Saturday and Sunday March 19-20, 2011:
Arriving last night without Father Don got me a bit scared. I’m religious, don’t get me wrong, but something about being in a castle-sized house by myself with only nuns scares me. Thankfully, he arrived about 15 minutes after along with the rest of the crew.
I’ll rewind a bit. I’m in a Nun’s house (I don’t know what it’s called officially) because I’m helping Father Don, our old priest at St. Thomas, who has been doing missionary work down here in Ecuador for the past 8.5 years and is now 79 years old. They’re having a retreat where professionals are coming in to help teach some leaders of their town (Rancho Alto) how to teach others about treating alcohol, drug abuse, and violence. My role is to help translate what he doesn’t understand and to start trying to form this board of directors.
We ate dinner and did our first session, which was mostly just talking about the program they would teach the next day; then we all went to bed. In the room with me were Victor (el macho), Jorge (wakes up at 4:00am) and Carlos Julio (missionary).
Promptly at 6:15am, I was reluctantly greeted with the bright red flash that consumes everything in your body when bright lights are flicked on. And just on time, the droning music of string plucking and an 80-year-old unturned voice was blaring over a speaker system. It’s not music that would get stuck in your head, but it sure as hell isn’t going anywhere when I’m sleeping!
Shortly, all three of us were up-and-adam. Only one showered and it wasn’t me – it didn’t help there was no warm water. We went to the mini chapel for a 30-minute prayer session before breakfast with everyone. In the prayer sesh, they said to go outside for 15 minutes and ask a plant why it was there and what it said to you… I know a little out there, but it wasn’t so bad. I got to enjoy the landscaping. There were blooming rose bushes, ripe pastel green lime trees, cactus and more…
We had a pleasant breakfast of bread, cheese, bananas, and warm milk. I’m becoming more fond of warm milk each time I have it. It only bothers me when it curdles then gets in my mouth.
Promptly after breakfast, the day of teaching began. I realized early that the professionals were not going to be teaching about drugs, alcohol, or violence, but rather, how to improve your family relationship. This helps with these issues and helps improve the community. They are also teaching how to organize their info sessions when they (the town leaders) do them for the addicts.
We had a bunch of small group sessions where we discussed culture, family, past vs. present, how to organize classes, and most of all, we sang/prayed a lot. It was a blast because all of the role-plays we did with small groups were hilarious. At one point, I was a drunkard, and at another a “dad” to 2 women twice my age and married to another woman – the “kids” wanted us to make babies. We broke for 2 coffee breaks, lunch, and dinner while the rest of the day was teaching sessions. It was exhausting but very rewarding. I was telling the professionals about the 5 love languages and some other philosophy from PBJ/my own studies, and they were eating it up! They actually gave me the floor to explain what I told them…in Spanish. Everyone commented on how impressed they were with my Spanish throughout the weekend. I was proud of that. In fact, one lady (who was my “wife”) asked me if I knew any classes that could teach her son English as well as I spoke Spanish. I just said Rosetta Stone to start, and then get a job as a tour guide who caters to English foreigners.
At about 9:00pm (it ended at 11:15pm), I started losing focus and started planning more of my book in my notebook – oops. At least it was productive inattentiveness. Looking up from my notebook, I noticed something very interesting. It was the most peculiar thing; we were in a group session and people were supposed to tell about their lives. There were about 8 people in the group, and absolutely nobody was paying attention to the person speaking. They had no regard for what they were saying. It was clear that they were thinking about what they were going to say, going to eat the next day, or just sleeping…. Literally, the LEADER of retreat strait up was sleeping right in front of these people’s faces. I don’t know how he could let himself do that. Anyway, the most interesting part was that only after each person spoke did they pay attention to the rest of the speakers. Every single person listened to others and cared only after they were heard. This emphasizes the fact that everyone wants something to say, to feel important. Only after they have felt important do they let others do the same. This story is going in my book. It’s a bit Dale Carnegie, but lesson learned – make people feel important before you talk about yourself. That is when they will actually pay attention to you.
Later, when we were all sitting in our room about to go to bed, all the guys from the town were reflecting on the experience from the day and how to help their town with it. They all REALLY care.
A few light facts I learned from the day:
1. Ecuadorians have much more hair than Americans (not as many bald people)
2. Ecuador is the only place where I am repeatedly the tallest person in the room
3. They LOVE to sing
4. They all REALLY want to improve their town
5.
God is a huge part of all their lives – not all in the town, but those that are here
Ciao,
Michael
