The #ten4tues Project: Bold in Broken Places

Why do we go the places we go? What do we expect to find when we get there?

Kristi was kind enough to do a guest post on her motivations, hesitations, and expectations.

Checkout Kristi’s Blog Bold in Broken Places. And if you’re interested, please, chip in.

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This is my third time rewriting this guest post. Not because Kelsey sent back my previous drafts. He didn’t see them. When he asked me to write a guest post about my upcoming year-long trip to Peru, I was so excited! And intimidated. I started my blog in order to get the word out about my volunteer trip to a Trujillo orphanage. I never expected a real blogger/writer to ask me to write something for his blog. When Kelsey asked me why I was going to Peru for an entire year, the intimidation factor plus the fact that I wasn’t sure how to explain led me to rewrite this post so many times. So, why am I volunteering at an orphanage in Peru for an entire year?

Mary Kaech posted something this past week on a Food for the Hungry blog. It was about what she learned from three Nicaraguan boys at a trash dump. Here’s the part that inspired this final draft:

“The boys quickly covered themselves and scowled at the idea of having their picture taken like this. The boy with green shorts attempted to cover his bare chest with his little hands, but it wasn’t working. I’ll never forget the face he gave me – wide, fierce, unblinking eyes staring straight into mine.

If you look closely at these facial expressions, you will find children who know this is not right. They know they were created for more than this.“

Through various experiences, God has shown me things that make me care about people I never thought I would care about. And when I did start caring, I realized how ridiculous it was for me not to care. I realized how ridiculous it was to be so caught up in my small worries (What am I going to wear today? What should my career goals be?). I want to be somewhere where I have to look into faces like the children Mary met. Why am I going for a year instead of a month or six months? I want to be there long enough to know that the children at the orphanage were created for more than what they were given at the beginning of their precious lives. I want to be affected to the point where I am unable to live my life with my small worries as the focus.

A month would have changed me enough. Six months would have changed me a lot. But a year will change me in an uncomfortable way that will affect everything I do from that year on. If it were up to me, I would stay in my comfortable life in Southern California. I would stay close to the family and friends who are easy for me to relate to and love. Those who hardly offend me and are cut from the same middle-class American cloth I was cut from. But there is Jesus Christ, who’s been telling me to go where I will not be comfortable all the time. He has called me to discomfort. He’s given me the grace to obey and do what He calls me to. To be bold in the broken places of a child’s heart, who I don’t have much in common with save for being a broken human myself.

There is so much more depth to why I am going an entire year, but I believe that is the best way I can describe it here. Deciding to move to Peru for a year wasn’t the hard part. The hard part will be actually having to live in Peru for a year.