Loneliness and A New Way of Life

I think it is safe to say that this has been one of the most stretching weeks of my life. Not the most difficult. Not the worst. But probably the most stretching. And I would say that it is a stretching of my emotions and my mindset more than anything else.

For those who have not been following my move, I packed everything up on Tuesday and my Dad, Don Riley, and two of my sisters (Krishauna and Taryn) brought me here to San Pablo La Laguna, my new home. We spent some time working on the house, headed to San Pedro to spend the night in a hotel (as a bit of indoor construction work was still underway) and we returned the next morning to finish unpacking and doing odds and ends in the house. My dad and Don then headed home but my sisters stuck around to help me get started. This is where I left off on my last blog post.

My sisters were here from Wednesday until yesterday (Monday) morning. During that time, we worked together to figure out how I was going to need to run things around here. We had a few foods that my mom let me take from home to help us get started or get us out of a jam when we were stuck (a couple boxes of mac-n-cheese, some crackers, coffee, a bit of rice, sugar, salt, and milk power, peanut butter (who-hoo!) and a few other treats) but we knew that I had to learn and our supplies wouldn’t last long, so we set out on Wednesday afternoon to learn! First, we headed to Pastor Efraín and Bety’s house to talk with the family and see how they were doing. Their daughter had just come home from the hospital with her new little boy, so we got to meet the precious little guy and catch up with the whole family. They then graciously sent their friend and house worker to go with us to show us where we could buy a few veggies and cooking supplies for dinner. (It is easy enough to find these things in a town like this—there are tiendas [little house stores] galore! But it can be a little harder for foreigners like us to know the fare price of these items in a new town since many store owners are quite eager to take advantage of a white skinned buyer, and prices vary from town to down).

One of the streets in town
 

So within ten minutes of setting out with María for food, we were back at my house with our veggies and additional items. That meal and the meals to follow were a bit interesting as we had to experiment with my funny little stove and oven and our new foods to try to get things right, but we ended up with some pretty delicious meals (aside from a couple of rough sides). This was thanks to my sisters because, for those of you who don’t know me well, I have no idea how to cook. But…I am learning! And I will continue to learn and practice until it is natural for me (I say with feigned confidence). But that little trip out with María was the first of multiple trips out last week.

Many cooking attempts...some a little rough, some wonderful! All with very few ingredients 
 
   


The next morning, the girls and I made and ate breakfast and I had some quiet time with God. During my prayer time, I talked to God about our plans for the day but asked Him to override or rearrange our plans as he saw fit. Our plan had been to head out on our own right after that to explore and look for more tiendas and needed supplies. But as I grabbed my dog’s leash and headed out the front door, there was our friend and translator, Mitchel (he has been working with our ministry ever since we started making trips to San Pablo to work with families here), standing at the doorstep. He asked our plans for day, and we told him. He said that he was asking because he wanted to invite us to watch a girl’s soccer game in which he was the coach and his wife, María, was the referee. We eagerly accepted the invitation and then he offered to take us walking around town to point out various tiendas and meat shops to buy what we need. We eagerly accepted that, as well. Over the next twenty minutes or so, he was able to point out to us the best places to go for fair prices and good quality food on all of the main streets here in town. He even introduced us to the owners of a couple of places so that we felt comfortable with them, as well as the prices they give us. That trip out left me feeling so much better about buying things on my own. Another answer to prayer!

Girl’s soccer game!


My goal, as well as my sisters’ goal, for this first full week here has been to push myself out of my comfort zone and get out there as much as possible. I believe that I am naturally an extreme introvert but that God has been changing me for His purposes in recent years and that it is my job to do everything that I can to let Him continue to do so. So the first few days here I would say to my sisters, “I really want to stay shut up in this house right now, so let’s go on a walk.” Or, “I’d really like some privacy right now (so people don’t see me looking ridiculous as I try to cut vegetables and cook), so let’s make sure the front door to the street stays open” or “I feel like there might be some coldness coming from some of the owner’s family, so I’m going to go ask them if they can help me learn some new Tz’utujil words”. And when I didn’t state these things, Krishauna would recognize them and determine them for me. (Thanks, Shauna!) We also did a ton of scrubbing on my filthy, filthy walls to make the house a little more…homey. Those five days and five nights, we learned a lot and I came far in growing more comfortable in my house as well as my town.

A couple of before and after photos showing the type of cleaning we were doing
  
  
My clean water source, my broom-made-into-a-mop, and my hot water source (something not many people have here)
  

Some scenes that I see when I look out my front door or window:
 
 

But yesterday morning at 9:30 my sisters climbed on a van headed for Antigua, and suddenly I was alone. I came back to the house where Champ was waiting and I hugged him and pet him, and I cried. Not because I’ve never been alone before. And not because I’m already homesick. I cried because although I will get to go back to visit my family for the holidays and other times in the future, I live here now. I live in a house with just my dog in the middle of a culture that is not only unlike the culture of my home country but also unlike the culture of the town where I have lived for the past 3 1/2 years. And while I know some people here from our once a month trips to San Pablo, I don’t know them well and none of them really know me. And further, I have never had the desire to live alone. Ever. Maybe with a couple of sisters or friends. Certainly with a husband. But never have I had a desire to live by myself. And yet here I am. All of this was hitting me like a fist to the gut and suddenly, I didn’t even know how to make rice for lunch. I messed it up before I had even really gotten started. I called home in tears, and spent some time talking to my mom. (I had done the same with my dad a few days before.)

I hate sharing this stuff because it makes me look like a very young and foolish little girl, but…well, that’s how I felt yesterday, and I just want to be honest with all of you. I think we all have our low points and too often we are too busy hiding it to know that others have them, too, and even more…that our weaknesses are opportunities for God to show His power. So since I am sharing these weaknesses, when things are going well here and lives are being changed, no one can say “Good work, Brittney! You are awesome doing what you do!” Instead can say, “Wow, Britt, you never could have pulled that off on your own. (I remember because you were a mess in the beginning) but how cool that God chose to use you while He did his work!”

So, after talking with my mom a bit (and getting some tips for how to prepare the rice the Guatemalan way), I hung up the phone, finished preparing my lunch, ate through tears, washed and dried my dishes, washed some clothes, hung them on the roof, and sat down for some time to myself. I spend time praying and talking to God (although struggling to keep the right mindset) and then I was a lazy for a bit.

 

Eventually, a few 11 and 12 year old girls that live behind my house came to my gated door, calling in for Champ and then calling me. I went out to talk with them and they helped me practice my new Tz’utujil vocabulary that they have been teaching me. It helped me relax a little bit and get my mind off of things. I then went on a walk with a friend (who is the young mother of one of the children our ministry helps) to the lake’s shore and talked with her about her interesting weekend. By the time we got back to the house, it was getting dark and I still was not quite myself emotionally, so I closed my door (something I don’t like to do until later in the night) and I had some more time to myself. I got on Facebook and received a message from my dear friend, Jon, who has become like a close brother. When he realized that I was struggling, it came to his mind to walk me through 1 Chronicles 16:7-12. So that is what we did! He broke it down verse by verse and we did what those verses said, giving thanks to God, calling on his name, singing praise and telling of his wonderful acts, seeking the Lord and his strength and remembering the works He has done as well as the promises that He has given us. By the end, my eyes and heart were directed where they should be and I was feeling much better.

Thank you, Lord, for using my friend to do your work on my heart in the moment I most needed it!

God also reminded me of something yesterday. I have been feeling like this adventure is not enjoyable because I have no one with whom to share it. But that isn’t true. This, in fact, is the perfect opportunity for me to walk hand in hand with my God, many distractions now aside, and fall more in love with Him than ever before. For now, I have no husband. For now, I have no close friends or family by my side. But I do have my God. And He can be for me a father, a mother, a husband, and a best friend all while being my Creator, King, and Lord. Is that not amazing?! So maybe this “loneliness” is something beautiful that God planned for me in this part of my life. Not so that I would be heartbroken but so that I could learn to love and be loved like never before. I love that. My God is incredible! And all for His glory. (Is He not best glorified when His creation is loving and glorifying Him?!)

I then headed to bed without dinner (messed up emotions also mess up your appetite) but feeling very a peace. This morning, I woke up at 6:30 feeling very well rested and quite positive about things. I have no doubt that yesterday was another day of me accepting lies from the enemies (my dad and I had this conversation just days before), and I have no doubt that these lies will be thrown at me again. But I am going to be more intentional about seeking out and rereading the truths of God so that I learn to speak them against the lies as they arise. I’m going to let God prepare me for battle…because there is going to be a lot of that around here as God does His work in the hearts and lives of the children and adults in this town.

Alright, I needed to share that with all of you because, frankly, this heart stuff is of greater importance than that which follows in this post. But so that you, my friends and family, understand what all I am doing here, I will give a more schedule oriented update of what today is looking like thus far and how I expect many days will look a bit like in the future.

6:30 to 8:00 Rise and shine! Shower and get ready, open up curtains, doors and windows, let my dog on the roof to use the restroom (more on that in the pictures), go on a walk to buy bread to go with breakfast, make and eat breakfast, wash dishes, and do any necessary odds-n-ends.

8:00-10:00 Sit on the outside doorstep for Bible reading and prayer journaling (something not many people seem to do here) and be interrupted by curious children and neighbors. Have conversations and build relationships and then, if not yet finished and having too many interruptions, head inside to finish quiet time. Sweep up in and outside the house, clean up the dog’s potty area on the roof, wash any necessary laundry and hang on the roof to dry.

My favorite sitting spot in the house, the 'pila' for washing dishes and clothes, my clothesline on the roof, and Champ's potty spot on the roof (yes, that is saw dust and wood shavings...apparently that's how they do things here)
   

10:00-12:30 Study new Tz’utujil vocab, blog and/or send emails/messages (the photo below is of the paper where I am keeping track of the Tz’utujil words [and their Spanish equivalent usually] that I have been taught…some of them are written correctly and others are written to help me better pronounce them)


12:30 Make lunch (however long that might take) and eat, making it the biggest meal of the day (and hopefully making extras to store in fridge for quick, small dinners when necessary.

Afternoon hours: Take a walk, buy needed veggies for the rest of the day and maybe the next. Stop and talk to neighbors and tienda owners whenever they seem eager or willing. Spend time with the children and young teens who randomly pop by and call out “Chomp!” (aka: Champ) or “Bdeet-naaay!” (aka: me). Work on making plans for academic assessment and teaching of children with special needs here in town and gathering resources.

6:30 Eat a small dinner and clean myself up.

7:00 Possibly go to evening church service (many churches have services almost every night of the week).

8:00 Go back to my house to sit on the door step to visit with the girls and women selling fruits and vegetables there, learning and practicing Tz’utujil vocab and grammar.

Whenever I feel like it: Heading inside and closing up doors and windows to get a little time to myself before bed.

10:00 Turn off porch lights (as the women are done selling) and head to bed.

This is pretty much what this day will look like and close to what the average day will look like for now. As I move into working with specific children, I will let you all know what is happening! I am trying to focus on the language learning and the nailing down and increased speed of the skills needed for daily life here in these beginning weeks. But very soon, I hope to begin talking with families that we know and determining which students I am going to work with first and what I can do to best help them in the time that I have with them. In a future post, I will give you all a description of the vision that I have for how this program might work, but in the meantime…this is my start here!

The timing isn’t ideal (as I am still getting started here), but tomorrow my parents will come to pick me up (and see the little life that God and I…and Champ…are building here) so that I can be with my family for Thanksgiving and a special weekend with everyone from the home and ministry. Monday or Tuesday, I will be back here to resume life in San Pablo for a few weeks until Christmas. (Don’t worry, I won’t always be back and forth so frequently!)

Can’t wait to see all that God has in store! And I’m not quite as anxious but certainly ready to see what God still has left to do in my heart. For those of you who are Christ-followers, I would greatly appreciate your prayers as He does this work in me so that He can do work through me.

The Day Is Here!

Up until now, this has been a dream. A plan for later. Something to work toward. But Tuesday morning, my family and I loaded most of my things (including my dog, my bed (thanks, Pat Duff!), and other new furniture) into our 15 passenger van and my dad, Don Riley, Krishauna, Taryn, and I headed for Lake Átitlan. Three hours, a couple of shopping stops, and a lunch break later, we pulled into San Pablo La Laguna and came to a stop in front of my new house. My new house. In my new town. Woah. It’s a lot to take in!

 

New town.
New culture.
New language in the mix.
First time living on my own.

It’s shocking. But as I sit here in my kitchen the morning after my first night here, I am happy. Almost like a nervous but giddy little girl waiting to see what her daddy has in store for her in some fun, little adventure. Probably because I AM that little girl. And my Daddy has a LOT in store. I don’t know what that is yet. I don’t know what the next few weeks and months and years are going to look like. But He invited me, I said yes, and now I get to hang on for the ride!

Don’t get me wrong: There have been tears. Just two Tuesday morning, as I packed my final things, I broke down and had to spend a few minutes just talking with my parents. Truth be told, this situation is not my first choice. I have never had a desire to live on my own, and I do not really enjoy the idea of needing to learn a language so difficult and unique as this one. I love having my siblings around me (most of the time) (: and my heart feels sick at the thought of not being able to be at the home as children, our children/siblings, come and go from the home and face sickness and seizures and emotional challenges. I love the ministry that our family has there, and it is going to be so hard to not be there with them. But Tuesday morning I climbed up onto our roof one last time and I told God that even though I was pretty nervous and overwhelmed, I told Him ‘yes’ and my ‘yes’ still stands. I will not back out just because this does not fully line up with my own dreams of “ideal”, because I trust Him to the point that I know His plans will always be better than mine.

I’m also coming to understand that He knows my own heart and needs better than I do. And while He owes me absolutely nothing, He has faithfully continued to meet all of my greatest needs up until this day; what reason would I have to doubt Him now? There is absolutely no reason.

I have much more to share with you all about all that God is teaching me and all the ways that I am being challenged in my thinking, but for now, as I have a lot to try to to get done today, I am going to give you all a quick update and run down of the last couple of days here.

Tuesday afternoon, we arrived in San Pablo and unloaded most of my things (with the exception of my dog) and did some initial cleaning and arranging.

    

Some men were still doing the work needed to add a pila (washing station for dishes and clothes), so we really could not stay the night. So we headed to San Pedro where we spent the night in a hotel. The next morning, we got breakfast and then headed right back to San Pablo where we spend a few hours doing more cleaning and unloading of boxes and my dad and Don did some little projects such as fixing light fixtures, changing light bulbs, helping to move the pila into place (that was a task) and cleaning a mini-chandelier. You would think that final task would have been fairly simply but…well, you should just ask them about that.

 Working hard or hardly working?
 
  
 

At about 1:00pm, my dad and Don headed back to San Antonio Aguas Calientes, but my sisters stayed here with me. (They will be returning by bus on Monday.) We looked at each other with funny expressions and looked at our small supply of food that we brought to get us started. We decided a box of macaroni and hotdogs would be our best option for our short amount of time. Half way through it dawned on us that we had no butter and it was too late to go tienda hopping to look for some, so we went without. The three of us sat around a tiny little table in my cute little kitchen eating our simple little unhealthy North American meals made over a cute little stove. (Are you catching onto the theme?)



When we finished up, we had to leave all of our dirty dishes sitting on the table because the pila was still being worked on. We spend a bit of time discussing goals for the day, foods and items still needed, and plans for house to accomplish everything. So we straightened up, grabbed Champ, and headed out on a walk. We decided to go visit our friends, Pastor Efraín and Bety and their family, who had just returned from a few day trip in which their daughter gave birth to her first son. We met their handsome little grandson and caught up with the family. They were then so kind as to send their friend and house worker with us to help us buy some needed veggies, foods, and supplies for dinner and breakfast this morning. (They did this so that we would get the correct prices instead of paying “skin tax” as some friends of our like to call it.) So María helped us purchase what we needed. We headed back to the house with our rice, beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions, potatoes, oil, and eggs, getting funny looks from neighbors who are all gawking at the whites and the German Shepherd. We continued along with friendly smiles and greetings, trying to act as normal as possible, and stopping to talk to any children or women who seemed eager to do so. (A group of children kept calling Champ from their doorway, but when I would move toward them to lead Champ to them, they would scurry into the house with screams a giggles.)

We arrived back and the house less than an hour after leaving, and we did some more touching up around the house, and general preparation for dinner. Making dinner was a little more time consuming and difficult than we expected as we are still learning to use new cooking tools and moving around my disorganized kitchen, but with team work, we are able to pull off a really good stir-fry meal over rice! (The rice was not as good as we had hoped, but we will learn with time.) We sat and talked at the table next to the big open window facing the street just yards away as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and neighbors moved too and fro, talking, laughing, and going about their day. Champ wandered in and out of our open front door, walking out to peek out the gate at all those passing by. (He has been sort of depressed these couple of days as he tries to figure out what is going on.)

  
  
By the end of dinner, Mitchel let us know that the pila was finished and the garage (aka: future classroom) cleaned up. So Taryn washed all of our dishes, we checked out the garage, pila, and roof and then…we set up my little Christmas tree!! I know it’s early. But I am going to go home for a few days for Thanksgiving and the Fulp family “Christmas Tree Day”, and I didn’t want to come back to a lonely, Christmas tree-less house at the end of that. Not to mention, this move is just a shock overall, so I needed something happy and fun to add to the mix.

   

By the time we finished figuring out all the issues with my cheap lights and stringing strings onto my cheap bulbs, it was quite late and we were quite tired. We found a way to fit the light therapy mattresses that we brought onto the floor of my bedroom for my sisters to sleep on. Then we fought off some fearsome attacking spiders (aka: I used a fly-swatter to smack two medium-sized spiders that surprised us on the wall), got ready, and went to sleep.

This morning we woke up a little later than we should of (8:00), showered, made some scrambled eggs and peanut butter toast, warmed up some refried beans, and made a pot of coffee. We then tackled the simple task of tying some rope up on the roof for a clothes line and I washed the dishes and two towels (made filthy yesterday) in the pila. Turns out I am quite the weakling. I forgot how exhausting it is to wash large items in a pila! But the towels are now on the room, the house fairly in order, and we have plans to eat a very simple lunch, go on a walk around town, visit a couple of friends, buy a few more items for cooking and house work, make soup for dinner, and watch a movie on our computer once it is dark.

 

I, personally, already feel myself wanting to shut down and hide out. That is why we are leaving my front door open, taking intentional walks, and talking to anyone that we get the chance to talk to. I have messed this up before, and it always hurts more than it helps. God has brought me here, so He will carry me through whatever I may face. He will be with me every step of the way. So I am setting goals and establishing requirements for myself so that I don’t give into my introvert-like tendencies. But for those of you who have relationship with God, please pray for me? Pray that God flows into me and then overflows to others, so that it is not me but Him that they are seeing. These are my neighbors and future friends around me, but this has to do with that which is so much more than me. So pray that I keep my eyes and ears open to what God is doing and that I lean on His strength to join Him!

Thank you for those who have been praying for me and encouraging me in a variety of ways. Thank you to those of you who helped support me financially as I get started. Each of you have helped me in ways that you cannot even know! I will do my best to keep you all updated (although not in such a detailed manner as this…that would get frighteningly boring. Wait—did I forget to mention my bathroom breaks??) In the meantime, keeping serving God where you are at so that we can encourage one another forward! I am certainly in need of accountability, and I am certain that many of you are, as well, so maybe we can do that for one another?