I go to orientation at Boston College on July 8th for two weeks and then will head straight to Ecuador on July 22nd. I will keep this blog as an attempt to chronicle my year in Ecuador, however I know it will be impossible to capture in words the gravity, beauty, and depth of the experience. I will try my best to post at least once a month!
I am nervous, excited, really all of the above for next year. While I do not know what I will find in Ecuador, what I will get out of this year, or where I will end up afterwards – I am certain in this one step.
In preparing to leave, I keep thinking back to a woman I learned about during our Spiritual Exercises retreat and my immersion trip to El Salvador, Jean Donovan (a lay missionary who worked in El Salvador). Jean once wrote to a friend, “There are lots of times I feel like coming home. But I really do feel strongly that God has sent me here, and wants me to be here, and I’m going to try to do my best to live up to that.” I am traveling to Ecuador. I will see poverty that will break my heart. I will cry in anger, sadness, and frustration. I will be removed from the comfortable life I live here in the U.S. I may question time and again why I am doing this. And yet, I too feel certainty.
I’m ready to embark on this adventure of a lifetime! While I am traveling to a materially poor area, I know that a unique and elusive richness found in the beauty of the culture and people awaits us. I’ll end this blog with a reading I just stumbled upon; I was chosen to read it for my El Salvador immersion group before we started one of our days:
“When we sense an obstacle or difficulty coming in our lives our inclination may be to avoid it. We want to detour from the path we set out on, or try to make the work as easy as possible. However, the only way God can work through us is if we are open to growth. Transformation – sanctification – occurs when we ‘die’ to our failures, our sins, our loneliness, our despair. This means we should welcome the obstacles, follow the hard road when it opens in front of us, for it is in these experiences of ‘dying’ that the life of Christ can grow in us.”
Wish me luck and keep in touch!
Love,
Colleen
