If you ever want to know what it’s like to be a celebrity, come on down to El Salvador; you’ll find out instantly. People stare outright at us, take pictures of us, and even snap some shots from inside their cars. Being some of the only “gringos” most of them have ever seen in real life, we really do feel famous…if a little awkward as well.
But we’re already adjusting, even though we’ve been here less than a week. Home is with the wonderful Santos family. Including the parents, their four kids, our two teams, and Dan (one of our squad leaders), there are twenty of us living in a relatively small house! I think it’s safe to say that community living is quickly becoming a reality for all of us.
To explain properly, there are so many of us together because we are two separate teams. My team, Team River Jumpers, has seven people. Team Meek has six. Being with those six girls is quite a blessing; they are a hilarious and kind group of people who make the whole “lack of personal space” situation much easier to handle.
So what have I been up to? So very much already. Since our first full day was technically an off day, we decided to visit a lake. However, this was not just any old lake – it was inside the crater of a sunken volcano! We rode jet skis and jumped off the diving board; overall, not a bad first day in El Salvador.
Since then, we’ve done a lot of ministry with the church every day. Coming here, we were under the impression that the church in which we’d be helping was a five minute walk away from the house. We couldn’t have been more wrong – it’s a forty minute drive away. But it’s all good, because we’re getting to know each other really well as we cram the 14-18 of us into a ~11 passenger van every day.
Continuing on, I can already tell that working with the Santos’ church will truly be a blessing for these next few months. In the last few days alone, we helped them clear some land for a new youth facility for the church, went to a service for teens, evangelized at a hospital, and helped with kindergarten ministry. What a busy weekend we’ve had!
What I’d like to discuss now is the language barrier…or rather the lack of one. I’m not saying that everyone speaks English or that we’ve all caught on to Spanish with extraordinary speed. Instead, I am truly amazed that even being unable to communicate through words, I can carry on an acceptable conversation with someone. It is truly a testament to God’s power that He can overcome such a barrier with such simplicity.
Example: I had the opportunity yesterday to do something way out of my comfort zone – go into a hospital and pray over the people there. As we walked through dingy hallways with the slightest waft of something unpleasant in the air, I was pretty nervous; I won’t lie. But I was also ready for God to work through me.
In the first room we entered, I stayed with Brady (from my team) who speaks more Spanish than the rest of us and can translate a little bit. We prayed over a young woman who told us that she was being discharged the next day.
I decided to take a little bit more of a risk in the next room and talked to a woman named Alicia* by myself. Now remember, this is me we’re talking about: Tara Santi, who loves French but doesn’t know a lick of Spanish. However, I’d picked up enough in the last few days to be able to ask Alicia a few questions and tell her a bit about my own life. Nothing advanced, of course, but we laughed as we stumbled over the words and out of that laughter sprung a bond.
As I prayed over her, I felt an overwhelmingly strong empathy for her and her situation. My eyes were moist as I asked the Lord to be with her family as well as her while she was in the hospital and to help her have peace even in the midst of such an undesirable situation.
When I looked up, she was also crying. I prayed in English for her…how did she know what I was saying?
I know she didn’t know. But perhaps it wasn’t my words that made an impact on her heart…perhaps it was the way I said them, the utter honesty and rawness I shared with her in that moment, that struck at her heart and tear ducts alike.
For someone who loves words and believes in their incredible power, this is hard for me to admit, but admit it I will: we don’t need words to love others. I might even have to say that words sometimes get in the way of our relationships.
We talk and talk and talk to each other, but in the end all I had to know about Alicia was that she had a teenage son and had been in the hospital for three days and I felt a kinship with her as strong as if I had been talking with her for hours. With words we can mask our lives and ourselves, but when we accept vulnerability and uncertainty in our relationships, there’s nowhere to hide. The love that springs from such a relationship is pure.
On the flip side of that, I’d like to tell you a little bit about our translator. His name is Vincent and he’s a family friend of the Santos’ who lives in the same gated community as us. He is only 17 and yet he speaks incredibly good English; he wants to live in the U.S. and be an author or cinematographer one day.
One of the greatest things about Vincent and why we all love him is his sense of humor. For someone who speaks English only as his second language, he picks up on our sarcasm really well and dishes it out in equal measure. We’ve had a lot of fun hanging out with him, even though he has to go to school on some days. I’ve been keeping a list of some of the great things he’s said, so to lighten the mood a little I’ll share some with you:
-Mixing up the words for ‘soap’ and ‘soup’ so that he asked us if we needed any soup for our shower
-Using ‘ain’t’ while translating a sermon, causing us all to crack up at an inappropriate moment
-Instead of translating it during the sermon, telling us “it was a joke” and leaving it at that
We’re also having a lot of fun with the Santos’ kids. One of their sons who is fourteen comes most places with us and we constantly tease him, though he ends up teasing us a lot, too. He speaks some English and I’m sure he’s going to get a lot better by the time we leave.
So there you go! A “quick” rundown of what the last few days have been like! And I didn’t even mention the papusas…that’s another story entirely.
Please forgive me if I haven’t responded to any emails. This is only the second time I’ve had a wifi connection since we got here. I’ll probably only be able to get onto wifi about once every week, so if you have an urgent question for me…too bad, I guess. Patience is a godly virtue, after all.
Thanks to my donors, my friends, my family, and my acquaintances for supporting me by reading this blog. You’re all in my thoughts and prayers. For me, my main request would be for self-control in many areas of my life so that I can live out my time here by being fully present and true to God. Your prayers are gratefully and humbly accepted.
Yours truly,
Tara
*Names are changed to preserve anonymity.
