerto Rico has the day off, but we spend it in staff meetings as long as we have power. I check the satellite images, and the center of the storm is about fifty miles south of us, but we're well within its wingspan. Where's the storm?

By 3:00 pm, gray clouds are coasting overhead, and little raindrops are falling. The wind picks up, the trees sway, and soon there's an average rainstorm going on.

But it lasts.

And lasts.

The back half of the storm, it turns out, is pretty good. The waves kick up, splashing over the beach into our backyard. Soon, I've got a pond back there, and the Caribbean just beyond.

It all picks up. And the wind howls. I lay there and watch a movie as the rain comes down in sheets and the palm trees bang their heads like awkward teenage concertgoers. Eventually I go to bed with the wind blowing and the rain pelting outside my bedroom window.

In all, we get about 20 hours of big waves, strong winds, and a lot of rain. There's nothing really dangerous in all of it, save for the flash floods in some communities. We never even lost power. But: my thirst for a good storm is quenched.

And though all I dealt with this time was paranoia - and a some cleanup the next few days, I bet - I have to wonder how different this would be if we'd been in the middle of a real hurricane, one of those 110 mph affairs, not some minor tropical storm centered 50 miles to the south. My house sits probably 20 yards from the Caribbean, which advances a little bit each year on our property. It was nothing for it to wash up and fill our backyard with water and beach sand. There's a basketball court out there somewhere that crumbled into the ocean. If you go down the street into the barrio, you'll see uninhabitable houses at the sea-end of every street that have collapsed into the encroaching water.

These houses... they're not going to last forever.

I'm heading back to Michigan in a few days, weather-permitting. We'll just see what this guy does in the meantime. At the time of this writing, it has a 50% chance of becoming a tropical storm in the next 48 hours. My flight is Wednesday....

EDIT: Pretty sure that guy out in the Atlantic is going North.

Year after year

I did a little math with my free time while I was home in Michigan the last two weeks. This summer marked my tenth in camp ministry. That includes my first two as a Counselor in Training while I was still in high school, and the five I spent as a counselor / core staff at Grace Adventures, the one I was in Tanzania, and the two I've spent here in Puerto Rico as program director. And that's not even counting the summers when I just showed up for a week or so to handle an overflow of campers as a rent-a-staff.

Having thusly proved my credentials, I pretty much have this whole Camp Ministry thing down and should therefore be finished making mistakes.

Yes, well.

I remember a phone call I made to my old director before last summer, in the last few days before staff training. I asked him what I should do if I make a mistake. I don't remember exactly how he worded it, but he basically said that I should just expect to make a bunch of them and move on. While he talked, I was busy realizing how much I had just betrayed my own nerves and fears about being the dude in charge of a summer program.

Now that we've wrapped up our summer camps for 2012, I can proudly say: I made several mistakes and no one ever demanded my immediate firing, and things never came to a screeching halt, and summer turned out pretty great. After all, camp has a way of running itself.

Now that I say that, I realize I probably could have gotten more sleep.

But anyway. One of the reasons camp went well, and that it's able to run itself, is because we had a solid summer staff.

Seriously, though. This was a consistent and constant comment from parents, visitors, mission teams, and other staff:

"Your staff, man... they're pretty awesome. Like, seriously. I didn't expect this."

Okay, that's my paraphrase. But I heard it a bunch of times, and I swelled with pride each time. And I grew increasingly appreciative of the way our counselors showed up and owned camp like they did. Nope, they weren't perfect - like me, they made mistakes, too - but they definitely exceeded expectations. People don't expect a bunch of college kids to be able to handle this, to be this dedicated and this responsible.

But they're the hands and feet of the ministry, and a big part of the big things that God continues to do here. We've got a really solid crew of high-schoolish and college kids who come back year after year and do this camp thing better every time. They volunteer their time a few weekends in the fall, winter, and spring to help us with retreats, too.

When campers come, they expect to see them.

That, to me, is huge. There's a bond of trust, and a sense of community amongst the campers. We're blessed to have a lot of returners and a healthy mix of new faces who quickly settle in like old friends. Because many of them are old friends. The returners know when campers or counselors are missing. They have real relationships, amongst themselves and with the staff. Many of our counselors have been able to invest in the same kids and witness their growth year after year.

It's huge. And I think it's a huge positive for the ministry here at Campamento del Caribe.

So, mad props to our summer staff. Job well done. Keep it up, year after year.



(how about I conclude with an old, semi-relevant Audio Adrenaline song:)

The End is Near

Last week, as we wrapped up our high school camp, I stood in front of a packed house of campers, counselors, dores, and parents. We'd watched our final video, I'd handed out the spray-painted medals with the theme "¡Gánatelo!" scribbled in Sharpie, and made our final announcements. I bid the campers adios and had just started to send them off to the Multipurpose building to wait for their parents when I saw Jerry and Julio coming up. "One more thing," they said.

I knew what it was. I handed off the mic and nonchalantly wandered back toward the projector screen or something to poke around and look busy while they talked. Jerry told them in his Bolivian Spanish, the non-native-speaker type I can mostly understand, that they had one more announcement. He called me over, and put his hand on my shoulder. I remember what he was talking about but I have no idea what he said, because I was in that face-beet-red Oh-crap-Oh-crap-Oh-crap they'retalkingaboutme state.

"Something something we have an announcement something thank you for all your hard work something something Agosto." Then I was looking at all of the faces in the crowd, looks of surprise and inquiry for many, and indifference for some. Here was a room full of people thinking about me and my time here and what I've been doing for the last two years. I looked at him. "Un placer," I said. 

It's been a pleasure. Not much else to say. After all, Yo soy un hombre de pocas palabras. Used that in a joke at closing the week before. Didn't say it this week, but I thought it. In Spanish.

I thanked them. They prayed for me. I got the mic back, told 'em I wasn't gonna make a speech or anything, but I was sure gonna miss everyone when I left at the end of August. I made a few more announcements to the padres as the kids walked out, then dismissed them. In front of our multipurpose building, as the campers filed out, there were lots of bendiciones from parents, from kids, the many I've gotten to know in the almost two years I've spent here.

"It won't be the same without you!" "I'm gonna miss you!" "Are you gonna come back to visit?"

I wasn't sure they were really going to make an announcement or anything. I didn't expect it, I didn't revel in it... I wasn't sure how to handle it. Really, I could only stand there and think about how much I don't like attention, and how awesome I must be to not like attention, and - how does anyone really like being the center of attention anyway? Why would anyone want that?

I've invested myself here for nearly two years, grown accustomed to the culture of the camp and the island. I've met a lot of people. It hasn't always been fun, or easy, but it has always been good, right, appropriate for me to be here. My only regret is not spending more time working on my Spanish.

For goodness sakes, people, if you're gonna live abroad, you gotta learn the language.

Camp is a bubble. It's wonderful for the kids but often difficult for staff. I am eager, excited, nervous to get back to my home, to my family, to Michigan. What a wonderful state it is.

But going home is inevitably going to be hard, and I am most definitely leaving something behind here. So many relationships, friends, memories. The landscape, the community. The Climate.

Oh, man... winter. I haven't seen you since 2009.

Unichallenge 2012

We do this thing here at Campamento del Caribe called the Unichallenge. It's a crazy, awesome, dangerous, energetic, and relevant thing. We put months of work into it and it wears us all out but we love it and I wouldn't change it. It's something we do really well, and I wish I could take credit for it but it started a long time before I ever got here.

Essentially, it's a full day of competition among groups of teens, college, and even older people who come from churches, schools, or social groups. On the surface, it's a competition, but I've begun to look at it more as a ministry, as a sort of lab, or scenario, or outlet, in which Christians are supposed to compete - and act, and live - as Christians are supposed to. We set it up, we plan it, we invite them. We kick it off with a loud, chaotic opening ceremony where each team gets to present itself. After that, we're all deaf, and we spend most of the day competing in the hot sun (or last year, pouring rain). At the end, we worship together. We don't really preach much. There's a little bit of explanation of what this whole thing is about and a few key points, but this definitely doesn't feel like church. In the end, it's the competitors that minister to each other. We're just... providing the environment, I guess.

I, uh... well... ya got me.

This year that environment included a 20 minute run, over balance beams, through tires, into the ocean.

And jousting in the bog.

And extreme gold rush. (In which two teams face off, having to cross enemy territory, retrieve their "gold" and bring it safely back to their side. Typically we play this with little blocks of wood. This year, we used coffee cans full of cement.)

And a Quest For Fire - a scavenger hunt to build a torch.

And an obstacle course.

And some extreme Steal the Bacon.

And some good old-fashioned AWANA games. (Just as I remember them - the bean bag toss, some relays, and Tug of War.)

It sounds cliche and corny, but it's not about winning the events. Sure, we give them a few extra points, and at the end of the day we crown someone the champion and give 'em a trophy. But the points come more from sportsmanship, unity, attitude, and spirit, than from winning each event. Actually, if you're out there to win at all costs, you will lose out in the other categories. You could win every event and lose the Unichallenge. You could lose every event but do it with a good attitude, good sportsmanship, and a spirit of support and positivity, and win the whole thing. Typically, the overall champion has a pretty good mix of friendly competition and athleticism. Sportsmanship is king.

In that environment, you always get a few people who miss the point. But you also see people who do it, and do it really really well. We always see teams stopping and elevating the needs of others above themselves. I saw one team in The Run carrying members of the opposing team to the end.

It strikes me that this is not only the sort of thing that rewards character, but also comes pretty close to the heart of college ministry. The competitors come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them are college age. People genuinely want to come and be a part of this. We had interest from 17 teams, but ultimately drew the line at 14. That's more than 150 people coming out voluntarily to participate, to endure a day full of crazy stuff to enjoy community, to have fun, to spend good time in fellowship.

College and 20-something ministry is elusive for lots of churches, I know. It seems like college ministry is either a priority and the majority of the church - which can alienate other demographics - or it's completely missing. It's all or nothing, it seems. I've walked into a number of churches where there's a gaping hole between the youth group and the young married folks with toddlers. I think some people think when kids go to college, they disappear from the church, or from the faith altogether. Some of them do. But not all of us disappear. We go to places where we feel included, where we have a chance to expand our social circles, where we get fed (literally and figuratively) and where we're engaged or challenged.

They/we want to see faith on display. A competition, like Unichallenge, appears to be a great way to do that.

The Ocean is Terrible; Skin is Amazing

(I describe some injuries, some bloody stuff here. If that makes you squeamish, you may want to skip this one...)

I have witnessed firsthand, a few times now, how dangerous the ocean can be. A few months ago, we took a group of guys from Tennessee to a beautiful spot on the Atlantic Ocean. There are some massive rocks there, jagged, formed by lava a long, long time ago. You have to watch your step, otherwise you could tumble and gash yourself real nasty-like. We like to go up there and watch the waves crash up against them, spraying up thirty, forty, fifty feet into the air. You can stand up high above them, at a safe distance, and watch the deep blue water churn and toss and crash. It gives me, as a Midwesterner, a great deal of respect for the ocean and how awful and deadly it can be.

Some of the guys wanted to get close and let the waves crash over them, like an amusement at a waterpark. But soon, the last of a barrage of three big ones crashed and surged, flooding down over the rocks, a fleeting, shallow river, just a foot of water, knocking most of them over. Some of them fell to their knees, one of them lost his footing and rolled down, his body tumbled over the jagged rocks. They cut him like glass and knives would.

It could have been so much worse. Luckily, these were tough guys and they mostly laughed off their scrapes, cuts, gashes like they were merit badges. We sat in the Walgreens parking lot and bandaged their wounds, horrifying the passers by.

Monday, we took a day trip to Isabela, to a beach called Montones. It's a beautiful spot, with the same kind of lava rocks, and a tidal pool where you can snorkel and see colorful fish and crabs, and only a few sea urchins (which I detest). It's a good place for kids.

The lava rocks are ringed by a flat walkway, where the water has collected into pools and flattened out over the centuries. It's like a boardwalk. In one spot, there's a gap where the water surges underneath and splashes upward like a blowhole. I went for a hike around it with John Cox, his foster daughter Lourdes, and Becky, an old friend and our intern for the summer.

As we walked, I watched the waves come up, small ones, gentle ones, rolling by, topping out just below our walkway. It seemed mostly harmless, but all along the way we walked through puddles of water. Soon, one wave rolled gently, barely above the surface, washed over our feet. It was pleasant. But as we went further out, the water really surged. It would rise to our level, then drop ten feet, then rise up again. If I were the type to get seasick, it would have made me nauseous. This was dangerous water - strong, steady, irresistible. It was not for swimming... to end up in the drink, as they say, would very likely kill someone.

Soon, the walkway ended and there was just a jagged cliff of rock down into the ocean in front of us and a steep hill up beside us. "I guess we go up and around," I said, and took a few steps up the hill while John, Lourdes, and Becky lingered on the flat spot.

It's weird when you have a near-death experience. I suppose some of them are immediately obvious, while others, the less serious ones, take a minute to sink in.

I stood there and looked down as one big wave rolled up from the ocean. It was slow and steady as it breached the edge of the rocks, and John, Lourdes, and Becky were suddenly standing in a swift current of water just a foot or two deep. With nothing to grab onto, they quickly lost their feet, and the water carried them determinedly away from me, back toward the edge. The ocean might just as well have had hands to grab them by the ankles. John immediately grabbed Lourdes by the waste, and the two of them struggled against the water, trying to sink their fingers into something to hold onto. Becky fell too, and I winced as I thought about what I've seen those lava rocks do.

All I remember is feeling numb, not so much scared, standing there watching these people very nearly get swept into what could have been their death. I think I saw it coming, I think I said, "watch out, watch out, watch out!"

John and Lourdes stopped just about a foot from the edge. Becky wasn't carried so far, but she got a fair number of scrapes, and I saw her sandals almost immediately 50 yards out to sea. They regained their feet and came up to the edge to inspect their wounds.

Down Becky's legs, a few trickles of blood had already started flowing. Lourdes joined me up on the rocks, remarkably free of any scratches. John had some minor ones on his legs. He's an older guy in his upper 60s, but he's active enough that you probably wouldn't guess it. Becky was missing her flip-flops, so John agreed to hand his off to her and make the trek back barefoot.

And then, as they continued to stand on the flat surface, another wave came up over where they were standing. This one knocked John over again, and Becky quickly fell too. I was close enough now that it knocked me off my feet, but I didn't go anywhere. I grabbed Becky's hand and held on as the water pulled at her. John didn't get nearly as close to the edge this time, but the tumble was enough to add some significant scrapes. As the water receded, they got to their feet and joined me a few feet up the hill.

Whereas Becky had kept her composure through the scrapes before, she was now wincing in serious pain and had a nasty gash on her knee. Julio later described it as "an open mouth," and I could see in just the briefest glance that it had cut through all of the skin, both sides open and thick like lips. She and John immediately scaled a few rocks and sat down at a safe height as blood from their fresh wounds trickled down their legs the rocks, a little red stream pooling up at the bottom. He took off his t-shirt and tied it around her knee. She didn't need to see it.

Soon, Lourdes was running for help, and I was left standing there, waiting for someone to come to help me help Becky, with my thoughts about all of it catching up to me.

I got to wondering how many different ways this scenario could have unfolded. Had any of us been standing near the edge, instead of where we were, it could have been so much worse. We could have been quickly tossed into the soup. I emerged from all of this with just a few scrapes, nothing more than what walking past a thornbush might do to me. John and Becky had to go to the Emergency Room for stitches, and a tetanus shot, and IV drips for some reason.

Skin is a remarkable thing to me. A few months ago, I had a nasty rash on my arm that came from something I touched in the jungle, I think. And you would have sworn by looking at it that my arm was disintegrating from the inside out. Jokes were made about leprosy, and someone else seriously thought I might have mange. Freaking mange. But this whole crazy battle on my skin was taking place on the outermost layer, the epidermis (that of "your epidermis is showing" fame). Everything underneath was unscathed. It took a while, but it faded into oblivion, and you'd never know by looking at it today that people were making leprosy jokes. And now Becky and John - with 26 stitches between them - have disgusting looking wounds that will simply heal themselves with the help of a little bit of string. It amazes me that our skin fixes itself, without thought, without medicine. Truly, we are well-equipped.

A lot of the time, when we deal with wounds, or blemishes, or lapses in judgment, or anything that involves a mistake, really, we feel a sort of regret that leaves us wondering what we might have done to avoid this situation. Could have stayed on the beach... could have stayed home... could have done anything differently and maybe saved ourselves a whole lot of pain... inconvenience... discomfort... embarrassment.

How could I have avoided this?

But there is another side to that thinking, the side that focuses on the grace, on what the hand of God hath stayed. Becky and John have cuts, but they weren't swept out to sea. We can wonder endlessly about where and when He's been good without our noticing, where He's intervened on our behalf to spare us, to preserve us, to bless us.

Just what did I avoid?

Maybe I'd rather not know.


p.s.: Here is a Simpsons clip that seamlessly integrates all of the elements of this blog: The water, the injury, the epidermis joke, it's got it all:

No Comprendo, Part Tres, in which I accidentally curse at a child.

(Learning a new language is hard. I've written about it before, a while ago, here and here.)

Wednesday night is Club Alas night at John and Kerry's house. For those of you who know about Cubbies, Sparkies, Pals and Pioneers, and all that, it's a lot like AWANA. Kids show up, run amok, we calm them down, they say verses, they hear a Bible lesson, they play games, we give them sugar and send them on their way. The games are always relays of some kind. You wouldn't believe the thousands of variations on relay races.

The other night I was there, listening to verses like always. Adalis was her usual energetic, sarcastic, kind of obnoxious 6th-grade self. I forget exactly what led to this, but she was cackling maniacally about something, tapping her fingers together like Mr Burns, ("Excellent.") like an evil plan was coming together. She looked kind of sinister, in the kiddish "I'm being funny" way.

Now's as good a time as any to give you a basic Spanish/Latin root session. The Spanish word for bad is mal. Bueno is good. Malo is bad. Very bad = muy mal. You can see that English and Spanish have a common ancestor when you think of the word "Malevolent," like evil, bad, sinister.

So I know that mal- is a prefix for bad stuff. Sometimes, when you're not sure about which word to use in Spanish, you just have to guess. So I wanted to say, "So evil!" And I know full well "Que mal!" would have done the trick. But for whatever reason, I said "Que maldicion!" I've probably heard/seen that word in movies, subtitles. Like much of the world, I'm learning how to swear from movies.

This stopped her immediately, and her eyes widened. Like, "Oooohh, You said something naughty!"

Oops. Swing and a miss on guessing at Spanish. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

She went to another leader who told her, yeah, in that context, that's a curse.

As it turns out, instead of saying, "So evil!" I said "Damnit!"

I had a good laugh about it. Then I realized I had cursed at a child. And that's the sort of thing you're supposed to apologize for, so I told her I was sorry.

Lesson learned.

Somethings, and retreats from start to finish.

By now I oughta have this whole "retreat" thing down.

We did a pair of them last February, a few months after I got here. We did another set of them in the fall, and just finished up another set of them over the last couple weekends. So I've handled six of these things, three for older kids and three for younger kids. They're full of excitement and anticipation and stress and sunburn and gratitude. And each one has its own lifespan:

First, the planning stage where we dream big and everything's perfect, and we want to get the giant inflatable moonbounce thing for the kids and have this absolutely mind-blowing life-changing heart-impacting weekend, fully saturated with opportunities to minister. The planning is really fun, and it always looks really great on paper.

Then you get the marketing all finished and mailed, and book a speaker. You get someone (Suleika or Bubu) to make some phone calls, and the list starts to fill up. You write devotions, make sure the speaker has everything he needs, start filling out the schedule. Then the reality of limited resources sets in. No giant inflatable moonbounce thing.

For the week leading up to the retreat, it's slightly less fun. In my experience, no matter how many checklists of tasks I make, there's always this hovering blob of undefined, undone stuff that probably has to get defined and done but I probably won't realize it until kids start to arrive. I'm always forgetting something, and realizing I'm forgetting something, without knowing what that something is.

That last week, the list really starts to fill up. For my first retreat, we ended up with some 60 kids signed up, and around 50 attended. The next retreat, we crept up over sixty on the signup sheet, and had 54 show. This time, we had 79 kids sign up, and 62 actually came.

And by the time they arrive, you realize that regardless of the perfect little details you never thought of until too late, camp is here, kids are here, and to some extent things begin to run themselves. Doesn't stop me from running around like a mad man, but 60 often screaming/mostly enthusiastic teenagers have a way of pumping you up. It's something, it's Holy-Spirit-infused enthusiasm.

From Friday night, until long into Saturday, that enthusiasm and a dose of adrenaline run the show. I take note of the stuff we have to do better, like: no more registration in our tiny office if 62 kids are gonna have to check in individually. Getting kids towels. Band-Aids. Maaaaybe some behavior management, but the older kids usually stay in line for the 42ish hours we have them with us.

It's fun until the sunburn kicks in sometime late Saturday afternoon. They have free time. I stop. Enter my nothing box. Maybe have a couple of long blinks in there. Saturday night, after a decent meal, we go go go until the sun is down. Some of them want Capture the Flag more than anything else. Some of them refuse to play it. Can't please everyone. Later, they go to bed. Lots of yelling, pillow fighting, stuff that might not fly at Summer camp. I should enforce lights out. I probably don't.

Sunday - it ends too quickly. Up and at 'em. Ejercisio. Desayuno. Tiempo a solas. Tema en la capilla. Empacar y limpiar. Almuerzo. Adios.

They leave. Then: More kids are on the way for the next weekend.

I guess maybe you never get these retreats "down." You try to improve them every time, making improvements and changes that may or may not work, or make things better, or keep kids happier, or help them go deeper. Something.

This Spring, they were successful. Of course they were. Glory to God, I'm supposed to say, I think. But that's a given. I'm the last guy to try to take credit for a camp going well. I always forget things, fail to write them down, something. Most program directors probably feel the same way. The older kids retreat was a blast, and kids were parroting back to me stuff that Nick, the speaker, talked about in Chapel. They loved it. Raved about it on Facebook.

The younger kids retreat - it's been a bit of a struggle to get kids to show up. It's a little deflating when only 14 kids are on site, but it's still a success. They have fun, they love it, they learn, they can't wait to come back. But there's gotta be some way to reach more of 'em.

I say they're successful. But I really don't know how you could deem anything a failure in ministry. And I'm not saying that in a hopelessly optimistic way, but I really mean it. Maybe I haven't been around long enough. Regardless of how I feel about a retreat's attendance, or if I bumble through a talk, or a game goes south or gets boring really fast, or I fail at navigating a behavior issue, I know that something probably happened, something good. God gave some kid a lesson he'll recall one day. A counselor, a cook, a staff member learned how to do something better. I learned something. God did something, regardless.

Write Your Life

I'm trying to blog more. Really, I am. At least 3-4 times a month. And it's not that it's slipped my mind or anything, I genuinely want to, I really plan to. It hangs over my head like a cloud, a big unfinished cloud, like homework used to.

But I do my best to follow two guidelines: 1: Blog only if you have something to say (this does not apply to Facebook statuses) and 2: Don't blog about really personal stuff (I wish everyone would apply this to Facebook statuses). There's a limit to the depth of stuff you ought to dig out of your private life and share with the internet. And it doesn't necessarily need to be scary, depressing, dramatic, dynamite stuff to be too private to share. Some people can blog like that, process life that way. I guess I try not to.

So in recent months as I've been sorting through some bigger life questions like, I don't know, I'll just throw this out randomly, "How long should I stay in Puerto Rico?" I've been inspired to write a lot, just not here. I have lots on my mind, lots to say, just not all of it needs to be detailed on the blog. But hypothetically, if I was asking myself how long I should stay in Puerto Rico, I would hypothetically have decided that I'll head home after about two years, which happens to be this fall. (Whoa. Two years.)

I say I've been writing. During this season, I have a lot of extra time in the evenings, so I decided it would be good to start a project. About a month ago, I created a sort of outline of my life (so far). I broke it down into 28 chapters (sidenote, I'll be 28 next week, send birthday cards / large presents / Dr Pepper to: PO Box 1416 Juana Diaz, PR 00795). Each of those chapters is a different piece about what has helped me become me (so far). Some of them are time periods or seasons, like "before I was born," and some of them are places, like "Grace Adventures," and "Tanzania," and some of them are both, like "High School," and "Grand Valley State University." It's been fruitful, and I have yet to experience writers block. I've got a notebook that is nearly full. And I'm glad it's a notebook, writing by hand is... different, better, more permanent. Only serious writers and lunatics fill notebooks. And I'm not a lunatic. So far. Lunatic notebooks, I think, have more diagrams and threats and secret codes and are probably better organized than mine.

I started it without knowing where it would go. Maybe a memoir one day. Maybe just a collection of notes for me to feel good about, or for my descendants to judge me by. Anyway, It's helped me to notice some trends in my life that I otherwise might not have recognized, and brought back a lot of memories that I've forgotten (or repressed?). There has been some cringing, too. "Yeah, I did do/say/eat that... eesh."

As for this blog: I haven't really written much recently about the work that I'm doing here, and I feel like I ought to fill you all in on the goings on of CDC. Much has happened. I'll do my best in the coming days to fill you in. Thankfully, it's a leap year, and I've got an extra day to get to that 3/4 post threshold this month....

Took this on Monday. My apologies, in advance, those of you in cooler climes:

Book of James

The barber finishes one man, and the chair opens. Another man, young, too young to be here, too young to have hit bottom, has been sitting impatiently, bouncing his knees, tapping his feet, and elbows another man out of the way to get into the chair first. The barber shrugs and dutifully, carefully buzzes away while The Dentist on the microphone welcomes them, announces birthdays, thanks volunteers, shares prayer requests. When the barber finishes, the young man gets up and pulls a women's compact from his pocket while another guy sits down in the barber chair. He looks at himself in the tiny mirror, turning his head back and forth, checking the fade in front of his ears, furrowing his brow, noticing something isn't quite right. He still has his vanity. There's pride, intensity, don't-mess-with-me in his eyes.

The Dentist prays, and the barber has his head bowed, but the young man starts to elbow him. He looks at the barber, tries to get his attention, then looks at his fresh do in the tiny mirror, then at the man trying to get him to shut up while The Dentist prays, then back at the barber, then back at the man trying to get him to shut up. The Dentist finishes and the barber silently makes an imperceptible fix on the young man's sideburns. He whips out the compact again, and nods approvingly.

Volunteers hand out meals to all the men and women at the tables. The rule is, you don't get clothes until you've eaten. No more clothes at seven. But the young man with the fresh haircut comes, stakes a claim on a pair of shoes before he's had his meal.

Don't give it to him, Jose. Because soon, they'll all be up here.

Jose hands him the shoes he wants.

Crap.

Soon, there's a crowd. Clothes start flying, in all shapes, shades, sizes, just like the addicts here.

Big ones, with beer on their breath. Size 38 waist please.

No tenemos 38.

I shuffle through the pile of pants.  

Aqui, 40. Pero no hay 38.

The words I'm most comfortable with come out in that lispy, cut-off Puerto Rican accent that I'm trying not to pick up. He rejects the pants for now, but comes back for them later.

Another one, with no voice, no teeth, lips curling over his gums, holds up nine fingers and points to his feet. This is a language I can understand. I dig for size nines in a shopping cart. They're already gone.  

Lo siento, señor, no hay nueves.

Another one, so very skinny, asks for size 30 pants, makes his request with gravel in his voice, it's rough and jagged like volcanic rock, the roughest I've ever heard. It's a wonder he can still use it. I fish him out some 29s.  

Size 29 jeans?

There are women, too. One was up front, for her birthday, they sang her at least three variations of the birthday song, as Puerto Ricans like to do. Big bandages on her arms in three places, three places where there was pain, and then escape, and now healing. Someone told me the puncture wounds get infected and they often leave them untreated and the skin rots away, down to the muscle, to the bone.

For some of the people here the symptoms are obvious. You can smell them on their breath, hear them in their voice, see them in the wounds on their arms, on their face, so clearly struggling, sitting on the bottom of society, providing examples of "At least I'm not..."

For some of them, the symptoms are not clear. They're clean, they're getting by with clean clothes and fresh haircuts, you wouldn't know it by looking at them.

Here, they're fed, they're clothed. Their wounds are treated, they're bandaged, welcomed back whenever they want.

Christ is followed here.

Enlightening the American Teenager

Every class has that one kid who makes everyone else groan when he raises his hand to ask a question or speak.

I was Skyping with my friend Kendra's Spanish class last week when that kid raised his hand to ask a question.

"What's the technology like there?" he asked.

 "Ohhh my God!" escaped from the lips of some poor, embarrassed girl in the second row. No doubt she was vastly more culturally aware and knew the obvious ridiculousness of the question. She was probably a few social rungs higher than the kid who asked it, and he had clearly violated some protocol asking about technology. But Middle and High school social hierarchy aside, this scene underscored the divide between our cultures, and the value of what we were doing.

I appreciated the question and I didn't laugh at him, like I did to the kid who asked if there was anything to do here. At least he asked something.

"Well," I said, "Technology here is really similar to what you guys have there. I'm Skyping with you over the internet, most people here have the internet in their houses. A lot of kids have PS3s and Xboxes like you guys. There's a Gamestop in pretty much every strip mall. Kids have cell phones and iPads like you guys."

A few times now, I've had the privilege of using Skype to talk to a class of kids thousands of miles away in Michigan. I probably don't make for a great Spanish language lesson, but I hope they at least enjoy the chance to talk to someone in a far away place and learn a little bit more about a different culture. There's always a little bit of nervousness on my part because a kid in an advanced high school class just might have a better grasp of some grammatical rules than I do, or they may ask a question I don't have a good answer for. Luckily, nuanced rules of Spanish never come up.

Instead, it's typically a variation on the same set of softball questions. What's the weather like? What do kids do for fun there? What kind of fast food do they have?

That last one always comes up, and I think there's a quintessentially American perspective behind it. I've asked it too. Our love for greasy, cheap fast food aside, it's a pretty good gauge for a place's standard of living. Or at least we think it is.

I've had a number of conversations with Puerto Ricans who've met Stateside Americans who always ask the same dumb questions, and it annoys them.

I understand their offense. Many of those questions come across as, "do you have what I have?" If you can imagine an annoying kid from down the street coming over to compare toys and being shocked when yours are just as nice, it's kind of like that.

Don't get me wrong, Americans are terribly blessed. The United States enjoys a great standard of living and a great deal of freedom, but they're not the only ones with nice toys. Or the internet, or PS3, or movie theaters. Or fast food joints. Besides, having McDonald's in your country is hardly an indicator of economic stability.

Puerto Rico, like much of the world, has a middle class with some disposable income. In Puerto Rico, like much of the world, there are lots of people who can speak flawless English or another second language. And Puerto Rico, just like the rest of the United States, has a large lower class that has embraced a potentially unsustainable and unhealthy consumer culture. Kids here may have iPads and XBoxes, but that doesn't mean they need them or can afford them comfortably. It's no different in the States.

That was something I discovered myself telling the high school kids over and over again, and I hope they got the point - kids here are just like you. The biggest divide between the States and Puerto Rico isn't how different they appear, but how little one side realizes they're the same.

Time to go back

Okay. Power blog. It's getting late and I need to go to bed because

I'm flying back to Puerto Rico tomorrow.

This was my third trip home, and it will be my fourth flight to Puerto Rico. It never gets easy to say good bye, but I think I do understand them a little better.

It's good to come home. Good to be around family and friends and snow, and separate from the pace of life and work in Puerto Rico, from salty air and daily routine, so I can go back and approach it anew, refreshed. I saw lots of people here. I missed many more. When you have finite time (and it's all finite, isn't it?) you just can't plan it all. That's no break. That's no vacation. That's not refreshing. So - sorry if I missed you.

The inevitable question people ask is - how much longer will you be there? If you've read this blog in the last few months, you may have sensed that I won't have a very specific or concrete answer. There are times when I'm sure I'll be finished there this fall, and there are others when I think - I'm doing good work, I feel useful, I'm growing, why ever leave?

It's a tough decision to make. It's almost certainly tougher than the decision to go there in the first place. It's not one I've got my mind fully made up on. I know I'll be there at least through this fall. Maybe longer. Maybe not. Professionally, I should stay. Personally, I'd like very much to return here, to normal.

But of course, "normal" is gone.

The decision to stay or go (or what to do or where to move or when to go or what to wear), in my unprofessional, non-seminary-trained opinion, is not the same as following or abandoning the will of God. To stay there, I can see where He would use me. To go home, I can see where he would use me.

It would be easy to obsess over it. Regardless, It is good that I have been there, and it is good that I am going back now. There's a lot to do.
Lots of camps to plan
Staff to train
Kids to reach
Places to explore
Stuff to learn
Advice to follow.

Let's go back.

falling water

Rain patters on the windshield of the van, making me nervous. We've been driving for 90 minutes, the last 20 of which on roads the locals will later tell me not to take. If the locals say the roads are bad, listen to them. There's some uncertainty, we've made no phone calls, no reservations, nobody is expecting us and, at the moment, nobody is coming to greet us at the gate.

I've talked this place up. I've sold it to them. We better get in. I don't have their phone number, no way to contact them. I honk the horn. After a minute, a young man comes bounding down the driveway under and umbrella. He greets us with English that leads me to believe he knows how to speak it. He doesn't. I think my Spanish is better than his English.

He knows why we're here - this piece of property lies adjacent to Rio Fajardo, which spits out of the rainforests of El Yunque toward the Atlantic. This is a base camp for a short hike to a sort of natural waterpark a quiet, secluded spot where the water falls down a chute like a waterslide, pools up under rope swings, with high rocks on all sides, deep so you can dive.

A rainy day means a surge in the river, which can make this place dangerous. We navigate a brief conversation about the rain, that it's not a good day to use the upper spot with the high jump and the waterfall, but the pool with the rope swings is fine. He sends me off to park the van up the hill.

We tumble out with stiff knees into the damp coolness of the rainforest, the canopy overhead cancels out the rain. It smells like Spring and rain and - and wet dogs. A sign nearby warns of perros peligrosos - dangerous dogs. They sniff us and leave us alone. Their only danger is their odor.

Another older man comes out, greets me in English, except he really does know English. I hand him some cash before he can ask for money, hoping he'll just accept my lowball offer. It's their property and they like you to pay to park and have the mud washed off your feet when you get back. He takes a quick head count.

Two dollars each. How many are you?
Fourteen.
I hand him some more, overpaying just a little. We'll keep coming back here; we want to curry favor with them.

He and I have another conversation about not using the waterslide or the jump next to it. He tells us to stay at the low part.

If there's a sudden surge, he says, stay off to the safe side and don't try to cross. Each year we have some bodies wash up here below. If you're stranded, we'll send a helicopter to rescue you.

The warning fills me with more curiosity than worry.

The path up through the jungle is rocky and uneven, slippery, lined with thick layers of thriving green plants of all sizes, and a few abandoned structures that nature hurriedly reclaimed. Waterfalls tumble from out of sight, birds and coquis chirp all around us. Soon, we descend the rocks toward a landing in the river.

Here.

This is the place, the quiet spot in the jungle where it's just you and the birds and the trees and the water and the rocks, the place you'd be stupid not to drive 90 minutes to, the place some people would drop everything to fly to, the escape, the place by which all other future escapes might be judged. It's rainy, the very worst of conditions save for a hurricane, and still - it is near to perfect.

We slip into the cold water, and clamber over the rocks and dive and jump and splash and play for hours. The sun falls behind the mountain and the light starts to fade.

I dive in, deep, wondering how long I can stay there, until I return slowly, reluctantly to the surface. There, I draw a deep breath and lay back as my arms and legs and torso float on top of the water. Everything slips away, and I stare up at the treetops and the waning daylight. My ears drop below, and I hear nothing but the distant, muffled roar of a waterfall.

CDC Men's Retreat 2011

Here at CDC this weekend, this happened:

We hosted our first ever Men's Retreat and some of the guys went on an Iguana hunt. No, we didn't eat them, but we would have tried if we could have gotten the meat off the carcass. And before you cry foul for killing off ugly but exotic animals without getting some protein from 'em, they're an invasive species and you're supposed to shoot 'em. In case you don't know how big an Iguana can get, that shows you the scale. Each of those is about five feet from head to tale. They're heavy too.

Also there was some of this:

But it wasn't all high-flying chess action. There was also some of this:

That ball probably weighs at least 30-40 pounds. Look at the next picture and you'll see Lawrence Trumbower, who has been a missionary here running the radio station for nigh 40 years. He's rocking Air Jordans. I've also seen him jump into a creek from a 30 foot cliff.

But of course, we had to get fed, and since we couldn't have Iguana, we had Pinchos. They're really just deliciously grilled meat on a stick. And what's a men's event without consuming burned meat? We thought, we have 20 guys, 50 pinchos oughta be more than enough. Not necessarily.

You cook 'em like this:

Taaaan sabrosa.

But we had to get fed in other ways:

Pastor Miguel Ortiz from Iglesia Biblica Juana Diaz spoke about being Men of Power.

...and we had some great discussion.

It was a great weekend. Men's fellowship is really important, and is overlooked far too often. We got great feedback from the guys who attended, and we'll definitely do it again, even better, next year.

The way to Bayamón

Saturday was one of those rare days when the skies were clear enough over the mountains so you could see the peaks and the radio towers and houses, and could be reminded that people actually live up there in the clouds. I drove up to San Juan, and the highway there keeps the mountains on your left and the Caribbean on your right until it veers left and juts right up into the hills.

I know the way up to San Juan by now, but I was headed to Bayamón, another metro area just to the west of San Juan. Never been there. As I left, I wondered - should I have brought someone along? I don't really know where I'm going. 

I replayed little sound bytes in my head of Julio and others talking about places you're not supposed to go. "What if I accidentally go there?"
"You won't."

"Well. Okay..."

They left it at that.

Also, the radio wasn't working* and the drivers side door of the pickup no longer closes. So I drove with my left arm out the window holding it shut, up to the crest of the mountains and then descended into Cayey, then Caguas, and into San Juan metro area.  

There, 52 becomes 18. You take 52 to 18 to 22 West to 2 West to 176 south. Not far down, on the right, there's a little purple building where they'll fix my projector. I know the numbers in my head, but I don't know the exits and I've never seen anything past 18. I had seen the map, and could actually visualize it in my mind. Years of pizza delivery helped me develop this skill.

52 to 18: check. Done this before a hundred times.

18 to 22: check. Now into new territory.

22 to 2: Oops.

There was a sign for 2 north, but nothing for 2 west. Well, crap. I know how the freeways here go. Like most places, it's easier to take the earlier exit and get back on if you're wrong, rather than pass the correct exit and have to double back a long way down. I dropped off early, directly into new territory with unrecognizable streets.

A note about streets in Puerto Rico: All the urban roads have numbers and names. Most maps have the numbers, but the signs have the names instead of numbers. Locals know the names. Also, this is not a flat island. There are no straight roads here. So while I can usually navigate pretty well, it becomes really tough when the road you're on winds all over the place and very soon, you might be heading the wrong way.

Here, I found myself on just such a road. Fortunately, even windy roads go somewhere. So if you stay on them long enough, you'll find your way to another busy road, which will probably take you somewhere recognizable. 

I like to say that I'm never lost, I'm just in a new place. And you really aren't lost as long as you know how to backtrack. Which is possible, but not easy, on windy roads.

I took the road to another major road and worked my way toward what I knew to be the general direction I wanted to go. But I didn't trust my instinct. I stopped at a gas station and went in to ask the clerk for directions. I wanted to be on highway 2. I didn't think I was. I asked the clerk if he spoke English and he said no. "No problema," I said and plopped down my map. "Yo quiero ir pa alla," ("I want to go there") and pointed on my map. "Donde esta carreterra 2?" (Where's highway 2?) He pointed outside to the road I'd just gotten off. That didn't seem right. I'd been on the right road all along? "Este calle aqui es carreterra 2?" (This street here is highway two?) I pointed out to the road. "Si!" he said. "a la derecha" (to the right.) 

Well. Okay. I got into the truck, held that door tight and wheeled out into traffic. Now, highway 2 goes all the way out of the city, to Arecibo and beyond to the northwest corner of the island. So when after one stop light this street, which the clerk had told me was highway 2, ended at a T, I knew there had been some communication breakdown somewhere. I took the T to the right (because why not? I had a 50-50 chance) and soon found a strip mall with a starbucks and a few cafes and a convenience store.

Two boys at the intersection out front were selling muffins and pastries. I asked if they knew where carreterra 2 was. They said no. Of course not.

I pulled into the parking lot and immediately found myself in one of the more nightmarish parking lots traffic jams I've experienced in Puerto Rico. After about 15 minutes, I parked. My transition from naive explorer into frustrated traveler was now complete. I went in and to get directions from a patron there. He spoke English. I handed him my map. He said, "Go out, take a right, take a left at the second light, go over the hill, and you'll be there at highway two.

"Great!" Sounded easy enough. "Thank you!"

I pulled out, took the right, saw no stoplights, and quickly found myself on a freeway on-ramp. 

Welp.

I recognized this freeway. I was going the wrong way, but I recognized it. I turned around at an exit, backtracked, found highway 2, and followed it to highway 167. After about 15 minutes, I landed at the small purple building. 

Now, I know where I went wrong in all of it. But the odds were in my favor. Had I driven around long enough, I would have found my way. I'm sure there's a lesson on stubbornness in here somewhere. But I can't find it yet. So for now, I leave you with:

This is why men never stop and ask for directions, and why we don't need to.

*The radio works. The rear speakers don't. Someone had the faders turned to those non-working rear speakers. I only discovered this today. I spent all day on Saturday driving without a radio, with only my thoughts to listen to. Sometimes that's not so bad.

One Year, Today

A year ago today, I arrived at CDC a little after midnight, tired and sweaty, with no soap. Dave gave me some, and today that same bar is sitting on the sink in my bathroom. Bachelor move, I know.

It's smaller now, cracked and discolored. But it still gets my hands clean and I think it'll be around for a while longer. I don't know how long a bar of soap is supposed to last. I swear I've been using it regularly. But things like that – the longevity of a bar of soap – make you realize a year really isn't all that long.

It looks a lot longer beforehand than afterward. For most people, it goes by and life changes imperceptibly. Not much is different when it's over. Your age is +1 and there are new songs on the radio and your nieces are talking a lot more.

Life kind of plods forward. That's true for the people back home who must think I'm living some crazy, exotic life, and it's true for me here. It's not everyday that I'm swinging off ropes over waterfalls into jungle pools. That was last Tuesday. It's not everyday that I'm rescuing baby sea turtles. That was a few weekends ago.

Leaving home is a sacrifice, no matter where you land. There are trade-offs. I would trade jungle waterfalls for just one afternoon of lazy football-watching with my family.

I still consider Grand Rapids my home and I'm realizing that, though I've only been in PR a year, I've actually been gone a lot longer. In 2008, I was in Africa. In 2009, I spent a summer and fall at Grace Adventures then moved to St. Joseph to work for Whirlpool. In 2010, I left St. Joe to go back to camp and then moved here to Puerto Rico. For much of the last three years, I've been away.

Gone.

Sometimes I get the feeling that while everyone back home is putting down roots and getting married and taking big, giant steps forward in life, I'm missing out on something. Most of my friends and family are back there, and most of the people I'm close to here are married or in a different stage of life. As a result, there have been some lonely days.

“Lonely,” for the record, is a terrible word. Just saying it, confessing it, affirms and exacerbates the feeling of it. But if I'm going to be honest, it's been a reality for me here that has colored my experience. I don't like being gone, being alone. But, you ask...

“How do you like Puerto Rico?”

Puerto Ricans ask me this all the time. It's usually a question rooted in pride in their island, especially for the older ones. I can tell that “You just love it, don't you?!?” is on the tip of their tongues.

Sure, I like Puerto Rico. I like 85 in February and never having to worry about icy roads. I like frappes and festivals and salsa and merengue music blaring from oversized speakers pretty much everywhere. I like waking up with the Caribbean lapping up just beyond my back door. I like exploring and the unpredictability and relaxed pace of island life. I like the creativity afforded me by a job that is directly related to impacting people's lives.

But there's still this big part of my heart that's stuck in Michigan, with its seasons and icy roads and – it's just home for me, and I've been gone for a long time. I can't help but look forward to returning someday.

My life hasn't synched up very well with everyone else's since I graduated from college. I've taken a different path, one with more miles traveled, more debt, less dollars earned. But I have to remind myself – don't take this for granted. These are good years and I'm hardly missing out. Someday, I'll miss the Caribbean and the salsa and jungle waterfalls, and I'll curse the biting wind and cold of Michigan in winter.

Tell ya what, I won't take this for granted if you, wherever and whoever you are, won't take yours for granted.

Scattered thoughts and further reflections on one year:

• I thought I would know Spanish by now. I don't. Learning a language is a long and difficult process.
• Top five frappes, in no particular order: Strawberry Oreo, Banana Oreo, Strawberry Cheesecake, Chocolate Coconut Banana, and Strawberry Kiwi (if the strawberries and kiwis are sweet.)
• I really don't mind public speaking anymore. At least not when I'm flanked by a translator.
• Dreaming and pitching new ideas is fun, but following through is far more difficult.
• I will never stop hating plyometrics, but I'm slowly growing more and more fond of P90X. Thanks, Tony.
• I cannot overstate the impact a package or letter has on me, no matter what's inside it. I've gotten a few from Michigan, one of which had a Tigers playoff towel that I will cherish and enthusiastically wave whenever the Tigers are playing or when I miss baseball, and a few letters from India. All of them were wonderful.
• Nobody is perfect. Not even missionaries.

The things you find on the beach

Living on the ocean, you're at the edge of the world, it seems. So when garbage washes up onshore, I like to imagine it could have come from anywhere.

Glass bottle? Dropped in the ocean by a sailor decades ago. Obviously.

A barbie leg? A little girl somewhere in Venezuela is tailoring special barbie pants.

Plastic car parts? Some freighter from Hong Kong lost a crate overboard en route to Brazil or Detroit or Latvia.

Clearly I have no idea how the gulf stream works.

In reality, when the rain falls, it flows down the mountains and through the city streets and sweeps all the debris into the river and out to sea. And shortly thereafter, it washes up on our beach. So while the barbie legs and bottles and plastic debris - and a mountain of bamboo and sticks - could have come from a long way away, odds are they're from down the street in Pastillo or Juana Diaz or Santa Isabel. There are lots of familiar objects in there.

Yesterday, a number of kids were here at camp to pitch in and clean up the beach to earn a discount for our retreats the next few weekends. It's really more for them than for us. We even feed them lunch. We don't, however, give them swim time when it's all said and done, something that made me lots of enemies as I drove them home after we ate.

I spent most of our two short hours of work dragging a few of them back from the water cooler in the shade and encouraging them to keep helping while the others kept working. A lot of them haven't quite grasped the benefits of hard labor in the hot sun.

Builds character. Grunt. 

I'm 27 and still working on my attitude towards this kind of thing. So I don't know why I would expect an 11 year old to joyfully sift through all the junk on the shore. 

You never know what you're going to find.

Almost immediately after we started, one of them found a syringe.

She jokingly asked if it was mine. That's the brand of humor I expect from this particular girl. I shrugged it off and assured her it wasn't.

A minute later, she found a tiny baggie. She knew it had held drugs, and again asked if it was mine. I again denied it with a smirk. She explained to me with a few gestures and some basic Spanish what had been in the bag and what someone would have done with it, then threw it in her garbage bag.

Had I found that baggie, I'd probably have thought nothing of it. And had I found the syringe, I'd have quietly dropped it in my bag and then washed my hands for twenty minutes. It's the kind of thing you don't want kids to ask you about, that you'd rather them never know anything about. You'd like to protect them.

I stood there for a minute and spaced out. Here was a 13-year-old girl who lives right next to a drug point and has had far more exposure to drugs than I have. And she was making jokes. How do you protect them then?

When I was 13, I just wanted to watch Animaniacs and eat cereal.

Not Just an Event

It's hard when your faith becomes your job.

The other day I was sitting there, just thinking. I do that sometimes, just sit there and zone out as my brain follows some long train of thought. Usually, just on the verge of some brilliant epiphany, I realize I've been sitting there zoning out and I snap out of it. I never reach that epiphany. Just a long string of thought, and often one that doesn't bear any fruit. That's okay. It's how guys defrag their hard-drives.

But as I sat there, I was thinking about my involvement in ministry. How did I get here? Why am I here? Why am I planning to be done with this in a year? How can I put a timeline on this? How am I qualified for this?

Most of us are unqualified, actually.

There are days when I get up and go back to the grindstone. I try to make decisions about new things, wait for people to call me back or email me so I can move forward on a project, or prepare stuff, or try to be creative by myself - am I the only one who sucks at this? Projects and budgets pile up and I stall on making decisions about more abstract things. Why does this feel like work?

We plan retreats, camps, and other events directed at reaching kids, in the hopes that they might go and be disciples. And there's a lot of work that goes into it. From coordinating artwork for a mailing to planning a menu to booking a speaker to updating a database full of names, it's easy to get overwhelmed with tasks.

You start to ask yourself - is this ministry, or is this a job? Couldn't anyone do this stuff? Is my faith really tied into this, or am I just an event planner?

As I was thinking, I started to consider some of the people who inspire me. Ministry doesn't usually look like work to them. They're so sold out to their cause that all they need is the fuel of the Holy Spirit to propel them forward. They run on It. They always love what they're doing so much that they would never dream of backing out of it, right? Why don't I feel that way? Here I am thinking my time here will be done in a year and I'll move onto something else. Why am I not surging happily forward in ministry, energized as though the Holy Spirit was coursing through my veins like caffeine? Shouldn't I love every minute of this?

Yeah, I don't think it happens that way. I think that whole utopian pipedream feel-good thing is a big lie, especially when it comes to ministry. The Bible definitely never paints that picture. Nowhere does Christ say "abandon your family, and it will be smooth sailing." Ministry is hard, and I suspect that the people for whom it appears to be so easy have days of drudgery too. Sometimes it's the work of the Holy Spirit just to get me out of bed and put me back at my desk.

We'll be doing our first men's retreat next month. It's new territory for me. Yesterday, I went to meet with Pastor Miguel, who will be our speaker, to pray about it and work out some of the planning. We prayed, talked, had a few good ideas, and as we wrapped up we prayed again. Though he didn't when we opened, He prayed in English this time, and I was glad because he used a phrase that stuck with me. "May it not be just an event..."

May it not be just an event. I grabbed onto those words and repeated them, rolled them over in my brain. They fit so well.

That is exactly the attitude I need to have.

It's not just an event.

background noise

Chickens are clucking, roosters are crowing, and dogs are barking around the barrio.

The breeze comes in with no walls to stop it. Fans above rotate slowly and help it along.

Javier stands up to read Psalm 23, in "a strong voice, like David."

From inside the house, a child erupts, crying. 

And it sets the dog off, and he starts barking and howling.

And a car rolls down the street with a deafening sound system, booming dirty lyrics for all of us in church to hear.

And I am the only one who seems to notice.

Anecdotal evidence

Yesterday I got a call from Pastor Gary at Rush Creek Bible Church, the church I grew up in and the one I still consider my "home church," though I've been gone for years, it seems. Since tonight is the Men for Missions Steak Fry, they asked me to come and share a short story about what God has been doing in Puerto Rico. I told him sure, I'd be happy to - After all: Public speaking is no longer a big deal for me. (Sidenote: Public speaking is still a big deal for me.)

And so I immediately started to think about what I would share. I get one story, one anecdote from the summer, and I need to make it count. And as I cycled through my memories from my time so far in Puerto Rico, I started to realize that most of my big impressions have to do with my personal growth. I need to get up in front of these guys and share something about the ministry, a story about where I saw God doing big things in the lives of the kids, counselors, others around the ministry.

And the thing is...

I'm struggling to come up with one.

That doesn't mean God didn't do big things. It just means I didn't see a lot of them firsthand. Maybe there's a disconnect somewhere. I know our counselors have some big things they would share, and I wish they could be here to do it. As a program director, especially in my first year, I spent a lot of time planning, putting out fires, preparing the next thing, processing the last thing, recovering, sweating, cleaning, thinking. And that doesn't leave a lot of time to be actively involved in the present. In other words, not a lot of time in direct heart-to-heart perfect-for-a-story-back-home ministry. I spent a lot of time trying to make sure everything was right for others to do that, but not a whole lot doing that myself.

To some extent, that is the job of the director - you're supposed to make sure that the goals are met, let others handle the tasks. I would be a terrible micromanager. But I still think that somewhere along the way, I would have gotten a pretty good anecdote to share.

There are anecdotes. There are naughty kids, crazy games - and confusing ones, the kid who puked during Fear Factor, the darnedest things kids said, and other summer camp anomalies. Generally, the stuff that goes wrong makes for better stories. It's low-hanging fruit when it comes to reflection. But it doesn't always make for inspiring stuff for the folks back home.

And so I think, in the 2-3 minutes I get, I won't be sharing just one small touching anecdote, but one big one - that we had a good summer, that kids learned that they need to live fearlessly as followers of Christ, that a few made decisions to turn their lives to Him for the first time, and that they had a lot of fun doing it.

And, of course, that nobody got seriously injured in the process.

While home

I wondered if there was going to be significant culture shock being back in Michigan after being in PR for 7 straight months.

I am happy to report: Not really. Not that bad. I've been enjoying the lack of humidity. Michigan in the summer is a good place to be, though everyone tells me it was wicked humid a few weeks ago before I got here.

I have yet to get into Lake Michigan, and enjoy a body of water without salt creeping into all of my nicks and cuts and flavoring my lips.

I've been able to visit my home-away-from-home at Grace Adventures. And in so doing, pitched in at Unityfest where I manned the Gaga pit and did some belaying at the climbing wall before I saw the Newsboys. I almost met them afterward, and would have were it not for the fact that to meet them, ya gotta have some merch in hand for them to sign. Still, great show.

I also saw Willie Nelson in concert, and though that wasn't on my bucket list or anything, and I hadn't planned on it until the day before, you generally don't pass up an opportunity to see a legend in concert, especially when it's free. Willie Nelson, for the record, is short. And downtown Grand Rapids made for an almost-perfect venue on a nearly perfect day.

I shot 9 holes with two good friends yesterday. It my first time on the course in, I think, two years. I might have gotten out once last year. I crushed my first drive and finished with a 50. For the record I cannot remember ever shooting under 50, so I was pleased.

We went over to one of their houses after and watched the Tigers game. I'll be going to at least one and hopefully two while I'm home. This is a good year for them. I can't wait to see them in person again.

I'm trying, at the advice of a friend who has been overseas and come home for a month, not to do too much in the time that I'm home. I need some rest. Some me time. Some get-fed time - I'm going to have to make sure to spend some time in The Word. So this week is primarily an open book, get up when I want, get a little bit of work done - not too much - hit the bicycle to pedal around Jenison.

I've had the chance to answer "how's Puerto Rico?" about 100 times. I have a script in my head now. But being home, being away, gives you a chance to reflect on things in a way that you can't while you're in the thick of it. You only get really good perception after the fact. I added up my hours the other day for the month of July, just thinking about how much I worked. I figure I worked a 70 hour week, an 80 hour week, and a 95 hour week in there. I think I got two real days off that month. And I was wiped out at the end of it. It's no wonder our counselors were too. The hours, though.... That's part of the gig and you can't escape it. By design, summer camp is a crazy, busy season. I think I bankrolled a few days off in that time.

And so now, I'm taking much needed time off with some people I've missed. Just being at home at night, doing nothing... I think that fills me up.