There and Back Again

A tale of two cultures, 10 different cities, 15 different locations within those cities, and 1 very strange young girl.

There were about six of us gathered together on Sunday night, at the Paasch place, as usual. Almost every Sunday after the 6 o'clock service at East Valley we (a very fluctuating, colorful 'we' that is not very clearly defined) get together and eat, talk, talk some more, eat, watch a movie every now and then... and generally "make merry" in a Christian sort of way. :) Well, it was one of these Sunday nights when, around a pot of Starbucks Sumatra, the topic of conversation turned toward character types. Turns out about oh, 7 years or so ago my parents learned this code for different personalities (one of many) - the DISC code. It works this way. "D" stands for determined, "I" for influential, "S" for steady, and "C" for conscientious. If someone's a little tricky, then they get a combination. My dad's an IS. My mom's a DDDDDDIIIII (I made up that variation - anyone who knows my mom will agree with me!). My sister's plain "I". Me, well... I'm, just...
I'm just...
different.

My mom - my MOM - whose skills in the art of pinning anyone's characteristics, be they physical, emotional, spiritual, you-name-it are positively psychic - has yet to pin me down. I've been trying to figure it out myself... and decided that the explanation couldn't be restricted to acronyms and I'd have to write a blog.
Which is great. I love to write.

Let me give you an idea of where it all began. If I were to be entirely thorough, I would probably use up more computer space than I'm at present willing to part with, so I'll [attempt to] be brief. :) (Brief for me, however, is something entirely than different than "brief" for the rest of the world.) My life began right here in Scottsdale, Arizona, some years back. (We won't specify how many presently!) My life was very, very... normal for the first six years - we had a lovely little home in Mesa, complete with large backyard, full-grown trees, and white shutters... knowing my mom (then!), we would have had the picket fence too, if the HoA would have permitted it. Then, soon before my seventh birthday, my life changed forever.

Yeah, I actually have one of those stories.

My parents went on a harmless little mission trip to Matamoros, Tamaulipas on the border of Texas that summer... and came back missionaries. Needless to say, I was shocked, irate, and very, very scared. I had read about these "missionaries" before. Weren't they all eaten by cannibals, or imprisoned for years on end with little food and no bathroom? Talk about gross! Weren't they the types that sold everything they owned and lived in the bush and who all either died of some kind of fever or were tortured to death by foreign savages?

That didn't sound like much fun.

And I swore I would never, ever go. That nothing - nothing - in the world would make me.

Fortunately, my parents took little consideration of that opinion (and fortunately, I was all talk!), and as soon as humanly possible, we were on the road to Texas. We were on the road a lot after that. We lived in Texas for seven months - and almost everywhere else you can imagine (as long as your imagination stays somewhere in North America). There was language school in Baja California, missionary training school in North Carolina, a year on the border of Nogales, numerous transitional apartments, and finally, three years in the capitol of Sonora, Hermosillo. We traveled through most of the eastern and central and midwestern United States, a good 11 states in my second home country (Mexico), and a few Canadian provinces here and there. All this change, all this moving - just what I had dreaded most.

God certainly has a sense of humor. And He chose to exercise His sovereignty in my life in many (and, to me, very mysterious!) ways.

About the time we reached Hermosillo I had had just about enough. Yes, I had experienced far more than the average kid my age, had been on more incredible adventures than many adults could boast. Throughout its entirety I was learning... my mother was quite determined that my sister and I would have a complete, thorough education - and despite the odds, we did! I learned my multiplication tables driving through Virginia; I counted to a thousand for the first time on one particularly long trek from Carolina to Jersey. I had memorized my prepositions in a small trailer home in Ensenada, written my first poems in a small drafty ranch house on the border's very brink in Nogales, Arizona. But I was ready to be done. Still mourning the loss of my last abode (I cried over every house I left but one), the idea of "settling down" to me seemed the most beautiful thing in the world.

But... God had something different in mind for me.

It had been a long fourteen hour drive, an all day ordeal, but finally the great town of Hermosillo, Sonora loomed in front of us, all lights and traffic and endless streets. It wasn't a new sight - we had visited before, but everything seemed dim and surreal, unable to fully register its reality in my mottled brain. Could this be happening to me - again? When my parents had decided to move to Mexico as missionaries, I thought they were crazy and had vowed I would never go. And yet, somehow, life was beginning again for me - in a new life, an entirely new world. Shortly after arriving, once the first excitment of our new surroundings had worn off, we began to realize how incredibly different we were, culturally, from the Mexicans around us. We had heard of culture shock, and laughed - now, we got to have our own up close and personal experience with it. Our first taste of this new culture came with our first Mexican fiesta. Our neighbors closed our street off entirely to make room for their little girls's 1st birthday party. Shocked, we shortly began t realize that such a procedure really was necessary in this case, considering the fact that most, if not the entire neighborhood was invited to the celebration (and most of the next!!!), and we were even more taken aback to find that they would stay at the fiesta until about 1 or 2 in the morning, regardless of the events of the next day. Never in my life had I seen seen such a grand affair - certainly not next door and even more certainly not to celebrate merely the passing of a child's very first year in the world. I tried my first bit of Mexican candy that night, too - being the master of drama that I was (and am), I immediately began to dry-heave the stuff up, handed the rest to my sister, and swore I'd never try it again.
What a revolting place, I thought. They make up their own rules without so much as an if-you-please, stay up and play loud mariachi music until all hours of the night, and this candy... why would you ever, EVER put chile and sugar together? I don't think that God ever intended any such disastrous combination.
I don't know if I can do this.

It's funny how nearly anything can grow on you if you just give it time.
(I can eat chile by the pound now... and yes, even with sugar.)

Shortly after moving in, finding a church became our primary object - and, for some reason, none seemed fitting. Everyone was either falling all over the ground and speaking something that didn't sound much like Spanish - or stoic and legalistic and rather altogether frightening. Finally, we found it - Maranatha, it was called, and it seemed to be MADE for us. But the necessity of learning Spanish soon became acutely obvious. My sister and I were sent to school, and quickly became quite "popular". Not, of course, because of anything either of us said or did (because we obviously couldn't), but, being 'la Americana', 'la gringa', I was instantly accepted, for what could be more of a novelty than a little white girl with light skin and blue eyes?

About the time I started sixth grade, the focus of our history class turned to the Texas revolution in class. Now, for those of you who didn't know, this subject is one that is still rather tender in the hearts of the Mexicans, and many are still quite bitter about the whole idea of Texas and the Southwest being taken from them. I soon found, much to my own personal chagrin, that the subject considered a huge victory against the cruel hearted Mexicans in America was regarded in a quite different light in Mexico. As we were told of the wrongs done to fellow countrymen by the heartless Americans - how their land was stolen from them (told with all the patriotic candor of a true hearted Mexican!), I began to sink lower and lower in my seat, my face hidden by the offending history book, hoping against hope that no one would associate me with those cold blooded Americans told of in THIS account of the Mexican American War. Thankfully, the connection was not made, at least verbally, and I began to see a different side to the biased version of history I had always known.


That first summer in Hermosillo I learned a few things. Every Saturday morning, bright and early, we would drive through the breadth of the grand capitol of Sonora, past la Zona Hotelera (the hotel zone), the gigantic, ominous homes of the few opulent in colonia Pitic and La Jolla, past our home church ‘Maranatha’ - past la Fiesta Americana, the largest and most precocious hotel in the city’s perimeter. Just outside of the city - a mile or so further - lay the barrios of San Luis Combate. Some years back this land had been overrun by squatters - those homeless with nowhere else to go, and here they remained. Here they made their living, constructing a life and a home with whatever they could find: carton (cardboard), corrugated tin... anything. And here, every Saturday morning, the San Luis children's mission was held. About fifty smiling, bare-footed children would congregate under that tree, rain or shine, all of those who weren't already hard at work - and enough stray dogs for each of them. Three years or so before our arrival they had come - no one had claimed the open land, and, without other hopes or prospects, they had settled here and built a life and home on what little they could - carton (cardboard), corrugated aluminum, anything to keep a roof over their heads. Never have I met a more kind and welcoming people - who offered generously out of their nothing and came faithfully to hear the word of God preached. Needless to say, I was every week shamed in my egotistic materialism, and, even without realizing it, I was gaining new perspective on life.

I became quite a different person those few years in Hermosillo. I learned to understand and even appreciate the many cultural differences, to see beyond myself and my own very limited way of thinking. I realized - and it was a colossal realization - that my citizenship was not here on earth, that my identity couldn't be found in one particular country or place, persay - no, I was a citizen of heaven. Here were people who loved the same Lord and worshipped him with the same faith ... although, perhaps, their faith and worship may have looked a little different. ;)

Three years later, the day came when we were to leave Hermosillo and move back to the States. I had no time to think about trifles of that sort however... my Hispanic band was playing at church that morning, and, before I left, I had to see this last performance through. Upon my early arrival at the church, I was told, with typical Mexican timing, that I was to make a speech that morning to open the band's presentation. Even though I had no time to plan or prepare for anything of the sort, I quickly wrote out (with a little help from our faithful band director) an address to the audience, and took a few precious moments to make sure I had all the songs by heart. As I stepped onto the stage, I looked out across the audience, my heart beating with all its eleven year old might, trying to get my bearings. I took a deep breath and delivered the important little speech, introducing our songs and the band, and, as I finished, the music began to play. Our last act went off without a hitch, a roar of applause succeeding our exit from the stage. And as the service ended and we drove out of town, I knew I would never, ever forget Hermosillo: my second home. The culture, the people, the life that I lived in Mexico has become a part of me, it has shaped who I am and the direction I'm headed now - I would never trade those few years for a life of leisure anywhere else. Without His divine intervention, I never would I have left a life where I was, once, content.
And gaining a new one.

So, I've been 'There'...

...Now what?