I just got back from the US after my first trip back. I have just a few thoughts, but a ton of feelings about being back. But before I go into that, I have to write about my trip back.

My flights alone totaled up to about 7 hours of airtime. But as soon as I landed into San Jose, it took me 14 hours on one bus before I got to where I needed to be. I landed at 11:49a and got to my destination at 4:00a. Yes, that was one brutal ride. I ended up meeting a couple of missionaries though on the way and we pretty much had a 14 hour conversation comparing travel stories and experiences. The couple does missions training for local pastors and helps the locals develop leadership skills and plant churches. What a great need they fill! It was a great time and I really appreciated what they were doing here in Panama. It made me glad to know that there are people who dedicate their whole lives to a worthwhile cause and trust God for their finances and provisions. Unfortunately, the next day, I had to wake up at 7, which left me with 3 hours of sleep and a very tired mind, body, and soul.

Madeline and Kyle’s wedding was beautiful. It was a smaller gathering (still at least 100 large), but really intimate. You could tell that almost everyone there was extremely close to the family and it meant a lot for both parties that they were getting married and that the guests could come. It made me think about my own life and my romantic life and wonder whether or not that sort of luck will happen to me someday. Madeline was the precious princess she I have always known; poised and elegant. Her dress was stunning and even as they gave the speech she told the world that the wedding was for them. Everything was perfect about the day and she embodied an excellence in internal beauty was was well displayed externally through everything from her dress to the colors on her eyes. I will definitely have to find someone who impresses me as much as she does someday in the future. Kyle was a little boy about to get the greatest present in the world he’d been looking forward to his whole life. On his face was an endless smile and his heart was clearly on his sleeve. He was of course, a super-stud and his golden tie and vest symbolized the heart-of-gold that he possesses. I can’t even explain the joy he must’ve felt, as he is, if you get to know him, a guy’s guy. Oh the things love can do to people – it’s great.

My lips and face almost cracked off while I was in Chicago due to the dry weather and being back in humid weather feels great. Everyone told me I brought Panama’s weather with me as the week before was freezing and horrible. I never thought I’d be so positive about heat and humidity (I’ve always loved the cold weather and was always against rain), but here I am enjoying the moisture in the air. It feels like I’m in a sauna that I can live in. My spirits are renewed and my energy has returned.

Much thanks to everyone who made my trip one of the best and most meaningful trips of my life. The conversations we had and the words we shared filled the spaces we were in with love, hope, and joy. I am grateful for each and everyone of you who opened you home to me, fed me a meal, took me out, or even offered to take me out – I wish I had more time to see everyone and eat a meal with everyone.

On faith, hope, and love.

The thought refuses to escape me. And “these three remain: faith, hope and love. Of these, love is the greatest.”

I can’t stop thinking about this phrase. I find myself completely enamored with the idea. The idea that love surpasses faith and hope is astonishing for several reasons. First of all, love is something of an exchange, a gift that we give, but something we must first receive. It requires that we truly see the other person for their worth, not just their status or what they can offer us. We must look within their lives, beyond the clothes, looks, job, beliefs, history, and habits in order to see that value within them. It is only then that we can move forward in loving someone. In order to give it, we must first have it. Love is both an emotional experience and a deliberate choice. But of all things, it is something that pushes the other into the center stage – where we can find beauty in sacrifice, empathy, service, and genuine care.

As I live from day to day, meditating on the Word of God through prayer, I am discovering new meaning to this passage. It would at first seem that faith is the most important thing. After all, everything apart from faith is sin and it is faith that we are called to have when it comes to Christ and his Kingdom. God calls us into a dependency of Him, something I believe is the perfect definition of faith. To have faith means to hold on to a promise or a commitment that someone made to you regardless of the circumstances that seem to swallow you whole. It is to believe that the other person is trustworthy and good to follow through. It isn’t just about motives, but about the realization of the motives. It is to understand what their intentions are and then to embrace them. To have faith means not to believe blindly, but receive with open hands the truth that was set forth and shared with us. It is trusting that their actions are congruent with their words. It is a security. The difficult thing is that we are constantly battling between the tensions of two sorts of faith in this era: the material faith and the saving faith.
Faith must be based on facts. It doesn’t have to be based on evidence. What is the difference? Facts are the truthful objective statements that exist whether or not we accept them. Fact: we are all broken beings in need of saving. Evidence is something that we can utilize to verify the facts. Most crime scenes provide evidence, but it usually requires time and dedication to find the clues to what happened. Evidence is sometimes deceiving and at times manipulating, but what we hope for in the search and discovery of evidence is that we will find hints or pieces to the puzzle of Truth (with a capital ‘T’). Evidence sometimes exists and at othertimes, is nowhere to be found. What really matters is whether or not we rely more on evidence or on facts. Its easy to depend on evidence because it is tangible, but as mentioned earlier, sometimes, evidence is nothing more than a red herring. We must not forget that faith is a dependency that must be based on facts and nothing more.

I have lived with a material faith for quite some time now. Living in America, you realize quickly that without financial stability, you can kiss your lifestyle goodbye. We rush to adjust our lives, values, and motivations around this economic system and try to get ahead by learning how to make all the right choices. We seek out experiences that will put us in the lead and find ourselves competing with people we’ve never met for jobs we really don’t want. Grades get in the way of intimate relationships when we enter high school and life zooms by without a unique memory. Every year looks like the last until you go to college and then those four years become a monochromatic sequence of time as well until you find your job. You hit the age of 21 and graduate, find a job and from then on, whether you stick with one job or try out 6 jobs until you find something you think might be worth spending your time on, you convince yourself that you are spending 9-14 hours a day in a worthwhile way. You make close enough friends to get by, but you don’t have the sort of relationships and friendships that you know your heart yearns for, has yearned for. Life is a blur, you get married to someone who seems to become your roommate where you do everything down the line and split the duties 50/50 instead of truly becoming one and living for each other. Love fades, but a kid comes along and even more years go on – the kids bring such joy. You continue to work so that you can fulfill your visiion from college and provide a healthy and happy lifestyle for your family. Your children go to a decent school in a decent neighborhood and have no exposure to the realities of the injustice in the global world, let alone the inner city. Your dependency is fully on your ability to perform, to earn money, and to maintain a level of living where your marital conflicts won’t become inflamed by the stress of limited finances. Life has become comfortable and secure, thanks to the economic and material system of the world.

Now, if you believe in God, you don’t forget his share and give him the 10-15% of your earnings as a tithing offering, but that’s ok. You make more than enough anyway. That extra 10-15% we give as an offering would either go to the church or added to your retirement account or the new Jet Ski you’ve been wanting to get.
It is so easy to fall into the traps of the world. I remember justifying to myself as I walked out the back door into my garage debating whether I should take the BMW or the Lexus that I was living a life of faith. Turning the car into the restaurant where I would eat a $100 meal that I wouldn’t hesitate to think twice about as each piece of meat melted in my mouth had become routine. Going out to shop at stores that you see the celebrities with the enormous publicity bank accounts was once something that made me think twice about, but no longer did it cross my mind when I spent $300 on a wallet that I would replace in a year. I worked for a lifestyle that most other people do as well and the normalcy of it all was blinding to me. I had no clue how my life of comfort was making me bitter. We must consider the object of our faith before all else, because the object of our faith will determine the values we hold and the values we hold will determine the outcome of our decisions and our lives.

Hope works the same way, except it doesn’t create a present addiction like faith does. Hope, is faith in the future. I have thought about what it means to hope and like faith, hope can become perverted. It is, like faith, also a beautiful and absolutely empowering concept. It gives us a confidence of the future and a comfort in the unknown. It gives us a sense of security that things will be all right, regardless of what the current outlook looks like. It gives us a light at the end of the tunnel. And like faith, if hope’s object isn’t hope-worthy, we will end up with a false hope or even a negative one. It will lead us down a path of decay as our minds will lose any sense of sanity and our souls will wither away. Hope is what makes the future meaningful.

Let’s face it. We don’t live in a perfect world, so if we continue to hope for imperfection, it doesn’t really give us much to be joyful or positive about. The hope that Christ offers in the Cross and the hope that all things will be redeemed to perfection is the greatest hope one can ask for, but just as we learn, it isn’t easy to hope in God. In fact, from the perspective of those who don’t know the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the same God of Paul the Apostle and of John the Baptist, there is no hope in perfection, only in the idea that things might get better. Time becomes an issue to those who don’t have a hope in God because time is the only factor that keeps us from getting there. We try to do and perform to the best of our abilities to realize that hope within us, but we find that we cannot accomplish what we want or get to the point we are trying to arrive at. And if we do get there, we find that we need to hope in something else, because the human condition quickly gets used to it all and everything gets old quickly. Let’s face it, we can never be satisfied in something that isn’t infinitely quenching.

Here’s what is interesting about these three things. If we look into the passage, we find that the context of the chapter is love. 1 Corinthians 13 is the famous chapter that gives love attributes by which we can determine whether or not we live in our out of love. More interesting about the passage is that everything we experience as people to develop faith and hope will eventually cease when “the perfect comes.” As this perfection comes, we will find ourselves with a clearer vision of reality, that God loves us completely and without conditions, and in the knowledge of that, we learn to love God and others.

How good these three are. At times, I wonder if faith and hope were necessary to begin with. It appears that the first two are pointers to the third. Somehow, the fall of man created a need for us to live in faith and to have hope, as they are the means by which we can grow in love. But then again, we are held up and sustained by God in all things and there is much hope in that as well. It is a mystery to which I have yet to discover and tap into its depths. To love, we must depend on God to provide us with the capacity. To hope, we must understand that there is something greater, and that something greater gives us glimpses into God’s promise and provision for our future, and the knowledge of the reality to be received allots us with a love for God for His goodness, mercy, grace, and righteousness. How love endures through all the pain, hurt, and sin of the world, we will never know. Its an eternal mystery I am looking forward to spend eternity to find out.

My hope is that this makes sense.

One life. Making it count.

You NEVER know where the day will take you. One moment you are finishing off a nice refreshing run, wiping off the last droplet of sweat off your brow as you converse with a neighbor about the baseball game; the next, you find yourself in a situation you wish God didn’t allow to happen. The sad thing is that the thing that should never happen happens often.

The day began like it has for the past week, gloomy mornings with a light rain to keep me guessing if the clouds will move in our favor or against us to bring even more bothersome rains. This isn’t the sort of rain people look forward to either. In Southern California, we complain when it rains even though we badly need it because we don’t want to be bothered by nature. Here, nature has pillaged the town and left no crop standing. Everything that was planted, then replanted due to the floods in December, has been lost, again. Fortunately, this time, the rain clouds went off to bother some other poor community that hasn’t been bothered by over 8 straight days of rainy, gloomy days.

In the morning, I went to Changuinola (the provincial capital) with a community member to look into starting a Panama Verde club within my site. I got up, brushed my teeth with the water I had collected the night before in the rain, and dressed myself in my usual mangy attire. As we finished the meeting, I decided that I did NOT want to head back to site right away so I met up with a couple of other volunteers and ate lunch. We had pizza and it was yummy. Anytime I can get away from rice and beans, I take the opportunity without taking a beat. Unfortunately, the pizza didn’t really agree with my stomach so I have been having problems with it since. The chocolate that I can’t seem to stop eating probably isn’t helping either. I’d say that I consumed about 2 pounds of chocolate today.

Around five, I decided to head back on a bus. I arrived home and immediately changed into my sleeveless New Balance running shirt, Abercrombie gym shorts, and my cow poop stained Nike’s. This has been the outfit that I have been wearing for the last week. The water doesn’t stop pouring down so my clothes don’t dry; therefore, I have no clean clothes to wear when I am lounging around at home. I really smell with these clothes on, but who am I trying to impress? I go on a run, plugging my iPod into my ears and turning on a sermon by John Piper on the importance of defending those who are defensless and weak. As I returned, I visited with several of my favorite people in site and listened to the baseball game that was going on between my province Bocas del Toro (currently ranked number 1) and Colon.

After listening for too long and hearing the name of the local Disputado, Benicio Robinson a hundred thousand times too many, I fared well to my friends and headed down the road. The baseball games here are sponsored by the local politicians and this being an election year, every candidate puts out all the stops to make sure they either get elected, or re-elected. Benicio is the current ticket holder and paid a good chunk of change to get his name inserted into every play – ‘It’s a pinch hit! Benicio Robinson, the man you can trust. He is going home! Benicio Robinson wants you to know that he will meet your needs. Strike out! Benicio Robinson understands your needs.’ Need I say more?

I stopped by several houses to greet some of the members of my community and as I was nearing the store, randomly decided to turn around and say hello to a teacher friend of mine who has 5 wonderful kids that when I returned from the second flood evacuation, gave me a standing ovation and shouted so loud that I caught the neighbors peering out their windows and doors trying to figure out what was going on. It was quite the warm reception. These kids were simply excited because I was back; not because I was going to give them something or that they were expecting something from me, but simply because they were happy to see me. The thing is, I don’t think I’ve visited their house more than three times during my time in the community. It really did wonders, therapeutically for my soul to be wanted.

As I approached Yesenia, she was sitting by the well in front of her house with a red nose. She was sniffling with a tissue in her hand so I assumed she had a cold. Most people are dealing with some sort of illness right now. Our mutual friend, Anderson was sitting with her. He was waiting for a bus to come around so that he could go tend to some family matters in the provincial capital. It was dark and unlikely that he would catch one. I greeted them both and since I thought she was sick, I asked her how she was feeling and if she needed any cold medicine. She sort of laughed, gripping her phone tightly, and just proceeded to ask me how I was doing. I said I was ok and pressed to ask her how she got sick – I had no idea she was actually crying. She told me that the climate changing and the constant rains had caused it. At that moment, her daughter Estella came out of the house sniffling and where she would normally give me a big hug and shout my name, she just looked at her mom and then went back inside. I asked her if she was sick too because at the moment, they looked more like they were sick than they were crying. She said that Estella had been crying. I asked her if Estella was being disobedient, which seemed an odd question to ask because she is an incredible girl. Yesenia laughed and said nothing. We continued with small talk until Anderson’s bus came to all of our surprise and he dashed off.

A minute of silence passed between myself and Yesenia on the verge of awkwardness because I could tell that something was up and that this supposed sickness was more of a rouse than anything else. At the end of a minute, she asked me if she could be honest with me. I had no idea what to expect, but I said yes. She then told me that she was actually crying and not sick, and for the same reason as Estella. She told me that they were going through personal problems; family problems. As soon as she said family problems, I knew what had happened.
She burst into tears saying that she had invested so many years, so much time, and made so many sacrifices in her life for this. And out of nowhere, for something like this to occur, she felt lost and kept asking me how she could find peace. She was in a serious situation and she needed to make a decision. I told her that she would do the right thing and that she needed to turn to God. God is the only source of true peace – I’m done with the mumbo jumbo false substantive peace that comes from decieving yourself or trying to convince yourself of something that you don’t really want to be convinced of. I wondered for a moment as to whether or not it would be appropriate to pray with her, but I decided to hold it in and just pray silently as she just let it all out. She had no one to talk to and didn’t want the rest of the community to know what was going on. We spoke for five hours – well, she spoke, I merely listened.

I hate the infidelity of men, the lack of character in these generations, and the stupidity of the idea that people are disposable. I hate that people don’t make wise decisions when choosing guys and I hate even more that men are irresponsible. I hate that guys are generally after one thing and that women can’t see it. I hate that good guys finish last and that women have to learn the hard way. I hate that women have to hurt because of the immaturity of men. There is no excuse anymore. It doesn’t matter – there is no excuse for infidelity. I hate that money, power, prestige, and a lack of class seems to dismiss wrongdoings of men. I burn with hatred for the sin of infidelity.

Yesenia and her husband have been married for nearly two decades and have five children. She is a special soul and different from most Panamanians. She views the future and takes into account the importance of disciplining her children. Furthermore, she takes extra time out of her day to help kids who are struggling in school and her house is always full with her neighbors’ kids who are over to enjoy the atmosphere of the house. I’ve never seen her say that she cannot do anything for anyone and anytime I ask her to do something, she complies. She is an incredible woman who loves to help people and encourage people – and has the humility to ask how she can improve as a person. Before we found out about the bastard cheating on her, I had made an announcement to the community that I was going to do a marriage/relationship seminar. She asked if she could participate to see how she could become a better wife. My heart aches for her and the more I think of her and all the precious women like her, the more angry I get at the majority of the worthless men out there.

Here’s my challenge to you men. Stop being worthless and give reasons for women to lose faith in us. Let us respect women and cherish them for the simple reason that they are our sisters in the human race – made in the image of God. Let us increase our own standards for what it means to be a man and change the status quo. No longer can we denegrate ourselves to mediocracy and pathetic attempts to be cool or pursue our physical pleasures.

On behalf of men, women, please accept my sincerest apologies.

I recently looked through my previous entries and noticed how dark I have become after joining the Peace Corps. I guess I had a lot of stuff to be stripped away of from the material to the physical comforts and my absolutely ridiculous passion for luxury.

On Facebook, there has been a recent note that has been going around where you ‘tag’ your friends and write 25 random things about yourself to others. My friend Daniel, in all his wit, selected 25 friends and wrote one thing about each of them. This is what he wrote about me: “Oh A-Ray-A-Chang, the Chang Banger. He once decided to work at the Armani outlet for a couple of weeks to get the discounts. Then again, these are supposed to be interesting facts, and anybody who knows Ray would not be surprised by that. Ooops.” Now, as much as I laughed out loud while reading it and enjoyed the thought that people relate luxury to me, I am realizing how much I hate the fact that it is true. My life should look different, and I have been a poor witness and a poor steward in the things that I have bought and the lifestyle I have lived before coming here. I know that I am not over the high-brands that I have grown to appreciate and love over the years, but I also know that I need to get over such shallow pursuits of nothing – even though I’d like to think that I look really good in Hugo Boss and Armani. Its sad how much I have fallen in love with such futile things.

We are flooding again though. The rain just doesn’t seem to stop here. The community members are beginning to blame me, telling me that every time I come back, the town floods. This is the third time the town has flooded and the fields have become ruined. If I wasn’t so sad that my community keeps losing their livelihoods, I’d be laughing because of how ridiculous this is. This time last year, the water source had dried out because of the lack of rain. When I think about that, I’m glad that it’s been raining. Who knows how horrible I’d smell if I had no water to bathe with, even though the water that comes out of the faucet is always brown and dirty. It’s like taking baths in chocolate water – at least chocolate milk would leave your skin feeling silky soft. Try Quik with water sometime, it’s gross.

Fortunately though, I have a rain water catchment system. I have started to collect Dasani and Aquafina bottles. It’s amazing how those two brands of water made their way here. Coca Cola is truly amazing (who makes Aquafina?) – their reach is incredible. So everyday, I wake up, grab a bottle that’s been filled with rain water and brush my teeth with the toothbrush that a cockroach has probably been playing with during the night. How do I know? When I go out of the house for several hours, the cockroaches appear in my favorite places: 1. my sink where my cookware and toothbrush are, 2. my bathroom where I do my duty and usually find myself naked to take a shower, and 3. my bedroom where I walk in the dark to find my bed. I use my iPod as light to scare off any bugs that have found a nest atop of my Thermarest and stinky sheets.

Speaking of stinky. I have devised a system where I take showers out of a bucket. And here’s the awesome part – the bucket showers are warm water! Yes folks, I heat the water up before I bathe now so I don’t have to shiver when I am bathing. It takes me three full pots to be heated with boiling water, but its worth the 25 minutes before I take a shower. Now, I enjoy scooping up my water with a small plastic bowl that used to be filled with dishwasher soap out of a 5 gallon paint bucket. Plus, I conserve water this way. It’s win-win. I win and so does nature. Unfortunately, after I do take warm water showers, I sweat immediately after I get out because the temperature isn’t favorable to my body heat. What can I say, I’m just a hot beast.

I hate how serious I’ve become. It feels like I don’t know how to have a good time anymore. I’ve become an old man. In fact, I just want to sleep all day and rest. Is that so bad though? Really… Someone pour me a scotch or a glass of red. Please.

I’m an all or nothing sort of guy. People who know me know that I live on one extreme or another. In friendships, I hate the type of friend you hang out with all the time, but never really truly know because they guard themselves off. I’d rather just be a contact or a good friend, nothing really in between. Hang out buddies drive me nuts. In dating, I either want to be on dates one or two, or in a long term relationship. Dates three to whatever are just annoying. They just seem to fill the gaps of time. I think that by date two, I generally know whether or not I want to be with someone. That’s why most of my dating relationships never go past two dates. Correction: all of my relationships over the past 6 or 7 years have never gone past two dates. In knowledge, I either want to be in the newly discovery stage or in the expert stage. I hate being in the middle where I know enough to discuss something, but not enough to really add new ideas to the conversation. In work, I either want to be the CEO or nothing at all. What does this all mean? It just means that I have been ignoring the middle ground that exists and as much as I’d like to avoid it and have tried to, I simply cannot.

Of course, the problem has been me all along (as it usually is). In my faith quest in Christianity, I have always admired two types of people: the people that were truly saved by an impossible grace from the worst sort of lives (drug addicts, people who were abused as children, people who were raised in the hardest of conditions, etc.) and the people who have lived their lives perfectly. An example of the former would be the sort of pastor that you’ll find serving in a compassion ministry that focuses on outreach to the person that they once were. An example of the latter wold be the sort of pastor that you find raised in a Baptist background with a series of preachers that preceded them. Of course I’m being a little too general, but you get the point. The thing I admire about each of them are that they lived in either extreme. It almost seemed like they skipped the middle ground. For them, it was a 180 transformation. I’m not saying that they didn’t experience pain or hardship, that they didn’t suffer or struggle, but that in the line of faith, they were either there or they were on the complete other end of the spectrum. There were no questions as to how much God knows or why suffering exists in the world. The questions came after their arrival into faith – something that I am questioning in myself. I wonder if I have arrived into faith or if I am living in a horrible self-deception.

I know Jesus lived and I have studied and found conclusion that the Bible is unbelievably accurate and consistent. That means that I really have had to decide whether or not Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or truly what he said he was, Lord. The reasons for faith make sense as a Christian, especially since the great battle is generally within ourselves, as to whether we want to be God or let Him be who He already is. In other words, I have come to a peace within myself that I am not the Ptolemaic center of the universe, but that God is the one who holds it all in His hands, as difficult as it is to accept. I have also come to accept that what is, is not what should be, and not what will always be. But even when I know all of that, I have lost a sort of innocent faith that requires a blindness to all the information while delicately holding the truth in a cradle. At times, I fear that I have found too much evidence to have faith and that my faith has become stale because of it.

I don’t want to live a life where I am certain of the facts of faith and not experience it. The two extremes I have noticed so often are that people experience the information they know. They are not cluttered by the knowledge, nor are they calloused to it. It seems to kneed out the knots of apathy in the lives of so many people that truly live our their faith whether or not they know all the answers or facts. I want to be sold out that I can’t help but live it, breathe it, and dream it 24/7.

So the middle ground of faith.

What I’m saying is, I hate the process, I always have, but I know I always won’t. Its a very real aspect to faith that I need to learn to embrace. And the reality is, that its the ability to live in the present. I admire people who can learn from their past, consider the future, and fully live in the present, but that is one ability that I have found myself lacking in severely. If there was a point of pride, I’d consider myself one of the best at learning from the past and dreaming up an imaginative future, but shamefully, I always miss the present. It was the same in every experience I have ever been a part of. And that might be why nothing is ever good enough.

I compared everything to my idea of the best whether the best existed or not. Outside of great food, there has never really been anything that I described as perfect. Maybe that’s why I love to eat at such high end restaurants or completely infamous hole in the walls. Food seems to be the only thing that if done right, cannot disappoint me. But with every school I went to, every program I have been a part of, every church I attended, and every organization I worked with/for, something has been completely and utterly wrong. I never found myself satisfied because I always wanted more and I always wanted it better.

My mom had a dream of me before I left, and whether you believe it or not, the accuracy is astounding. I was on a bike riding down a road. I peddled so furiously that I didn’t take notice of the oncoming traffic or the things I was passing on this road. Everything was a blur and I was always in a hurry. When I had arrived, I found myself severely cut and injured on my leg as I had been swiped by a truck while peddling and it was only when I had stopped that I noticed the injury.

While praying for me, my friend Maddie wrote that she saw a compass with a needle that kept spinning wildly. It spun in every direction and kept on spinning until it finally landed on the North Point and just stopped. She attributed it to my many passions and finally finding a singular passion while I was here.

Both of them rang true for me and resonated in my soul. So much so that yesterday, I called my mom and Maddie to hear their voices. I wish I had told them everything that was going through my mind, but even as I write this, I am struggling to find the words to write.

My pride has killed me up to now. My invulnerability to become a subject to the process and to embrace the present. It hindered my learning to really only hear what I wanted to hear. It stopped me from truly experience life as it was meant to be experienced. In the present.

I can’t do it on my own. At the end of the day, I am learning to be humble. To stop rushing a million miles an hour and to take the time to step back and smell the flowers. My prayer is that God will teach me to enjoy the present and all that it encompasses.

Middle ground, here I come.

One life, letting God make it count.

The rain doesn’t stop. You don’t believe me? Look at any of the weather forecasts for the Bocas del Toro region, west of the mountains and you’ll quickly find yourself in agreement with me. I always hated Chicago for the same reason. I never really noticed it when I was a child because I guess that’s all I ever really knew. Being born and raised in the same place really doesn’t help you to realize that there are other options available, that you DO have a choice in the matter.

I never got seasonal affective disorder, in fact, I never knew what it was until I went to California and people would tell me that when they went away for college or got transferred from a job, that they would get depressed without really knowing why. I’d think to myself that they just went to a stupid school or were wasting their life slaving away at a job for a paycheck, but when I went back to the mid-west for college, I quickly understood what they were talking about. I’d quickly get depressed without knowing it, often times feeling lethargic and burying myself into a box of Godiva chocolates or a Chipotle burrito – gosh I miss them both right now. When the weather was sad, I was sad and didn’t want to do anything except stare at the blinking cursor on my Microsoft Word document. When you get SAD (seasonal affecti… blah) you just don’t want to live when you are living. You aren’t suicidal or anything, it’s just that you are just a blob of breathing flesh and blood and yea. Well, I feel like that here.

As much as I hate to say that environment should affect the way we live, it does. Of course I don’t mean just the weather. I also mean the people we are surrounded by, the home we live in, the quality of relationships we have, our jobs, our hobbies, and of course, our ability to escape when we want and/or need. I really don’t know where I’m going with this, so take this entry as more of a stream of thoughts instead of one linear thesis that I am trying to develop.

I recently found out that my mom and her family had a Peace Corps volunteer when they were growing up. It was both highly motivating and severely depressing. It was motivating because she told me her perspective on things. The key thing was a question she asked herself, “why would someone come all the way here from there to live with us and help us for two years?” As she told me that, I kept reverting back to thoughts of my experience and how I am perceived in my own site. At the time, that PCV who went to Korea was amongst the first ones there. From that moment on, she had a belief that all Americans were blue-eyed, blonde-haired, tall, and Christian. It was depressing because all she remembered of him were his features and that he taught English, which she didn’t remember anyway. But at the end of the conversation, she said something that gave me hope, which was, “Not many people can do what you are doing in the Peace Corps.” I took a deep breath and just thought about it.

we live in such different times. My parents lived and barely survived through the Korean war. A man hungry with power at the right time when a great political war was being forged between the two philosophies of communism and democracy. My uncle (mom’s oldest sister’s husband) put himself through one of Korea’s best medical schools working in a heating furnace that kept the heat on for the US military. Every hour, he was required to make rounds checking to see if the furnaces had enough wood/coal for the fire or if there were any complications. During the day, he’d go to school, and at night, he’d study, sleep, and when the alarm rang every hour, he’d check the furnaces. While we were eating one day, he told me that the experiences from the Korean war had haunted him from ever wasting any food. Food to him wasn’t about pleasure – although he enjoyed great food, but about necessity. His parents lost a thriving stock of silk and other valuable merchandise from the Orient due to the war.

My dad has a similar story. When he was young, his father was a prominent business man who had a knack for the entrepreneurial. He was one of the first people to bring cameras into Korea, started his own makeup company, and even started a school that stands to this day. In the war, as people began to realize that one nation would be divided into two, they all fled south in fears that they would lose their freedom. Of course, they left everything behind to save their lives and at the last moments, my grandfather found himself with not only his kids, but the kids of his siblings – over 20 mouths to feed. I remember hearing from my aunt that the kids quickly forgot the sacrifice my grandfather made as they are now established in their own rights in Korea, but at the cost of my grandfather’s life. He died of stress. My dad went on to sell everything from frozen treats to newspapers to try and help his family and eventually ended up in Saudi Arabia as an electrician. I asked him if he ever wanted to go back, and you could see the dread in his eyes from his experience there. It was a definite, no. He found himself in the States and married my mom. And now, here I am.

I have too many choices. I always felt like life is a game that is easily won. As long as one has the resources OR is resourceful (much more important), they can find what they want and go forth with it. I suffer voluntarily and in luxury compared to what my relatives had to go through. I think I need another gut check on what I’m doing here and why I am doing it.

But back to complaining about the weather. Yes, I hate it. I’m sticky, cold, and wet at the same time. The sun is nowhere to be seen except on the other side of March. I am going to Chicago to see my friend Maddie get married. It’s been a long time coming, and I can’t believe that she’s getting hitched. She’s always been too wise for her good and finally, all of our conversations about life and love will be put to the test. We met in Hawaii and became good friends while I lived in Chicago to attend Wheaton while she attended Northwestern and met her man Kyle. She’s never stops thinking and you can see the incredible level of care and concern in her life. Very few people I know can really manage to think big while working creatively and patiently through the details. Even fewer people can manage to consider other people through it all. I’m sure that she will be a great wife and that Kyle (her fiance) will prove to be a phenomenal husband. Congrats to you both~

on that note…

Spencer is FINALLY and ACTUALLY engaged. Its been such a long time coming, yet it came out of nowhere. The girls name is Ryan (the gurl) and they met in California. To be honest, I never thought that Spencer would really settle down until he met Ryan. I remember the first night they met, through a mutual friend, and Spence made sure that he kept his distance while maintaining connection. It was a funny night as he walked through the doors while I was watching TV. He had a glow, but it was a glow of mixed messages. From then, they “casually” got to know each other. The whole relationship was sort of quiet for a while. No boyfriend/girlfriend business for a while, then out of nowhere, a few days later, bam, “hey Ray, Ryan’s my girlfriend.” And now, as of Valentines day, they are the soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Wall. Nuts. Crazy. Insane. The Great Wall has been conquered – and this time, it wasn’t by some Mongolians, but by a sweetheart named Ryan. July 25th, here I come.

and on THAT note…

Why the heck is everyone getting engaged?!

Josh, is engaged out of nowhere. I was in my village when I got the message. Total randomness. Less than a year and he is engaged – or was it just over a year. Anyway, our talks and jokes about Stalker Beans and Atlases are soon to come to an end as he will find himself happily ever after with a certain Shannon. One minute, he likes a girl and they are trying to keep it on the DL because they both work together with the church’s youth group and the next minute, they are asking each other what the place settings will look like and where they’ll be getting hitched. Pretty cool stuff.

Oh the days of bachelorhood are quickly fading and I have lost a couple of the best wingmen to ever live. I guess I’ll have to enjoy the peanuts at the bar all alone while drinking a beer now. I just can’t wait to see these dudes with kids of their own – it’ll be both gross and absolutely fantastically wonderful.

Honestly, there is nothing better in life than to find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. I can’t express how happy I am that they have found someone to cherish, to love, to serve, to hold, to comfort, to laugh with, and to experience this blessing of a life that we have all been given. My love and my joy to each of you and your new found ‘lovers.’ I’ll be giving you each a special greeting in the near future. Love you all.

Does that mean I need to get married now?