Dear Friends,

This final letter I have been putting off for quite awhile now. Not knowing where to begin, or how to articulate a year of experiences and relationships so rich, so beautiful and so very real and present to me still in this very moment. To write this letter as if it were the close of a trip or a simple summary of a journey wouldn´t be enough. This last year is just a small piece of the journey of life, my lifelong search for the person God is calling me to be and the discovery and cultivation of the faith that was planted within me in the waters of baptism. Through the incredible people I met, their stories and the realities that I saw and learned about this year, my heart has been touched, my eyes opened and I have been changed for the better. But the most difficult part of this process of change is figuring out what that means for me in my new old context at home and how to live out that change in me in a way that lifts up and shines light upon the injustices in this broken yet beautiful world. I want to lift up the people I came to know and love and breathe life into their stories, making it as real to all of you as it is to me and so many others out there. I want this year to help me believe that I can make a difference, believe that love is stronger than fear and hate and therefore living a life of love can somehow bring about awareness and thus change.

Community. If I had to describe the experience of my year in one word it would be community. I learned more about what it means to live in community with one another, to share, depend on, and be depended on. To walk together and give freely of the gifts that we have been given, purely for the sake of giving and enriching the lives of others. In that giving, sharing and breaking of bread is where I came to see Christ in the faces of the other. In the children I worked and played with, in the adults that I sang in the choir with, in the young adults that I played volleyball with, in the students that I lived and ate with, in the faces of each Uruguayan that I drank mate with. It was incredible to be in a place where community is such a natural part of their culture, in the way of being of the people. It was so easy to share because that is what they just do. And there hasn´t been any other time in my life where I have been more vulnerable, or when I could have needed that community more. I learned that it makes more of a difference to listen to people´s stories, to give them a chance to speak and let their voices be heard. When I stepped away of my own ideas of what it meant to go and serve others, and the idea that I had to do something to help and just allowed myself to listen to what they were saying to me, only then did I begin to understand the idea of accompaniment and what it truly means to walk side by side with someone and to recognize that we are all going in the same direction.

Now as I sit at my home in Walla Walla WA, I find myself already overwhelmed with things to do. Our fast paced North American culture has me spinning three or four different plates at the same time. It has been a joy and blessing to share and reconnect with friends and family, return to my home church and so many of the other places that I have called home in the past twenty-three years. I am lucky to say that in spite of the difficult economic times I have found not one, but two jobs. I am working with the public schools part time as a para-educator in the dual language program at my alma matter, Edison Elementary School, and in the afternoons I work part time as the Supplemental Educational Services Coordinator where I am helping to organize the implementation of free tutoring for students in the public school system. Both jobs allow me to use my ability to communicate in Spanish. It is a privilege to be able to communicate directly with the children and families with which I am working. This journey, this adventure, this life, continues to unfold before me; each day allowing me to take another step forward creating moments, building relationships and constantly challenging what I know to be true. Each day I am being prepared for what is to come. Learning, listening and loving. I have traveled a great distance, yet it seems as if I have never left. I am changed by my wanderings. Yet I am very much the same.

Thank you for being a part of this adventure! I am very glad to be home and to have the opportunity to reconnect with friends and family. If you would like to get together to chat over a cup of coffee, or some mate, please email or call me! I would love to hear about what you have been doing this past year too, and I am more than happy to share some of my pictures and stories with you as well.

Many blessings to all of you.