Since this blog has been dedicated to my Honduras adventure, I started a new one for this next phase of life. A very long phase that promises to be full of studying called "medical school." :-)
New blog address: www.ashleymeffordjarofclay.blogspot.com
Friday, August 5, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Final Thoughts...
I remember thinking when I was young that life moved so slowly. I believed that middle school would never arrive, then I believed high school would never arrive, then I believed that I would never get my driver's license, then I believed I would never graduate college... Got the idea? There are days that you just can't let yourself believe will eventually arrive for one reason or another. Well, to finish the list, I never thought this day would come: settled again in America. I can still remember clear as day telling my friends, that I might be going to Honduras for a year instead of starting medical school right away. Now the year has come and gone. Life happens. It passes. And we are but a mist. I get that now like I never have before. So, this is it. Perhaps not the last blog that will ever mention my time in Honduras, but the last about it specifically. Time to get some final thoughts down. Likely, it will be a very long post. God bless you if you decide to actually read the whole thing :-) Well, here goes...
Thought #1: People take patience. Whether it was working with the locals at school, trying to keep students under control, or ignoring harsh remarks from the orphans who have a warped view of "friendship" (especially with Americans), to work with and minister to people a LOT of patience is required. While I was there my patience was indeed tried over and over again, mostly by students, and it failed on numerous occasions. But God has been reminding me, I take a lot of patience too :-)
Thought #2: Kids are hilarious. Even if they are a pain to try to control in a classroom, you can't help but fall in love with their ridiculousness and personalities.
Thought #3: Where we place our trust determines so much about our lives. We can try to trust in happy times coming again when we're in a dark place, but there's no guarantees of that in this life. We can trust in all the comforts around us to shield us from some of the dark realities of this world, but the reality is that we're all dying. If our hope is not placed in something eternal, something everlasting and true, then where can we turn?
Thought #4: Baleadas are the best breakfast food EVER!
Thought #5: God is sovereign even in suffering and he promises to be with us through it. In our humanness we protest suffering as if it is something unjust, but our God is infinitely just and his thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours. I am convinced that our true need is deeper than relief from the pain, it is to see and know our Maker. He knows it because that's what he created us for, but sometimes it takes the pain and struggle to open our eyes. As Job said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you."
Thought #6: Some things "valen la pena."
Thought #7: The Gospel is the most important thing we have and sharing it is the most important task we are commanded to. But rising to that call can be very difficult if it is a message you have heard all your life, prevalent in the culture, but truly taken seriously by very few. It is hard to even realize how much we take that message for granted until we are removed from the familiarity of it.
Thought #8: It is a terrible idea to have children staying in the same classroom all day with teachers coming and going. Discipline could be so much easier if the students were walking into the "teacher's" classroom, rather than the teacher walking into the "student's" classroom.
Thought #9: Helping even with the best of intentions can hurt if you don't understand the context that you are entering into with your aid. We saw lots of students learn to be dependent upon generous Americans with large pocket books and the desire to help. Some of them had learned how to get everything they needed/wanted by exploiting those relationships. And I don't judge them for it because I know the difficult lives they lead, but it grieves me to see them losing their self-confidence, their chance for independence, their ambition. It is just plain dangerous to treat impoverished situations like emergency situations in the way resources are handed out. It can do lots and lots of damage if care is not taken.
Thought #10: Sometimes I am more prideful than I realize. The situation for me at the orphanage was this: either I tried to communicate and befriend, but got laughed at for my poor Spanish or I would keep my mouth shut and get called "creida" (stuck up). It was a lose-lose, or at least that's how it felt sometimes and it frustrated me greatly at times. However, learning humility and accepting the jeers more would have been something I'd do differently if I could. My pride kept me from doing it sometimes, earning my label of stuck up, I suppose. I wish I would have stopped being so concerned with what they thought of me and learned to stop taking myself so seriously. They hurt me deeply sometimes with the taunts, but they have been hurt even deeper and if it takes getting walked all over to demonstrate that someone really does love them and is willing to be vulnerable, maybe that's a testimony they would have listened to. God forgive me for not realizing that sooner.
Thought #11: Learning a second language is hard if you aren't studying it every day.
Final thought: The more challenging the circumstances you put yourself in, the more you grow and the more you learn. If you never work your muscles to the burning point, they aren't going to get much stronger. I think in some ways I unintentionally threw myself into a situation that I was not prepared to handle. A learn-how-to-swim-or-drown kinda of experience. And although, it was not a pleasant experience at times, I can at least say that I did learn a lot, especially about myself.
And in case I hadn't gotten enough of that kind of experience in Honduras, now I'm going to medical school, hahaha...
Thought #1: People take patience. Whether it was working with the locals at school, trying to keep students under control, or ignoring harsh remarks from the orphans who have a warped view of "friendship" (especially with Americans), to work with and minister to people a LOT of patience is required. While I was there my patience was indeed tried over and over again, mostly by students, and it failed on numerous occasions. But God has been reminding me, I take a lot of patience too :-)
Thought #2: Kids are hilarious. Even if they are a pain to try to control in a classroom, you can't help but fall in love with their ridiculousness and personalities.
Thought #3: Where we place our trust determines so much about our lives. We can try to trust in happy times coming again when we're in a dark place, but there's no guarantees of that in this life. We can trust in all the comforts around us to shield us from some of the dark realities of this world, but the reality is that we're all dying. If our hope is not placed in something eternal, something everlasting and true, then where can we turn?
Thought #4: Baleadas are the best breakfast food EVER!
Thought #5: God is sovereign even in suffering and he promises to be with us through it. In our humanness we protest suffering as if it is something unjust, but our God is infinitely just and his thoughts and ways are infinitely higher than ours. I am convinced that our true need is deeper than relief from the pain, it is to see and know our Maker. He knows it because that's what he created us for, but sometimes it takes the pain and struggle to open our eyes. As Job said, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you."
Thought #6: Some things "valen la pena."
Thought #7: The Gospel is the most important thing we have and sharing it is the most important task we are commanded to. But rising to that call can be very difficult if it is a message you have heard all your life, prevalent in the culture, but truly taken seriously by very few. It is hard to even realize how much we take that message for granted until we are removed from the familiarity of it.
Thought #8: It is a terrible idea to have children staying in the same classroom all day with teachers coming and going. Discipline could be so much easier if the students were walking into the "teacher's" classroom, rather than the teacher walking into the "student's" classroom.
Thought #9: Helping even with the best of intentions can hurt if you don't understand the context that you are entering into with your aid. We saw lots of students learn to be dependent upon generous Americans with large pocket books and the desire to help. Some of them had learned how to get everything they needed/wanted by exploiting those relationships. And I don't judge them for it because I know the difficult lives they lead, but it grieves me to see them losing their self-confidence, their chance for independence, their ambition. It is just plain dangerous to treat impoverished situations like emergency situations in the way resources are handed out. It can do lots and lots of damage if care is not taken.
Thought #10: Sometimes I am more prideful than I realize. The situation for me at the orphanage was this: either I tried to communicate and befriend, but got laughed at for my poor Spanish or I would keep my mouth shut and get called "creida" (stuck up). It was a lose-lose, or at least that's how it felt sometimes and it frustrated me greatly at times. However, learning humility and accepting the jeers more would have been something I'd do differently if I could. My pride kept me from doing it sometimes, earning my label of stuck up, I suppose. I wish I would have stopped being so concerned with what they thought of me and learned to stop taking myself so seriously. They hurt me deeply sometimes with the taunts, but they have been hurt even deeper and if it takes getting walked all over to demonstrate that someone really does love them and is willing to be vulnerable, maybe that's a testimony they would have listened to. God forgive me for not realizing that sooner.
Thought #11: Learning a second language is hard if you aren't studying it every day.
Final thought: The more challenging the circumstances you put yourself in, the more you grow and the more you learn. If you never work your muscles to the burning point, they aren't going to get much stronger. I think in some ways I unintentionally threw myself into a situation that I was not prepared to handle. A learn-how-to-swim-or-drown kinda of experience. And although, it was not a pleasant experience at times, I can at least say that I did learn a lot, especially about myself.
And in case I hadn't gotten enough of that kind of experience in Honduras, now I'm going to medical school, hahaha...
Thursday, July 21, 2011
A year in quotations
Since getting home I have completely dropped the habit of blogging, but with medical school about to start and my summer about to end I felt like I should at least attempt to sum up the year a bit (and later decide where to take the blog from here)...
My first sum up entry is going to be simple: the three most memorable quotes from the year. There were plenty of funny ones especially from the students, but for this I chose the three that most spoke to my heart where I was at that particular time. So in no particular order, my favorite quotes from the year.
The first quote speaks to how much I was missing my family and how much more important a simple "hello" or "I love you" became even if it was via email. My grandmother wrote me an email at one point (can't remember when exactly, but it was after Christmas) and I remember being in a place where I was having a bit of a pity party. Struggling to stay surrendered to the work that I was doing for the sake of the students and just wanting a bit of a break, I read the email before setting to work on lesson plans for the night. One line of the email read, "Pa paw just walked in and said, 'Tell her that I love her.'" I broke down into tears right there. It is difficult to explain exactly why, but the vision in my head was that of God our Father looking at Christ in the middle of his suffering and saying, "I can't take this suffering from you, but remember that I love you." From 1500 miles away, they could not make my tasks any easier and they weren't meant to, but they could remind me that they loved me and that there were people waiting for me on the other side.
Quote number two represents a little bit of a turning point (little being the key word) in my teaching year. In February the topic for one of the high school assemblies was, of course, love. And as luck (or God's design) would have it, one of the teacher's asked me to give a short talk on my views of physicality in dating relationships. Oh boy. (And I can't remember if I wrote a blog about it already or not, but no matter, I'll write about it again) So after giving my abstinence speech (lol!), one of my seventh graders came up to me with the only verbal response I got from any of the students, "Miss, you're brave. The other teachers no its wrong, but you actually told them it's wrong." I wasn't particularly proud of myself, but I was encouraged that maybe I had finally done something to get there attention a bit. And I did notice that the 8th grade boys behaved better in class after that...
The third quote has to be the much appreciated words from one of my cousins, sent via FB. I can't remember if he had actually heard through the grapevine that I was struggling with things in the fall or if he just assumed I would be (safe assumption). Either way his encouragement for me was this:
"The best piece of advice I know for a situation like this is: get on the boat, do your job, and come back home."
Getting on the boat was the easy part. Staying there and doing my job was much more difficult, but the hope of the last part "come back home" was what kept me going.
For any of those amazing people who kept up with me this past year and prayed for me and sent me encouraging words, I want to say thank you! I would not have made it without you all and more importantly, I wouldn't have been able to pour out as much if it weren't for you all pouring in. This side of heaven I'll never know if I really did any good or not, but I learned so much and am so thankful God gave me the chance to represent him to his precious Honduran children.
My first sum up entry is going to be simple: the three most memorable quotes from the year. There were plenty of funny ones especially from the students, but for this I chose the three that most spoke to my heart where I was at that particular time. So in no particular order, my favorite quotes from the year.
The first quote speaks to how much I was missing my family and how much more important a simple "hello" or "I love you" became even if it was via email. My grandmother wrote me an email at one point (can't remember when exactly, but it was after Christmas) and I remember being in a place where I was having a bit of a pity party. Struggling to stay surrendered to the work that I was doing for the sake of the students and just wanting a bit of a break, I read the email before setting to work on lesson plans for the night. One line of the email read, "Pa paw just walked in and said, 'Tell her that I love her.'" I broke down into tears right there. It is difficult to explain exactly why, but the vision in my head was that of God our Father looking at Christ in the middle of his suffering and saying, "I can't take this suffering from you, but remember that I love you." From 1500 miles away, they could not make my tasks any easier and they weren't meant to, but they could remind me that they loved me and that there were people waiting for me on the other side.
Quote number two represents a little bit of a turning point (little being the key word) in my teaching year. In February the topic for one of the high school assemblies was, of course, love. And as luck (or God's design) would have it, one of the teacher's asked me to give a short talk on my views of physicality in dating relationships. Oh boy. (And I can't remember if I wrote a blog about it already or not, but no matter, I'll write about it again) So after giving my abstinence speech (lol!), one of my seventh graders came up to me with the only verbal response I got from any of the students, "Miss, you're brave. The other teachers no its wrong, but you actually told them it's wrong." I wasn't particularly proud of myself, but I was encouraged that maybe I had finally done something to get there attention a bit. And I did notice that the 8th grade boys behaved better in class after that...
The third quote has to be the much appreciated words from one of my cousins, sent via FB. I can't remember if he had actually heard through the grapevine that I was struggling with things in the fall or if he just assumed I would be (safe assumption). Either way his encouragement for me was this:
"The best piece of advice I know for a situation like this is: get on the boat, do your job, and come back home."
Getting on the boat was the easy part. Staying there and doing my job was much more difficult, but the hope of the last part "come back home" was what kept me going.
For any of those amazing people who kept up with me this past year and prayed for me and sent me encouraging words, I want to say thank you! I would not have made it without you all and more importantly, I wouldn't have been able to pour out as much if it weren't for you all pouring in. This side of heaven I'll never know if I really did any good or not, but I learned so much and am so thankful God gave me the chance to represent him to his precious Honduran children.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
At a loss for profoundness
The funny thing about coming home after being away on a 10 month adventure is you feel a lot of pressure to have a really fantastic coming home post... haha, I've got nothing.
For me, it's been what's it's been. A crazy first day of seeing all the familiar things again, trying to remember that the 10 1/2 months I spent away was not just a really long dream. It's not as weird as I thought it would be because 10 months is not long enough to have forgotten all that you've known so well all your life... but it is strange that it isn't more strange coming back.
I didn't post much about the last week mostly for lack of time, but it was sweet. Lots of good-byes. Lots of well-wishing. Lots of trying-not-to-think-too-hard-about-it moments. It was sad to leave. I think the hardest thing to process is having all of those memories so vividly on my mind all the while looking around me and being in a very different world again.
God has been so good to me this year. If I were to try to recount it all I would need volumes and I'm sure that I can't even remember or understand all the ways he has guided, led, corrected, and taught me this past year. What can I say? Other than this is not the end of the adventure. Like I told the teachers at Maranatha: I'm home again but I'm not really home until I reach my dwelling place with Christ. Now there is a place that seems really far away sometimes. But we're moving closer and on to the next phase of the journey. Further up and further in as Christ leads. How great his grace must continue to be to allow me to continue in this journey after so much failure! To his name be the glory forever.
"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore, I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.'"
For me, it's been what's it's been. A crazy first day of seeing all the familiar things again, trying to remember that the 10 1/2 months I spent away was not just a really long dream. It's not as weird as I thought it would be because 10 months is not long enough to have forgotten all that you've known so well all your life... but it is strange that it isn't more strange coming back.
I didn't post much about the last week mostly for lack of time, but it was sweet. Lots of good-byes. Lots of well-wishing. Lots of trying-not-to-think-too-hard-about-it moments. It was sad to leave. I think the hardest thing to process is having all of those memories so vividly on my mind all the while looking around me and being in a very different world again.
God has been so good to me this year. If I were to try to recount it all I would need volumes and I'm sure that I can't even remember or understand all the ways he has guided, led, corrected, and taught me this past year. What can I say? Other than this is not the end of the adventure. Like I told the teachers at Maranatha: I'm home again but I'm not really home until I reach my dwelling place with Christ. Now there is a place that seems really far away sometimes. But we're moving closer and on to the next phase of the journey. Further up and further in as Christ leads. How great his grace must continue to be to allow me to continue in this journey after so much failure! To his name be the glory forever.
"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind and therefore, I have hope:
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, 'The Lord is my portion; therefore, I will wait for him.'"
Sunday, June 5, 2011
You just NEVER know...
We have an on-going joke here about never, never, NEVER assuming that you know what is going to happen any given day when you get up in the morning. For example, last day of exam week for all the students (so essentially their last day of school for the year), I assumed I would be sitting in the teacher room most of the day working on grades and writing recuperation tests for the kids who failed the normal year. Wrong. Instead...
Nothing like bare walls and empty space to remind you you're leaving soon. Not that I could forget :-) Oh, how I'm going to miss these precious little children!
God, may it be in remembrance of these, and the countless others like them who are in need of your loving-kindness that I move forward into the next phase of training in my life and for their sake, finish the education I started to serve them better. Help them to always be in the forefront of my mind and heart as they are in yours. Amen.
I'm at a pool by 10:00 am watching 34 fifth graders, trying to make sure none of them drown. Haha! Thankfully, yes they all made it out alive despite there being a deep end, a diving board, no life guard, and only two teachers monitoring the chaos.
By yesterday (Saturday) I was very much ready for a relaxing day at home which was more or less accomplished, but got a little melancholy when my house mate started moving out (to the new apartment she'll be in next fall).
There's the lovely desk the boys at the farm made for me and have thoroughly enjoyed these last 11 months! It's going to her new apartment so she can enjoy it another year. With the desk gone and all the packing begun, my room is just looking sad...
Thursday, June 2, 2011
El Roi
This is just too beautiful... if only I were a better writer, but I will do my best to communicate the beauty with which this series of thoughts struck me.
As it is my last week and a half here, a few days ago I had been contemplating writing a devo for the young mothers at the Buen Pastor project. My thoughts had been something about being known by God and assured that even in the darkest moments we are not truly in the middle of the obscurity our hearts feel. Which tonight led me to read a little about the name of God El Roi only found once in scripture: the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave, running away from Sarai, her mistress in Genesis 16.
Just before this small inquiry, I had been preoccupied and praying about my desperate lack of self-discipline especially concerning the "spiritual disciplines" (prayer, Scripture study, etc.) My prayers were quite frustrated and desperate as I struggled through just wanting to read something for fun and go to sleep (isn't this the daily, obnoxious, and surprisingly difficult battle we all fight with everyday? whether it is the TV, our own agenda, our habits, we always seem to have something else more desirable to do then focus on our Lord). But my spirit, my conscious, the Spirit of the Lord--however you want to call it--just wouldn't leave me alone. I had to sit down, I had to read my Bible, I had to pray. My flesh did NOT want to, but it surrendered to the hunger of my spirit and after a little study and prayer is when I found myself looking up this name of God...
My initial thoughts on the "God who sees" had to do with not feeling like you are just one in a million, lost in a crowd, obscure, and unconsidered by anyone. Especially as chicas, I think it is easy to feel this way and we have quite the job trying to convince ourselves that God really does care about us individually and profoundly. But then I found this commentary about the above mentioned passage:
As it is my last week and a half here, a few days ago I had been contemplating writing a devo for the young mothers at the Buen Pastor project. My thoughts had been something about being known by God and assured that even in the darkest moments we are not truly in the middle of the obscurity our hearts feel. Which tonight led me to read a little about the name of God El Roi only found once in scripture: the story of Hagar, the Egyptian slave, running away from Sarai, her mistress in Genesis 16.
Just before this small inquiry, I had been preoccupied and praying about my desperate lack of self-discipline especially concerning the "spiritual disciplines" (prayer, Scripture study, etc.) My prayers were quite frustrated and desperate as I struggled through just wanting to read something for fun and go to sleep (isn't this the daily, obnoxious, and surprisingly difficult battle we all fight with everyday? whether it is the TV, our own agenda, our habits, we always seem to have something else more desirable to do then focus on our Lord). But my spirit, my conscious, the Spirit of the Lord--however you want to call it--just wouldn't leave me alone. I had to sit down, I had to read my Bible, I had to pray. My flesh did NOT want to, but it surrendered to the hunger of my spirit and after a little study and prayer is when I found myself looking up this name of God...
My initial thoughts on the "God who sees" had to do with not feeling like you are just one in a million, lost in a crowd, obscure, and unconsidered by anyone. Especially as chicas, I think it is easy to feel this way and we have quite the job trying to convince ourselves that God really does care about us individually and profoundly. But then I found this commentary about the above mentioned passage:
Whither wilt thou go? Thou art running into sin; if Hagar return to Egypt, she will return to idol gods, and into danger in the wilderness through which she must travel. Recollecting who we are, would often teach us our duty. Inquiring whence we came, would show us our sin and folly. Considering whither we shall go, discovers our danger and misery... Hagar could not but admire the Lord's mercy, and feel, Have I, who am so unworthy, been favoured with a gracious visit from the Lord? She was brought to a better temper, returned, and by her behaviour softened Sarai, and received more gentle treatment. Would that we were always suitably impressed with this thought, Thou God seest me!
God is El Roi to me tonight. Because in my lack of self-discipline, in my frustration with myself, and my desire to give up the fight of the flesh and turn to what is easiest, He sends his Spirit to me to lead me back to where I belong. He is El Roi not just because he removes me from obscurity, but because he cares enough for me and the little moments in my life to intervene in my weakness, rescue me, turn me around, and set me back on the path on which my passage was paid for in blood.
I must stop thinking that the little moments and decisions and wastes and foolish uses of time or money are meaningless to the God who sees me. The little things make up our lives and if it is important enough for the God of Heaven and Earth to intervene with me tonight on how a spend an hour or two before bed, then how can I ever neglect the importance of even the smallest task, opportunity, moment, decision, etc.?
God sees us. God fights for us. God cares about the little things and how they will effect eternally. We accuse him of not caring, when in actuality, I'm beginning to think he cares infinitely more than we do.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
2 weeks, q rapido!
Friday was the last day of classes with the 5th, 7th, and 8th graders. What a day. It was not emotional knowing that I would be seeing them all again this week for exams, but the goofiness, the joy of seeing understanding on their faces after a difficult explanation, the jokes, the hugs, the "Good morning, Miss!" 's... these things I will miss. And although some of them have mad me royally angry at times and others I never got to know as well as I would like, here are the classes I'm so very proud of and so thankful God put in my life this year...
And as all of us missionaries keep on saying to each other: I can't believe the year is already over! Just like any experience such as this there is no way to capture in words or explain what it has meant to me. I can only thank God for the experiences, encounters, and lessons learned and pray that my students saw glimpses of Him in me.
Hace mucha falta!
So now that I'm feeling nice and sad, here's the funnies from last week:
4th grade student in Kadian's class: MISS!!! Alejandro just erupted!!! ("eruptar" meaning "to burp" in Spanish;-)
At the grocery store, Kadian to the armed guard (pointing to the 'grocery' price tag on his gun): "Con permiso... cuanto cuesta?"
I'M ALREADY MISSING IT HERE!
 |
| 5th grade section "A" |
 |
| 5th grade section "B" |
 |
| 7th section "B" (probably my best class, but shhhhhh!... it's a secret, they get big heads really easily) |
 |
| 8th "B" the girls |
 |
| 8th "B" the infamous boys (I'm relatively sure one of them is getting his butt pinched in the picture... hopefully some of them will grow out of it...maybe...eventually) |
 |
| 8th "A" the girls |
 |
| 8th "A" the boys |
 |
| 7th section "A" |
Hace mucha falta!
So now that I'm feeling nice and sad, here's the funnies from last week:
4th grade student in Kadian's class: MISS!!! Alejandro just erupted!!! ("eruptar" meaning "to burp" in Spanish;-)
At the grocery store, Kadian to the armed guard (pointing to the 'grocery' price tag on his gun): "Con permiso... cuanto cuesta?"
I'M ALREADY MISSING IT HERE!
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