Trips to Another Land

Note: I wrote this for our TEACH newsletter:

To be touched by another is to be invited out of ourselves into a bigger and nobler world.

It was high good fortune for me when, owing to the invitation of a law school friend (our executive director), I traveled for the first time to Guatemala in 2004. My first impressions of that country are still with me: a visit to Camino Seguro at the Guatemala City dump; the beautiful old City of Antigua; the chicken buses and precarious roadways we traveled on to reach the lush interior of the country; the welcoming faces of little children looking up at us, lightened by the sun; the different languages I heard that drew a veil over comprehension.

Our goal then, as now, has been to assist in the education of Mayan children, a goal that I have embraced owing to my own gratitude for schooling, and the freedom and opportunity it has made possible for me. But most meaningful and touching for me has been meeting many kindred spirits in our sister land to the south, fellow human beings who are confronting the same basic life struggles and strivings as we face here in the more northern climes of America, and who are buoyed up by the same hopes and aspirations, the same dreams for a better life.

I think of Ingrid Perez, Olgar Pop, Brother Chico, Sister Margaret, Padre Javier, Bishop Penate, Enrique Xol Rax, Padre Sam, and the many little (and not so little) children I have met, including my own sponsored children. I can truly say that my life has been widened and ennobled by the many folks I have met and friendships I have made.

With each visit my sense of the mystery of Guatemala changes. I no longer have an incipient anxiety in entering this country the size of Ohio. My rudimentary Spanish gives me confidence (though perhaps it shouldn’t in light of the times I am asked why my Spanish isn’t getting better!). And I see improvements in Guatemala’s infrastructure and economy each time I visit.

But my strongest impression in the many conversations we have with our friends there (revolving around issues of education but touching on many things), is the almost impossible difficulty of comprehending the complex challenges these people face, and the need for us to work hard to listen so we have some hope of understanding. My goal is to be such a listening friend, and my prayer is that God may use me (and us) in some small way to realize His plan.

When I attempt to express the meaning of my experience, I am in the end left pretty much at a loss for words. What I can say, and do say, to those who ask is: “Come and see!”