going to prison

Recently I´ve started to work in a prison for girls, and I´m really enjoying it. It´s good to get back to doing 'youthwork' - but it´s quite different from everything I´ve done before. The girls are between 14 and 17 years old, although some of them also have their babies or young children with them. Initially I was only allowed to preach - without any kind of participation or interaction from the girls. Now the Director has grown to trust me a bit (I think) and I´m allowed to do more interactive discussions which has been great.
But there´s strange limitations in working in a prison. The most obvious, is that I´m not allowed to use anything that the girls could take and use as a weapon.... so no pens and paper. But then there´s other limitations that aren´t so obvious. So far the girls have had a varied response to what I´ve done. Some have been very quiet and not given any sort of verbal response. Others can be quite talkative - and always want to answer the questions --- perhaps like any other group. But there is always lots of 'right answers'. Even when I make a big thing of explaining that I´m interested in their real opinions etc, somehow people always come to the perceived right answers really quickly.
Let me explain...... most of the time, I think there aren´t many 'right answers' - what I mean is that I think there is much more benefit in an honest discussion, with all the messy disagreements and inconsistent opinions, than in the tidy polished religious answers. Mostly I think that the answers that 'religion' gives, are inadequate - or answering completely irrelevant questions. For me, our real journey of faith is found in the struggling with issues and questions and the search for God in that - often he answers us with mystery and further questions rather than answers!
So anyway - back to the prison, I don´t know whether it is simply because of the guards who are lurking nearby that prevents the girls being honest, or a much bigger issue of religiousness here in Guatemala, where many people memorize huge chunks of the Bible - but can´t ever put it into their own words because they don´t actually understand what they´re memorising.
But it´s good. It´s a challenge for me to think of new ways to encourage the girls to open up, and to communicate with them something of God´s heart for them - not the neat and tidy answers - but the unconditional and uncontrolable love that he has for them. I keep praying.

stepping up

In my job, I usually look after short term volunteers during their time here in Guatemala. But this time last year, we sent a Guatemalan Strider off to England, and he´s recently returned here. It´s been fascinating to see the experience from the other direction. What´s been really interesting has been to hear how he has changed through the experience
We met up to reflect on all that he´s experienced this last year. He explained that there were lots of things that he was worried about before he went, but he decided from the beginning that whatever he was asked to do in his placement, he would say yes... (and panic later)... and that´s how things went. As a result, he was able to step up into all sorts of new things, that he´d never done before and experience Gods faithfulness in it all.
His friends and family have also commented on how he has changed. His brother said ´he´s different ... but the same.´ It is a strange sense of being the same as before, but much more so - which somehow makes him different, almost like he has grown into who he always was - or at least had the potential to be. There´s something about being in a different culture with an attitude of service, that makes you step into more of what God has for you. In the process gifts and abilities are developed and a sense of vision and calling are sharpened. Of course that´s never the end of the story - God always has more for us to grow into but there´s few opportunities in life like it, where you can really put yourself on the line and step up.
And I love the fact that Latin Link is able to provide these sorts of opportunities.

Stormy Weather!

You might have heard that it´s been raining a lot in Guatemala. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-15283869) That´s true. It´s been raining almost continually for a day or two - and on and off for the previous 2 weeks. Really the rainy season should have finished about a month ago, but it keeps on. When you live in a well built house, it´s easy to think that it´s just rain, but the reality is that this can have a huge affect on people. In rural areas, whole villages can be washed away by a landslide. In Guatemala, where the infrastructure hasn´t fully recovered from Tropical Storm Agatha last June (2010), or even from Hurricane Stan, a few years previously, storms or even the ´tropical depression´ that we´re experiencing at the moment, has far reaching affects on people, communities and the economy. As the depression has now been downgraded to a ´low pressure´, the officials begin the counting.....15 dead.... 3588 affected..... 931 in temporary shelters..... it'll be a while before they work out the financial implications, but many of the agricultural regions, which supply the country with staples have been severely affected too.
It´s interested, that just yesterday I was in the Ezra Centre office, working on a project for them about climate change and the environment. I learned that Guatemala ranks in the top five countries in the world most affected by floods, hurricanes and earthquakes, with 40.8 percent of the population exposed to five or more threats simultaneously. And that doesn´t just affect rural areas. With so much uncertainty and risk involved in agriculture, there is a sustained internal migration to the cities, where satellite communities grow up too quickly for local authorities to provide basic services and ensure that homes are built safely and away from risk areas. This reality is echoed on the news reports at the moment, as several metropolitan areas are badly affected as well.
So we keep on counting, and praying .... more rain forecasted for the weekend.