Life After Mission

I’m sitting in my car at a red light when a car passes me in the opposite lane and I catch a split-second of the music coming from the car.  I can’t be sure of the song, but it sure did sound like bachata or even meringue.  I would get the two confused sometimes as they are both incredibly popular in the Dominican Republic.  It feels as though it were yesterday that Vicente and I were sitting on the Malecon gazing into the sea.  There was an unusual silence between us in that moment; we both were coming off enduring weeks of work and service.  The thoughts mulled and rolled around in my mind like the waves crashing into the rocky coast.  Our El Presidentes sat there sweltering in the heat of the Caribbean unable to pull us away from our pensive thoughts.  To the east, we could see a ferry departing Santo Domingo for Puerto Rico with all the passengers on the top deck waving to their loved ones back on the shore.  In that moment, a Romeo Santos song came on – Llavame Contigo.  We grinned at each other as we watched the scene unfold, pretending as if the song were an overture playing in some cheesy movie about lovers parting by ferry ship.  Before we knew it, we were belting out the words to the song as Romeo reached his crescendo with his falsetto voice.  We were laughing so hard that we were crying by the end of the song, but it was what we needed.  We needed that moment of silliness to bring us back down to Earth and remember that we need to let go at times.  Sure, we felt small sitting beside the ocean, just the same as when we work so hard and see no results in our mission.  But there’s a humbling peace to it all though it may be obscured by the feelings of disappointment when you don’t see the fruits of your labor. To know that others are out there working hard to make a small difference in the world helps and refocuses me to the objective of my mission: service.  The song and laughter get Vicente and I talking and sharing about the happenings in Santo Domingo and Barahona.  As he takes a drag from his cigarette, he reminds me that we knew it wouldn’t be easy before going on mission and that no matter how hard we thing we have it, it’s nothing compared to the people who suffer every single day.  I take in his words and gaze back at the sea.  This time I’m not having feelings of self-pity with a bruised ego, but a peace knowing that I’m supposed to be here, doing this work, building solidarity with Vicente and the people in Barahona, and discovering the living God omnipresent amongst us.  Vicente turns to me to say something, but all I hear is the sound of the car honking its horn from behind me.  I am taken back to reality, now sitting at a green light as the person from behind me speeds around me in the emergency lane giving me dirty looks.  I take a deep breath and roll on towards wherever I am going. 

Vicente y yo

If this was the first or even second time this had happened, then maybe I’d blow it off and call it day dreaming.  The fact is that I’ve caught myself reliving these memories time and again.  I can never predict what will trigger it: the smell of a food, the name of someone I met, an advertisement on a bus, or a familiar face.  I catch myself lost in a nostalgic state staring into apparent nothingness, but in my mind I’m alive and animated in the worlds and communities I served in and was a part of. 

It seems that my time with missions has come to an end; or at least a hiatus after two years of serving in various locations.  Guatemala, Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, San Antonio, New York, and Switzerland have each left an effect on me and opened my heart to gain a better perspective on the world we co-inhabit.  I’ve discovered the meaning of family, community, solidarity, sacrifice and faith.  I’ve felt freedom and oppression, bliss and agony, success and failure and have gained something from each accompanying experience.  In some way, I expected (or hoped) this to happen to some degree.  I figured that this type of service would impact me and possible change the way I see the world.  Yes, but this was a selfish outlook and I missed one major detail before going on mission: the human experience.

Why was this not reinforced by others?  Or maybe it was and I completely missed the point when they were trying to explain it to me.  For some reason, I had an idea that I would finish with my mission and simply move on to the next part of my life.  Now I don’t know how that would even be possible.  It’s hard enough to leave your family and friends to go serve abroad, but in some ways it’s even harder to leave the community that you’ve served in for a number of months.  I always knew I’d be back home at some point to get to see my family and friends again, but I didn’t stop to consider how difficult it may be to visit those I served alongside in the future; or the possibility that I may never see them again.

Such is the case with a young boy nicknamed, “Mello”, who lived in Barahona.  Mello was a young and curious kid, but suffered from thyroid and insulin problems.  Constant medication was out of the question and his family struggled to provide proper food to the family.  The Salesian Sisters provided assistance by giving Mello a healthy meal everyday to control his carbohydrate intake and support his family.  The Sisters also used this opportunity to teach Mello the Catholic teachings and faith.  As he was a curious boy, he became very interested and always had questions for the Sisters.  They taught him and he was baptized in the Church this past year.

And maybe it was all part of God’s plan, to use the Sisters as a vessel to spread the teachings of Jesus Christ.  Mello died this past week due to complications with pneumonia and his weakened immune system.  I received the news from the Sisters and it felt too surreal – the boy I had seen and served everyday was gone.  Something that may have been able to be cured in a developed country led to the death of a young boy in an under-developed country.  While he is with God in heaven, we are here with heavy hearts and minds, asking the all-too-familiar questions when things go wrong.  Why him?  How could this happen? Could I have done anything more?

Mello, tu alma descansará en paz,
ahora eres con Dios.

This is what I could not foresee about service work: that you never truly leave.  Part of me is alive in the Sisters, in the community, in the work I participated in, and them in me.  I cannot forget them, cannot shake them even if I wanted to.  There’s no “The End” with a period or full stop to finish the story.  No, it was just a chapter in an ever-evolving story that is being written as time flows on.  We were told to “make our story” as volunteers, but it seems so misleading now.  You don’t really make a story as much as you take part in one.   I think I am getting into semantics and possibly missing the point again.  Maybe the point is the story itself, to share and educate those willing to listen; to be a witness and bear the truth, not for oneself, but for others.  After all, the purpose of volunteering is to serve others, not oneself – though (to completely contradict myself) in serving others, one gains more than he could on his own.

To conclude, I wish to end with a poem by Henry van Dyke that holds a special significance to me:

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and starts
for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.

Then, someone at my side says, "There, she is gone."

Gone where?

Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my side.
And, she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me -- not in her.

And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"