Culture Shock

The title of my blog entry does not do the past 5 days justice in the fact that my life down here in Honduras is unbelievably different than my life in the US.

Although there are so many details I would love to fill you in on, I am trying to keep my entries concise for your sake and for mine. Not to mention the fact that the internet cafe by mi casa is the only place I get internet connection and I have to pay for it. And their keyboards here in Honduras are very interesting, so much so, I cannot find the apostrophe button, hence the reason why this post will contain no contractions. Every single english teacher in America may want to adopt these keyboards into their curriculum. All this is beside the point,

the past few days have been very eye-opening as I realize over and over again how priveleged I am in the United States. I mean, things I took for granted like, running water... seriously. The house I am living in has not a drop of running water. Please imagine this scene with me, Lucas uses the bathroom toilet and tries to flush, however, nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing. Embarassed, he asks someone he met ten minutes ago why the toilet will not flush. This person procedes to take Lucas to the water basin where he is instructed to fill the pitcher with water and dump it in the un-flushed toilet. Ironically enough, the toilet does not overflow when you add fluid to it, rather it flushes everything down. I will spare you the story of me clogging the toilet yesterday.
You should have seen me in the shower. I stood in a small cement box with a gallon jug of cold water that I poured over myself while trying to wash my sweat-soaked body. On a good note, one of the helpers in my house, Margarita, fell in love with my Old Spice body wash scent. This commercial really is true:

Being a person of little patience for incompetency, I am now the incompetent one... in so many ways. The language, the food, the bathrooms, the music, the movies, the work, the lingo, etc.
It has been humbling to say the least. However, I am truly grateful to be here and I have not yet found myself too frustrated with any of the changes. I know you are praying for me to have patience and I am shocked by how even keel I have been this past week. The patience everyone has with me is also humbling. I have had some very encouraging conversations in Spanish and I have had some not-so-encouraging conversations that end with a group of Hondurans laughing at/with me :)

I am learning to enjoy the slow pace of life here. I began helping with the construction site (which is what I will do almost every day for the next month of my life... as well as eat beans, eggs, butter, and tortillas with coca cola or pepsi) and I felt like our "work" was more of a hang out. I am so accustomed to 100% effort 100% of the time, whereas here, it is ok to just sit and be with others. I am glad to learn these lessons as I probably would not learn them otherwise if I were working in the US right now.

The family I am living with here in Talanga, the Archagas, are wonderful. Celeo is the pastor of the local Cuerpo de Cristo (Body of Christ) church. His wife, Gloria, is very sweet and laughs easily, which is helpful for me as I am muy chistoso (silly or funny). They have four children, one of which I have bonded with well. Alejandro is my new amigo. We talk about school, music, food, the beach, Apple products (which they are fascinated with down here, you should have seen the whole family gather around when I whipped out my MacBook), and many other things. I no longer feel like I am on a missions trip as I have realized I will live with this family day in and day out for the next month or two of their lives; I am excited.

So, I am on a computer in the local internet cafe and I just recieved a message saying, "Dearest customer, there comes a great storm. Be sure to save your information if cut out energy." Hmm, I am thinking it is time to wrap this update up. Let me leave you with a vivid story from my journal:

My first night here, I attended a funeral service for a man that died of a heart attack. This man was very respected in the community and  invovled in the church. As the service started, I sat down on a couch not realizing I sat in the spot beside the widow of the husband whose funeral we were attending. She was a strong woman, but you could see the grief in her face, the ache in her stride. Sitting next to her, I felt an overwhelming amount of empathy pour over me for this woman. I noticed the way she held herself up and put a comforting hand on the shoulder of the woman next to her rather than the other way around. She cried as she mourned the loss of her husband and appeared as if she was at the end of her strength.  All I could think of was the short, often joked about verse in John 11:13, “Jesus wept.” Jesus entered Lazarus’ death scene knowing full well He was going to raise him from the dead, but instead of storming in and giving the right advice, he empathized with those around him and wept.

I entered this funeral service thinking to myself, “well at least this man’s in heaven, so maybe it won't be that sad.” I had the “right advice.” And although I’d never met this woman before in my life, as she cried next to me, I couldn’t help but extend my hand onto her shoulder and cry with her. Yes, I cried with her. It was empathy within me that I haven’t felt before, an empathy from God.

What an incredible way to start this season. Over the past two weeks, I  was shown the same weakness in my personality and leadership style that tend to disregard empathy or validation of one’s emotions. No matter where we are at, sometimes we as humans just need to be listened to, respected, and validated; the “right answer” or the “correct ‘fix-it’ advice” is usually not the answer. Tonight, I gained a tangible experience in which I had more empathy for a random stranger than I’ve had for the closest of friends and family. It’s amazing to see direct confirmation that this is a lesson God wants to teach me right now. I’m excited to keep learning about and tapping into this newfound reservoir of God’s love for others. 

Pretty cool stuff. Thank you for your prayers, please keep them coming. I will do my best to shoot out an update once or twice a week depending on when I can get into the internet cafe long enough.
Hope all is well in los Estados Unidos!
 
P.S. Unfortunately, I left my camera cable in the states and cannot upload my photos yet. I am going to borrow a plug from an amigo of mine here in Honduras and see if it will work. Don't worry, I am taking pictures and you will see them. Sometime. Hopefully soon. 
In the meantime, here is a link to a photo I took with my iPhone (whose screen just broke last night, rendering me "phone-less" in Honduras this week) before I found out I was using all my minutes to upload information to facebook... soy un gringo estupido.  The picture is from a funeral I saw in Talanga my first night here:

http://distillery.s3.amazonaws.com/media/2011/09/21/331bcbbe2cba405781c765a985cb0200_7.jpg