Top 20 of First Semester 2010!

There are so many blessings that we encounter over a semester. It’s hard to acknowledge them all, but here are my top twenty for the semester.

20. My Birthday – My birthday was made special by the 400 smiling faces singing “Happy Birthday” to me while I stood in the middle aisle of the church after Mass. Also an old student heard it was my birthday and he called a current student to let me know that he was going to treat me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Then one of the Belizean teachers had their wife bake me a cake. The volunteers also had a signed card for me and made a cake to celebrate.

19. Siddarth/Sanji/Zoe/Sandra – These adorably cute children always brighten my day when they’re around. Siddarth and Sanji are the son and daughter of Mr. Punjabi, the Math and Business teacher at the high school. Zoe is one of their friends and Sandra is the daughter of the custodian who works at our school. These four children are so joyful and so funny, coloring with them and playing games with them is always a treat.

18. Visiting two students at their house – One of my students was in a motorcycle accident in which he was banged up pretty bad. Another teacher and I made the point to go visit him at his house. He was very grateful for the visit – we were his first visitors. Another student was missing from class for 10 days. I knew that he was a student that had potential to drop-out. I took initiative to visit him and to make sure everything was okay. He was not planning on coming back to school, but through a little persuasion, he was back at school the next class day. These were two opportunities where I realized the impact we can make as a teacher.

17. Mountain Pine Ridge – the staff retreat in the middle of the mountains. The highlights were swimming in the pools, going to the Rio Frio Caves, and playing games with the volunteers.

16. Hurricane Richard – The electricity went out which means that we volunteers, who normally have nothing to do, had even less to do, but we make do with what we have and it ended up being a blast of playing games in the dark with flashlights and candles.

15. Theology of the Body Song Presentations – This was one opportunity where I realized that I have the potential to be a great teacher. The students had to present on a song in modern culture (“Soy Hombre” ~ Aventura, “Whatcha Say” ~ Jason Derulo, “Don’t Tell Me” ~ Avril Lavigne, “Mine” ~ Taylor Swift, etc…) and tell me whether it was a good example or a bad example of masculinity, femininity, sexuality, love, or lust. They did awesome with it! I was so proud of them!

14. St. Ignatius High School – Although I dreaded the thought of it. It was actually a blast and renewed my love for teaching as I entered into 6 different classrooms at a different high school to give a talk on God’s love. I saw some familiar faces from when I first visited on a week mission trip in March 2009 and I really connected with the kids there.

13. Los Finados – I never really appreciate All Souls Day until I celebrated it this year. It was absolutely beautiful as we processed in candlelight from the church after Mass praying the Rosary in Spanish to see a beautifully decorated, candlelit, and populated cemetery with families praying in remembrance of their deceased family members. Students made altars dedicated to praying for the faithfully departed. Families invited me to drink xpasha and eat bollos in honor of their family members.

12. Hanging out with Victor – Victor is my Belizean friend who is an IT teacher at the high school. He is such an awesome friend and I am so thankful for the many times I have hung out with him and just relaxed. School can get very stressful, but whenever I would go over to Victor’s to eat, watch TV, or have a drink, it always put my mind and heart at ease.

11. Market in Melchor – There have been many times when I have went over to Melchor de Mencos, Guatemala the border-town right across from us and have went to spend time with my students at the market place where they work. The market is so much fun. There are clothes from Hollister, Abercrombie, American Eagle, etc… (which explains why my students are way more stylish than I) and this is where my students work. On the other side of the stalls are the houses of my students and it’s amazing to experience the hospitality that they have to offer. When I visit they make sure to take out chairs for me to sit and to offer me Pepsi or cola.

10. Christmas Celebrations with Volunteers - Because we are always looking for a reason to celebrate when there’s not much to do, we do holidays big. This Christmas we made a bunch of snowflakes and hung them from the ceiling, made a paper life-size Christmas tree, had Yankee Swap, and Secret Santa.

9. Halloween Party with Volunteers – we all dressed up and invited a few Belizean teachers to come join us. It was a masquerade fiesta as we had the 80’s, a Twister board, a Coke bottle, a mobster, a biker girl, Ursula, a pumpkin, a 50’s girl in a poodle skirt, a gypsy, a Islamic woman, and a Jedi. The dancing was fun!

8. Fishing in Melchor – One day, I was asked to go with a bunch of students to go fishing with them in Melchor, Guatemala. One student drove their jeep to the place where we would fish. We “fished” with a stick, fishing line, a hook, and we had to look for the worms. Later they decided to put chicken necks on the line, but they had to go buy them. Their jeep ended up getting stuck for three hours in which we pushed and shoved and dug. It was hilarious! To top it off, they drove me back to the border on my very first motorcycle ride.

7. San Pedro – One of the three day weekends, the volunteers made sure to get out of good ole mundane Benque to go to La Isla Bonita – San Pedro on Ambergeris Caye. It’s so beautiful out there! We stayed at a resort for super cheap through a connection that someone had. We had great food and a great time!

6. Day on the Ranch – I was asked to go hang out with some of my former student’s on their ranch in Guatemala. We drove out there and there we cooked steak on a stick and then rode a horse. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them and have quite the adventure.

5. Mr. Mai’s – We were invited to lay cement for one of the teacher’s house. There we mixed the cement and laid it down, then after all the hard work – we went for a relaxing swim down the river making fun pit-stops along the way.

4. Flores and Tikal – Another three-day weekend rolled around and a few of us had a much-needed vacation to Flores in Guatemala. The beautiful island on the Lake Peten Itza. We sang karaoke, went souvenir shopping, ate delicious food, and enjoyed the view and each other’s company. Later we went to Tikal, which is a huge Mayan ruin site which is absolutely amazing. There we met two amazing people, Adam and Kate, who are biking to raise awareness for Autism. Later we met up with other volunteers and took a boat tour around the lake.

3. Third Form Girls Retreat – Was a great opportunity to get to know and show my support for the girls that I teach in the third form. It was so clear that God had so much healing for the girls on this retreat and it was beautiful to see them be so receptive to God’s love.

2. Skit – There was a welcome assembly for the first formers and the teacher’s decided to put on a skit in which we dressed up like the students and acted like them. Then we broke out into the Cupid Shuffle in front of all 400 students who erupted into smiles, laughs, and screams.

1. Knights of the Immaculate Retreat – This was such a huge blessing of the semester in which I saw God do such mighty things in the men who were open to the power of the love of God and it helped me grow in fellowship with them.

Mid-November and December

The thing about missionary life is that it is still life. And because it is still life, it has the same challenges, same habits, same vices, same problems, and same tendency to complacency to overcome as in non-missionary life. Things can go very well when on mission, so much so that you are amazed that God has called you to such an incredible privilege and opportunity that it brings you to such complete joy. However, so much of mission is ordinary. So much of it is same old, same old. There is so much routine one can often times become complacent in going through the motions again and again, day in and day out, that one can easily lose focus on what everything is really all about. See I told you it’s still life. And when that happens, God loves to throw a curveball to mix things up a bit. When you expect things to continue to be amazing and beautifully providential, not because of your faith or trust in God, but because that’s just how things have gone, why wouldn’t it continue? You take for granted the many blessings you have encountered and you almost forget to count your blessings because you’re used to them. And you almost come to expect them because you somehow come to believe that you, yourself, are responsible for them. And that is when everything flings out of control. At times it can cause one to seriously doubt everything, but only through that dark period of doubt can one come to realize the true meaning behind everything. This needs to happen in order to remind one that everything is a gift. We do not earn anything, we do not deserve anything, we should not expect anything. Everything that we receive is a gift that is undeserved and unwarranted. This is something of the beauty and generosity of God, which is why every now and again we need a wake-up call to remind us of this truth – that we are nothing and that God is everything. That is what this past month has been about for me. Beginning with the third form boys’ retreat. I thought it would be the best retreat yet and that God would manifest Himself in manifold. This was the class that I pretty much made my decision to come back to Belize for. It was because I loved the second form students so much that I decided to come back and teach them. And yet this was one of the most painful retreats I’ve ever been on. Where I thought great things would happen, it seemed things went wildly out of control. The boys seemed apathetic, non-receptive, and bored. My heart ached in pain, seeing their amazing potential and seeing them be so nonchalant towards it. I guess this is something of what God feels for us when we do the same. I’ve noticed a lot of the students I was close with have really been becoming more and more detached. I was so frustrated and so confused. At that moment, I thought for the first time since I’ve been in Belize that I wanted to go home and quit. I wanted to give up. As I came back from the retreat so depressed and upset the student who received Communion for the first time in five years on the Knights retreat asked me if we were going to pray the Rosary today and I said “If you want to pray the Rosary, let’s go to the chapel.” So me and this student prayed a Rosary together alone in the chapel. And then he began to tell me how he had really began to change and when he was going through a really rough time at home and at school almost to the point of not wanting to come back to the school. He said “a phrase keeps coming back to me from the letters I received on retreat and from different situations, ‘Never Give up.’” And at that moment I realized that God was speaking through this student to me. A few weeks later, again, I was going through some serious doubts about my effectiveness and what was really the whole point of me being in Belize. I was at a daily Mass and I was just thinking, “God what am I doing here?! I’m not doing anything at this school. I’m not making a difference. If I was a good teacher, how come there are no students that come to daily Mass?” I was so frustrated and going through so many doubts. As I received Communion I offered everything up to God and as I turned the corner to return to my seat, I saw in the Communion line that same student. Sure enough, God continued to speak to me through this student. He’s been at Mass almost every day since. God, as the master Catechist, was teaching me a lesson that I largely had forgotten. It’s not me. It’s not my mission – it’s His. It’s not me – It’s Him.

“And you will meet humiliation all through your lives. The greatest humiliation is to know that you are nothing. This you come to know when you face God in prayer. When you come face to face with God, you cannot but know that you are nothing, that you have nothing. In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can fill you with Himself.” ~Mother Teresa

How beautiful it is to know, it’s not me. It’s Him, it’s in His hands. All I have to do is say “Yes – Fiat! Let it be done to me according to Your word!” It’s so easy to get caught up in the stupid day to day things that happen that you forget the main point. You can get so caught up in “busy-ness” that you forget your own need and dying thirst for God, Himself. You get so caught up in the routine and the way things go that you forget what everything is all about. It’s Him! It’s Him! He is worthy of the first thought and the last thought and everything in between. Why can we get so caught up with non-sense. It’s so easy to become selfish about your own time that I’ve realized I’ve lost focus in my teaching, in my relationship with students, and with my relationship with God. Oh how beautiful is His mercy that He reminds us that even in those times of deep doubt and darkness that He leads us into His light.

This reminds me of St. Thomas. In the Gospels, never is Jesus referred to as “Theos” meaning “God”, but only “Kyrios” meaning “Lord” which can be used to describe a human person worthy of honor because they had authority from God like a king or magistrate. This was because for the Jews, which was strictly monotheistic to the core, to call anyone “God” would go utterly and directly against the fact Yahweh is God and there is no other. “Lord” was a way for the Gospel writing Jews to express divine authority without putting into question the monotheism of God. St. Thomas is always thought of as “the Doubter,” that’s what is most commonly associated with St. Thomas, which is so sad considering he was eventually a martyr for the faith. But most don’t look at St. Thomas from the following perspective. Imagine that you spend three years of your life with this man called Jesus and you see Him do miracles, you see Him heal the sick, cure the lame, the deaf, and the blind and forgive sins. He looks in your eyes with such an intensity of love and He speaks truth, which burns deeply in your heart. You come to realize that He is so much more than just a man. He is the Christ. He is Lord. He loves you in your essence. He loves you totally for who you are. And you know that by the look in His eyes. Now imagine that this Christ whom you’ve loved dies and then you hear from everyone you’ve hung out with for the past three years that this Christ appeared to all of them, but not you. Would you not doubt also? “But I was a friend of Christ too? I gave up everything for Him, why would He not appear to me? I saw the way He looked at me and He loved me! There’s no way that that the Jesus I knew would appear to all my friends, but not to me! I do not believe He rose from the dead and unless I see His hands and put my finger in His side I will not believe.” Imagine being in this doubt and aloneness where the Apostles are ecstatic saying that they have seen the Risen Christ, your one true friend, and they are filled with this amazing joy and you have to hear them reflect on it, speaking about it, knowing that if something did happen it happened to all of them but didn’t happen to you. “Why would Christ do that? Didn’t He love me? What’s wrong with me? What did I do wrong that would make Christ appear to everyone else but me? He must not have risen!” And after a week of deep doubt and deep darkness finally Jesus meets Thomas in his doubt, in his darkness. And here is the beautiful lesson that St. Thomas teaches us. That it is in those doubts and in that darkness, in those low times, that Christ desires to bring us into the light of His truth… it’s not about us… it’s about Him! And blessed are those who believe in those times of doubt and darkness who have not seen… because they will come to know who Jesus really is. And here is the deepest confession of faith that you will see anyone make in the entire Bible… Thomas cried out “My Lord “Kryios” and my God “Theos!” It is precisely through those times of doubt and through those times of darkness that Jesus will build our faith even more deeply in Him than ever before and He meets us where we are and let’s us put our fingers in His side and touch His heart where we can come to realize that HE IS GOD and that we are not. We are nothing and that He is everything! Jesus I trust in You!