Feel free to read my fundraising letter if you haven't received one.
I'm spending a year, from August 2010 to July 2011, in Trujillo, Peru. I'll be volunteering at an orphanage there called Hogar de Esperanza (Home of Hope). I'm excited and nervous. I tried to keep this post short so you'll actually finish reading it. Feel free to ask questions if you want more details on something.
college
I graduated from Azusa Pacific University last December. When I started college I thought I would do well in class, graduate with a political science degree, and become a high-paid political journalist for the Wall Street Journal. The first two things happened but the political journalism career is still on hold, indefinitely.
cerritos kidz
APU requires students to volunteer for several hours a semester in order to graduate. I was excited about the requirement because I had done a lot of volunteer service in high school. I chose a tutoring program called Cerritos Kidz. It was at a low-income housing apartment complex in Azusa, just blocks from APU's campus. I had worked as a camp counselor every summer since I was 16 so doing volunteer work with children was natural to me.
The program met in the courtyard in the middle of the complex. The first day I volunteered children were running around, cussing, and hitting each other. Well, it wasn't just my first day that they did that. They did it every time I was there. They weren't the polite middle-class white kids from camp I was used to dealing with. They were loud Mexican children in there home environment who didn't want to do their homework. They had such different lives from my own. I had a room of my own most of my life. A lot of these kids shared rooms with all their siblings, if not an aunt or uncle. I knew that people lived like this but I never personally knew people who did. I continued to volunteer for the program into the following school year, becoming a lead volunteer and participating in a language exchange program with the Spanish-speaking mothers.
the book
The leader of the program gave all of the lead volunteers the book Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development. The book talked about the biblical reasons for reaching the underprivileged and marginalized. It discussed how Christians have allowed society's standards to separate us from believers of different backgrounds. We've allowed our church communities to be segregated according to socioeconomic status. I grew up in this sheltered middle-class Christian American environment. Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful for my childhood! But while reading Beyond Charity, I wondered how much my sheltered childhood crippled me from seeing all of God in the lives of others. I wonder how much my sheltered life now impairs me from seeing all of who God is.
comfort
I finished reading the book during Summer 2008, when I worked for an amazing missions organization in Queens, New York. With three other young Christian people, I hosted missions trips for youth groups at First Presbyterian Church in Jamaica for two and a half months. It was nothing like my comfortable life back home. My main responsibility was organizing a Kids Club program at a nearby church for neighborhood children. The church we stayed at had a weekly soup kitchen for the poor in the community. That was always amazing. The poor weren't just some cause for me to picket for; they were real people I cared about. I felt so blessed to know them and learn about their situations. I especially felt blessed to realize how much and how little I could help them at the same time. I've never felt more empowered and powerless, at the same time, as I did that summer. Empowered because I could reach out to so many people; the neighborhood kids, the youth who stayed with us, and the marginalized in the community. Powerless because I could only do so much for all of them. I was blessed to realize that my powerlessness was what God wanted me to be aware of most. He took care of those people long before I met them and He would long after they were out of my life. That summer was an amazing challenge that I think about every day.
the short version
I knew after that summer that God didn't want me in a high-status career field. I knew he wanted me to work outside of my comfort zone. I continued working for an after-school program targeting low-income areas during my last semester of college and several months after graduation. I took a three month "break" from the after-school program to work at a group home for at-risk teenage girls (the most challenging job ever!). During this period I was reading an awesome book where I came across the quote that inspired this blog's title. I'm now working for the after-school program again and two retail stores. And I'm living in Pasadena with some of the greatest young women you'll ever meet.
the orphanage
I've been wanting to volunteer in South America for over a year now. I would have been there by now if it were up to me. But other opportunities and obstacles kept me here for the time being. While looking for volunteer opportunities, all I wanted was to work with children and for the program to be affordable. I found Hogar de Esperanza through an amazing volunteer opportunity website that my friend Meredith (who's in Peru right now!) discovered. The orphanage is run by amazing Christian people and they serve the orphaned, abandoned, and abused children of Peru. The orphanage provides about 48 children with a home and education. Most of all they provide a loving environment for these children and work to get them into adoptive homes in Peru as well as the United States. The orphanage's volunteer program has a great reputation and will be providing me with room and board while I volunteer full-time. The $5,000 I need to raise will cover airfare costs, travel and health insurance, pre-trip vaccinations, and personal needs (i.e. toothpaste, VISA renewal) while staying at the orphanage. Any amount raised past $5,000 will be donated directly to Hogar de Esperanza. Please visit their website to learn more about what they do!
I'm not going to Peru to change the world. I'm going to have my world changed. I'm going to love and be loved. I'm going to do what Christ calls me to do everyday, in every circumstance: be bold in broken places. I hope that my trip will inspire everyone who learns about this trip to do the same.
You can donate by debit or credit card by going to to my ChipIn page. Ask me for my address if you want to donate by check.
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