Some basics for those of you just now dropping in: My sister and I are on an 11-month Christian mission trip to 11 different countries across 4 continents. We’re headed to: Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Cambodia, and Thailand. The work will range from country to country in partnership with established ministries in each area.
It’s month 1. My team is in Santiago, Chile.
We’re working with a local church.
Back in the States, October means pumpkins and lattes and pumpkin lattes. Here in Chile, October is the start of primavera, a lovely Spanish word that means spring. I love the word primavera. Maybe that’s why I feel so betrayed. I have been personally victimized by the springtime air. My allergies have spiked into what feels like a full blown sinus infection, and I am furious. How dare you, primavera. Et tu Brute to every flower in Santiago. Rude.
So here I sit, cough drops melted into a minty tea, sniffling my way through the morning. My team is in the city, but I’ve stayed back to plan my revenge on Santiago’s pollen. Other than that, I haven’t much to do. I’ve got some time. And I want to talk about Rosa.
I first met faithful Rosa at a prayer meeting the morning before we went to Punto Alto.
She is stout and five foot tall and was wearing a very large hat. Her husband floated in behind her, twice her height and dazed. His eyes stare just behind your head at all times. When my teammate tries to engage with him, Rosa pulls me down to say “Mi esposo tiene Alzheimer.”
Later we will visit her home, and she’ll tell us how hard his disease has made life. The house is like most of the Santiago homes we’ve visited: lots of tchotchkes, yellow painted walls, a dog. There Rosa will say that she tries to be patient and feels guilty when she isn’t. She’ll talk about how she is constantly worried that he’ll wander outside and into the street and in front of a car. He’ll nod and mumble along when we sing How Great Thou Art, even though its in English. He thinks it is a Spanish song he’s forgotten. She’ll cry.
But at the prayer meeting, his Alzheimer’s is just a simple fact. She even laughs a bit because my teammate interprets his blank expression as a translation issue. Rosa decides that telling me is enough and makes no move to save my teammate. When we sit down, she tells me about Punto Alto.
We’d been asked to host a children’s service in the area. Rosa says that we’ll have a very hard time wrangling the kids. “Ellos
estan locos.” It’s a very bad neighborhood.- lots of children, lots of drugs, not so many parents. Rosa says that the mothers are absent. She blamed alcohol. I remember thinking how strange a remark it was.
The mothers are absent. That’s a new one. Before the prayer meeting is over, two more women warn us of the unruly kids we’ll be dealing with at the mission.
To get to Punto Alto we drove towards the Andes. The mountains get larger and larger until they loom over the community, rocky and orange near the bottom, snowy and purple at their peaks.
Let me take a moment here to say that I miss my island. There’s a first date question about this: mountains or oceans? Well, oceans. Oceans, oceans, oceans. The mountains here make me claustrophobic. They surround Santiago like thugs. I hate having to bend my neck to see blue sky. And the line between the peaks and the sky is so clean that it looks drawn. In fact, the entire range looks drawn, two-dimensional. I keep waiting for someone to knock over that big, beautiful backdrop and let in some air.
Anyway.
The team at the Punto Alto mission split us up as soon as we arrive. I found myself again next to Rosa, feeling very tall and awkward. The plan was to go out to the neighborhood and collect the children. Rosa explains that this is our opportunity to witness to the mothers. “Nunca van a venir a la misión,” she says, “pero nos enviarán a sus hijos.” They’ll never come to the mission, but they’ll send us their children.
The whole thing feels sketchy to me. I have trouble believing that parents will send their children with us- this small Chilean woman and her tall gringa sidekick. I’m also nervous about sharing with the parents. We’ve been evangelizing all month, but it hasn’t gotten easier yet. In the end, my worries are unfounded. We don’t get to talk with any parents.
We set off down a dirty, dusty street. I count one, two, three, seven hundred dogs. At the first house Rosa rings the bell and yells “¡ah-lo!” Two young girls (11 and 9, I find out later) come to the gate. Yes, their mother is home. No, we can’t talk to her. Oh, because she’s sleeping. Yes, they’d love to come to the mission.
The older girl holds the gate open and they slip out and trail behind Rosa, who is already marching on. They don’t even tell their parents. I glance back before following, expecting an adult to come running out after us.
No one comes. We do this all down the street, our little parade growing larger and louder. Rosa hardly even looks at the kids, just puts her chin up and marches on. Some of them know her, others don’t. Still they all dutifully follow, sometimes wandering off to chase a dog and then returning. Occasionally a cross street will reveal another team from the mission leading their own troupe of niños.
The only adult we encounter runs out and kisses Rosa on both cheeks. The woman is wearing a tank top and no bra, an unlit cigarette between her fingers. She notices me only after Rosa points me out. A kiss on both of my cheeks and she is off, yelling behind her that she’ll have more time to talk next time, promise. Her young son stays with us, and Rosa marches on unfazed. After we cross some invisible boundary line, Rosa proclaims “¡eso es!” and we head back to the mission.
The other teams trickle in until the small room is full of children. The next hour is a blur. We lead games and sing songs, do a skit and talk to the kids about Jesus. Someone passes out popsicles. We teach the kids English words; they teach us Spanish. This we did for a long while, and only one boy tries to get us to say Spanish curse words. Before I know it we are done and I am again with Rosa, walking kids back to their homes.
Rosa has been working with the mission for years. She says that the people in Punto Alto are very special to her. It’s their time, she says. It took my brain a second to translate that, and Rosa had walked on ahead. I wish I had known what she said in the moment, so I could have asked her what she meant. I suppose I could have asked her later, when we visited her home, but by then I had forgotten. Sitting there, in her small living room, it had been all about her aging husband and his sickness. In fact, I don’t think I thought of Punto Alto at all while we were there. The woman leading children through those dusty streets seemed years away from this woman who admitted to being impatient with her ill husband and cried during a hymn. Her pluck was missing.
My team wrote out a word for her. “God is faithful. He is your sweet reward.” She knew that, but she thanked us anyway, tucking the paper into her worn bible.
It’s going to be a long eleven months, and I’m glad to have met Rosa in the first. Her strength encourages me. Rosa isn’t results oriented; she is just faithful. Month after month, year after year, she returns to Punto Alto, telling herself that “It’s their time.” I hope someday she is right, but I know Rosa will keep going even if she’s wrong. She is faithful.
Her husband doesn’t say thank you; he doesn’t even know that he should. But she keeps on. One of the hermanas in the church says of their relationship “Life together is hard for Rosa. Hard together but better than not.”
Rosa is the valiant woman marching children down the streets towards her Jesus. She is also the broken and sad wife, locking the doors to keep her husband safe. She is a daughter of the king, drawing strength from the Lord both for her mission and her sadness. Through it all, she’s faithful. I’m praying to grow in that faithfulness, the patience for thankless and endless work.
We have ten days left in Chile. I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to all of these people. There are so many people here like Rosa- so many who have inspired and challenged me. So quickly they’ve become family. On our first day here, one of the women said “When you leave, I will cry.” I wonder now how she knew.
