A funny tidbit - in the weeks beforehand, I pestered my friends who'd been on this particular mission for packing tips. Here are a few of their recommendations:
- Bring clothes you don't care about keeping, because you won't want to, and the people there will wash them and give them to people who need them after we leave.
- No, you don't need a blow dryer.
- Pack your clothes inside large plastic bags inside your suitcase so they won't get wet. (huh? get wet?)
Our accommodations were the first of many surprises for me. I'd envisioned the possibility of squalid huts with cots and mosquito nets - but the Amigos dorms were just that - dorms. Electricity, curtains, bunk beds with sheets and pillows, large community bathrooms (with doors!), and fans - plenty of fans. Fans on the ceilings, clip-on fans on the beds...lots of fans.
Hmmm. This week was already shaping up differently than I'd imagined.
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Day One of our itinerary was a Sunday and was set aside for recreation and worship; no work on day one. No, day one was slated for a leisurely hike on a nearby volcano.
We were broken up into two teams of six; our team assignments for the week were to make the daily PB&Js and to fill the giant water coolers with water and ice. My team was on PB&Js for day one; we created an assembly line, and I was the jelly girl.
Unlike the microbus from the previous evening, we piled into a generic yellow schoolbus which served as our transportation for the rest of the week. I was glued to the scenery, face pressed against the window like a little girl, as we departed comparatively urban Chinandega and traveled into the rural countryside.
It was on the bus ride that I got my first glimpse of real poverty, the kind where people barely have shelter from the weather or enough to eat. And yet...as we forged on, bouncing up muddy wide swaths which served as "roads", people waved and smiled and went about their day. The children especially made a point of running to the roadside, wildly jumping and laughing and waving at the busload of gringos.
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The soil got progressively darker as we drew closer to our destination. Cerro Negro is among the Pacific chain referred to as the "Ring of Fire" and is an active volcano. The name represents the black volcanic ash comprising its face and much of the surrounding area.
As we got off the bus, our Amigos for Christ mission team (the REAL mission team, the young people who have signed a 2 year commitment) explained some choices and requirements. There were two ways to tackle the volcano; one, straight up the face, and I do mean STRAIGHT UP. The second was described as a less arduous but still challenging hike up and around the back. It isn't hard to guess which one I chose. The Boy chose the hard way.
In addition, the Amigos team (about whom I will have a lot to tell you, in a separate post) was extremely firm about taking plenty of water with us. Good lord, kids, we're going on a hike and you want me to haul this giant heavy bottle of water too? How about I just drink a bunch down here and then I'll take a little with me and get a refill when we get back down.
(Ummm, no. Probably the only thing I ever saw those guys get twisted up about was making sure we drank enough water. I soon learned why.)
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And now I will attempt to describe one of the most literally monumental experiences of my life.
The majority of our group chose to climb the nearly vertical black face of Cerro Negro, while I joined a smaller team of ladies older than me; both parties were accompanied by seasoned Amigos for Christ missionaries. Now, I've hiked in the Great Smoky Mountains dozens (hundreds?) of times in my life, so I wasn't particularly intimidated by the hike itself; I had strapped on my trusty old Merrells, and I was ready for anything.
Did I mention that Nicaragua is remarkably hot and humid? We weren't ten minutes away from the bus before I was pouring sweat. Not dewy, not glistening - drenched. I quickly came to the realization that I was going to look like hell for the next week, and I was a tad amused to also realize that I didn't care.
The next 60-90 minutes serve as a wonderful snapshot of who I am at my best - and my worst.
My worst: I quickly lost patience with myself and my companions. This was much harder than any stroll in the Tennessee woods - even the Chimneys pale in comparison. I can't imagine what climbing the front of Cerro Negro must be like, because the "easy" way was brutal. At one point, we were clambering over rocks and boulders with practically no sure footing or clear path upwards.
Yep, I showed everybody alright.
I would end up a few short paces ahead of the group, panting and guzzling my precious water and then bending over to ease the stitch in my side. Once I even led us off the indistinct path and up a series of rocks that simply weren't meant to be climbed. Yep, I showed everybody.
Our Amigos guides gently reminded me that we were not in a hurry, that this wasn't a competition - this was meant to be a day set aside for enjoying God's creation and each other.
Humph. Easy for them to say, all athletic and cute and in their 20s and barely perspiring at all. And yet, I experienced a fleeting understanding of what they were telling me - and how it applied to much more than a sweaty hike in Nicaragua.
My best: (This is harder to describe, because I have trouble in general acknowledging that I'm not all that horrible or unique after all.) Initially, I had a very hard time accepting help from the Amigos team. Clearly, they knew what they were doing, and I didn't want to be perceived as the idiot gringa from the sticks who couldn't haul her wide backside up the mountain.
The encouragement and Christ-like patience and kindness they exuded was unlike anything I've ever experienced, before or since. A helping hand here, an insistence to rest there, an offer for a pinch of salt (miracle cure for overheated nausea) - the sincere desire to help me conquer my physical and mental resistance was new and awkward and wonderful.
And on we went, up and up, across rocks and intermittent dirt paths, spiraling up through a verdant panorama that was bounded on one side by the Pacific Ocean in the distance and endless rolling hills on the other.
There are few words to adequately explain how I felt when we crested the summit. Relief certainly, but astonished achievement, profound gratitude and overwhelming faith in a God I'd long believed in but that day drew me in close (warts and all) to His heart.
Cerro Negro is an active volcano, so the rim is warm and there are little pockets of steam here and there. It was surreal and amazing to sit down on the surface of such a powerful force of nature.
My firstborn and me, 9/1/13
Cerro Negro - Nicaragua
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| the tiny white speck is our bus at the bottom of the volcano |
Coming down was also quite an experience - instead of going back down the way we'd come, we went down the face that everyone else had climbed. The black ash wasn't firm, so you would sink with each step, and the steep angle was disorienting. Unlike the Boy, who ran and even body-surfed down the volcano, I awkwardly stumbled and tumbled, ungracefully picking my steps and squeezing the hands of the two young men who ended up as my kind-hearted escorts.
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One of those escorts was named Jack, and he presented me with one of the biggest surprises of the entire week.
Jack, you see, is a gorgeous young man. Beautiful eyes with unfairly long lashes, dark complexion and athletic build - this boy must melt hearts in multiple time zones. Men who are that attractive have always made me uncomfortable, mostly because of the things I sometimes tell myself about myself, which are unkind and not fit for repeating in polite society and I wouldn't say them to my enemy's dog. Men who are that attractive have historically been nice to me for only one of two reasons: one, they felt sorry for me; or two, I had an attractive friend with whom they wanted to hook up.
Yet this young man, this Jack, he didn't seem to feel particularly sorry for me as he encouraged me up and then back down the volcano. Endless patience (I would've been exasperated after the first 15 minutes) and grace and a gentle barely-recognizable reproof when needed - these are among the gifts I received from this boy. And since I was pretty sure he wasn't trying to hook up with my other travel companions, I marveled and wondered about his motives the rest of the afternoon.
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That evening after dinner, we gathered for a concluding time of devotion, discussion and prayer. The Amigos team took turns leading the evening devotionals (a "devo" as they call it), and Jack led it that night. He read the passage from 1 Kings 19:11-13, where the Lord commanded to Elijah to go to Mount Horeb where the Lord was going to pass by. There came a fierce wind, and a terrible earthquake, and a consuming fire...but the Lord was not in any of those. The Lord instead came to Elijah in a gentle whisper.
Jack closed his Bible, and recounted the sights and events of our day. The beauty of the countryside, the magnificence and power of the volcano, the promise of a mighty ocean in the distance...God created all of these things. He created EVERYTHING.
And yet, He is not in those things, said Jack. He is only in us, His greatest handiwork, for He breathed life into every single one of us with that gentle whisper and calls us His own, His beloved children - more beautiful and precious than any wonder of nature because we are where He lives. He lives in us and equips us to care for and be kind to each other...whether climbing a volcano or shopping at Kroger or driving on the interstate or meeting a need in a third world country.
Therein was the first of many surprises that week, this wise teaching from a committed young Christ-follower. I realized that evening that the ugly things I say to myself aren't true - they are lies from the pit, carefully crafted to render me useless and miserable and mean. And absent frequent prayer, study, meditation and fellowship, I am gullible enough to believe them.
Surprised by truth - I couldn't wait to see what God had in store for Day Two.
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