Loma de la Cruz, El Salvador

Where to even begin? It has been 4 days since leaving Loma de la Cruz, Jucuapa, and this is really the first time I have sat down to think about everything that happened there. But here I go, letting thoughts and feelings flow as they come…


About ten minutes left, someone had said. The seemingly long drive from San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, was reaching its end as our microbus drove down a bumpy dirt road through the jungle heading towards a small village outside the town of Jucuapa called Loma de la Cruz. The van was quiet, everyone immersed in his or her thoughts while taking everything in. I was busy doing likewise. I was excited, I knew I had to be- this is what I had been looking forward to for our whole trip. Two weeks in the middle of nowhere, engaging in a small community, doing manual labour, hanging out with the kids, and maybe even getting some English classes in there. What was there not to be excited for- not to mention the fact that we would be sleeping in hammocks every night? I was pumped, and I knew that this is exactly where God wanted me to be, yet thoughts of longing to be home with my family were overpowering at the moment. I had just talked to mom the day before, and Jordyn, my youngest sister, was really sick. I had known she had been not feeling well over the past month, but it wasn’t until then I found out that this was bad. I knew it was going to be an ongoing battle for me to be able to focus on where God had placed me in each moment and not have my thoughts and mind back home.
As we drove over the final hill, we saw the school to the left, and a road with houses scattered down it. We turned right and pulled up in front of a small little house hidden amongst the trees and bushes. We all jumped out, grabbed our bags and ran over, ready to inspect each room. But that didn’t take too long, we all stopped as soon as the door was opened-there was only one room. Around back was the bathroom, a cement hole in the ground surrounded by three brick walls and a sheet to cover the door, and a shower, a wall, large pila filled with water and a bucket to dump the water over your head. This place was going to be awesome.
The first few days went by, relatively in similar routine, wake-up after multiple people have tried their hand at getting me up (apparently I am a really deep sleeper…), eat breakfast, head to work, then later in the afternoon partake in different activities people invited us to. Many of the families (there are 30 families total within this village) wanted to teach us how to make something new (papousas, tamales, atoll, cashews), or have us try a different kind of fruit, the names of which I will never be able to remember. It was a lot of fun, and I was thoroughly enjoying getting to know the people, feeling so welcomed by everyone. It was somewhere around this time that English classes started taking place on our front porch every night. I’m not even sure how this happened, but it did. Shayla and I started out teaching a small group of about six aging from around 13 to 21 years old. By the end of the first night, the faces I had just seen for the first time seemed to be faces I had seen all my life. I found out rather quickly this place had a way of pulling your heart in fast and making you feel as if you had been there a lifetime. I looked forward to these night classes each night, even though dirty from working all day, and drained from the heat, this time meant a lot to both Shayla and I. It had been one of our goals in going there that we didn’t want to feel separated from the town, spending a lot of time in our house and for it to be an off-bounds type of a place. This class opened up the perfect opportunity for the people to feel welcome coming to our house, and I think we were both able to engage in these individual’s lives in a way we would never have been able to do otherwise. As a few nights passed, more people began coming out, and Shayla took the older group, while I hung out with the younger group. I remember in the midst of one of these classes, just looking into the eyes of all these kids, hungry to learn, excited to just be close to you, I was for the first time awestruck with where God had brought me. How did I get here?
So many times over this past year I have found myself stopping to ask this question. So many things I never could’ve planned for, so many things I couldn’t have even begun to dream. A year ago I would never have envisioned myself sitting on the dirty front porch of a house in a tiny village in the middle of the jungle somewhere in El Salvador, gazing into the eyes of these children calling me ‘enseñar’. Even a month ago, a week ago I never could’ve known. But God knew. That simple fact has continued to blow me away time and time again. No matter how much I feel the need to plan things out, or make sure I am ‘ready for the future’, no matter what I do, He always has a way of bringing me right back around to where He wants me. I can run, I can try and hide beneath a thousand carefully laid out plans recorded in my trusty black agenda, and yet it all seems so empty, so meaningless. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I began truly understanding the power of faith and jumping out, tossing away my own agenda and submitting to whatever plans God had for me (read Hebrews 11). And so, for the thousandth, no millionth time this year I found myself again in this place, a moment in time I ever could’ve planned to be in for myself, and I felt so at peace, this was exactly where I was meant to be.
Practicum for me was so many things, and I know that as time moves on more things will uncover themselves, and I will continue going through life tangled in these moments of unpredictable peacefulness. I am so thankful for this continual reminder that He has everything in control and that He above all else knows the path set before me. As I continue my journey down this path, and prepare for returning home, I am able to finally reflect back on time spent in Loma de la Cruz, right down to the final glance out the back of the van window, a mental picture of people I had grown so close to standing in the middle of the dirt road, understanding His faithfulness, and then turning to face the road ahead, buckling in for whatever it is He has planned next.