"The Beautiful Here": Spring 2015 Student Post

Remembering Oscar Romero

This week's student blog post comes to us from Julie Marmion. Julie is a student at Biola University, studying Spanish and linguistics. Here, she reflects on the recent commemoration of the legacy and life of Archbishop Oscar Romero from El Salvador, who was assassinated in 1980 while giving mass.

Leah (left) and Julie (right), traveling to an organic farm.

     Two days ago was the celebration feast day of Monseñor Óscar Romero. Perhaps his legacy is unfamiliar to you, but as the Catholic Church prepares for his canonization, I encourage you to carefully consider his life as an example for living out Jesus’ mission for justice. Romero was the archbishop of El Salvador during the late 1970s in the midst of great governmental violence, yet despite the impending peril, he found strength to speak out against the violence, torture, poverty, and disregard for human dignity. Although he was assassinated, his message planted a seed of hope among the people of Latin America. 

     I cannot begin to understand the situation of the oppressed, but my experiences here in Latin America have put a face to the issues and injustices about which I have learned. Although I had previously learned about the fight of the Sandinistas against Somoza in Nicaragua, living and conversing with a family who had experienced the revolution gave me a personal connection to the situation. It wasn’t just another group of citizens fighting for liberty; it was Chilo, Isella, and Eric. It was the beautiful face staring back at me as we enjoyed our Sunday morning breakfast of Nacatamales.

     Similarly, having listened to the life story of Elmer, a speaker who lived in the same framework as Romero, I began to recognize the devastating effects of poverty on the human beings it infects. These interactions do not permit me to deny the reality of such injustices nor the necessity and power of Romero's courageous opposition to them. In resisting the patterns of brutality and destitution, Elmer suggests we be intentional in forming relationships with the marginalized and in standing with them in solidarity, which Romero declares to be the mission of the church. 

In the documentary “Romero”, Rutilio Grande, an influential priest and advocate for human rights, professed, “How can I love God who I don’t see if I don’t love my neighbour who I do see?”  

     This causes me to reflect on my attitude with respect to the oppressed and my responsibility as a Christian. Sometimes we get caught up with other aspects of faith that we ignore Jesus’ vision for society—a Kingdom characterized by love and justice. This vision still lacks completion. Thus, we as Christians ought to offer ourselves as instruments in God’s triumph over injustice as we follow the example of Jesus and those such as Óscar Romero who shared his vision.

Nicaraguan Host Families

One of the things that really sets a semester at LASP apart is our focus around placing students in host families throughout the semester. Very few days are spent living in an environment with just members of the group, and we do so a proposito. Our goal is that students will connect in meaningful ways with their hosts, and become true members of a family, not just a guest in a home. Many students cite their host family experiences as that which impacted them the most during their semester at LASP. Check out our latest semester update to see what I mean (and maybe read a quote YOU wrote alumni!). Pura Vida.

 

Of Things that Aren't So Different

This week's student blog post is written by current Spring 2015 LASPer Tyler Struyk. Tyler is from Terrace, British Columbia and studies at The King's University. 

You can read more & follow his blog here. 

I feel that so often when folks like me, young, adventure-seeking, poor students (or anyone for that matter) come to another country or culture it is the things that are different, the “beautiful”, the “gross”, the “exotic”, the “charming” that we notice first and that we bring back with us as stories and photos. The “different” stands out like white on black or a meatball in the fruit-punch (I’ve personally never seen this and hope not too but it suffices for effect). I could go on and on about all the “strangeness” around me every day, not only in the food, sights, smells, and sounds but even in the behavior and attitudes of people themselves. Now I realize I might be leading you to believe that I think these things are wrong, but to the contrary in fact I think they are a large part of what expands our worldviews and even the capacity to have compassion, resolve, and love especially for the “other”. When I am the “other” in the “other’s” context it is the differences that challenge and break down my own preconceived assumptions and understandings of the world to build a more inclusive and holistic understanding. 

Now this is something I have been reflecting on lately and its fairly convoluted in my mind so I apologize if it spills through my fingertips that way too. From my first few days of orientation when absolutely everything felt different and was new and unfamiliar one quote from the director of my program still pierces my thoughts: “Be slow to judge for the strangers and the strange all around you are experiencing your strangeness.” How true that is, and how often it seems to me that the average North American abroad might never realize that it is THEM that is the strange and the different. With the advantage of having been given this insightful hint of advice I have been keenly aware to be aware, though I don’t always make it past the first “aware”, of my own outlandishness in this place. Now I won’t bore you now with all my displaced peculiarities, for you know many of them well within yourself as everyday habits and reactions, but let it be enough to know that they are very real and present everyday even though I might not always perceive it.

Up to this point I realize the title may seem fairly misleading. But it was necessary to talk about the importance of the differences before realizing the contradiction of the title. I have been here in Costa Rica now for almost four weeks and have barely scratched the surface but it has been enough to scratch away some of the veneer that shimmers as a blinding wall of otherness. And underneath all is not different. There are the little things that are the same like breakfast, lunch, and dinner and a universal enjoyment of the three. Or a morning shower, a bakery to treat oneself to doughy goodness, and jaywalking. But when I talk about similarities it’s not the little things I am thinking of, though those have come to be very important for a sense of groundedness. It’s the bigger, often less tangible, but more real similarities I am thinking of.

But allow me a little more background so you understand in part why I have been thinking of such things. The LASP program is about opening students eyes to the realities of Latin America; the problems, the successes, the language, the people, the history, and the relationship with North America among other things. And much of the classes in these subjects have brought on the realization of the terrible things we humans in general (and North America to Latin America specifically) are capable of doing to each other militarily, economically, and socially in the name of democracy, economics, growth, and safety. “Socialism” is not an excuse for Augusto Pinochet, or drugs, “the public enemy number one”, are not an excuse for torture, indiscriminate killing, and war in Colombia, and “neo-liberalism” is not an excuse for the Canadian company Infinito Gold to sue Costa Rica for a billion dollars when its people have chosen carbon-neutrality over foreign investment. And it is not an excuse to do all these things because others are so “different” or “alien” that the civitas, subconsciously or not, assent to it.

Maybe all too often we live and travel and experience with a kind of cultural myopia that only lets us see the little things at are feet that are the same while everything in front of us seems different and unknown. And maybe all too often we think in a way that identifies the similarities in the different rather than the differences in the similar. The first view allows us to visit, enjoy something exotic from our tiny viewpoint, and leave before it inconveniences us keeping the term “responsibility” nicely wrapped up for our little world at home. The second view calls us to realize a global responsibility with all humanity and to realize joy not suspicion at differences. But maybe you already knew that. Its in the Book. And its this second meaning of similarity I mean. Under the veneer are people who also know what it is to laugh with their friends not because something is funny but because they are experiencing the joy of fellowshipping together. Under the veneer are people who also see the sun and the stars and sometimes get the shivers for pausing to think about how tiny they really are. Under the veneer are people who have the same desire to be loved and to love and to live in relationships with others. And under the veneer of all those differences are people who are people too.

It’s our differences that should give us the compassion and wonder we need to work toward a better, inclusive global community but so often it’s the differences that lead to hate, to prejudice, to injustice, to poverty, to violence, to war. But then maybe it’s not the differences we need but the similarities. So together can we humble ourselves and finally pick up those glasses we’ve been given from Him and see that maybe it’s really our little things that are different and the big things that are the same.

Matthew 22:37-39

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Mission Statement Monday: Looking back...

Our first Mission Statement alumni post comes from Tim Honchel, who was a LASP student in Fall 2009. Follow Tim as he reflects on the semester abroad experience that introduced him to author (LASP friend & speaker) Elmer Hernán Rodríguez Campos and helped him find the path he is on today. You can read more about Tim's translation work here.

  After a transforming short-term mission trip to Honduras when I was 16, I knew that I wanted to do something different with my life and help change the world for the better. For a long time, I thought that meant becoming a missionary in Latin America, which prompted me to study abroad through the Best Semester Latin American Studies Program in the fall of 2009. My three months with LASP confirmed my convictions to do something out of the ordinary and gave me the tools, insights, and confidence I needed to get started. The experience also shaped those convictions in a way I would have never anticipated.

Experiential Learning
I came to LASP with a set of conscious and unconscious expectations, only to find that each day was an adventure and that I never knew what to expect. I had wanted to learn more about Latin American culture and life. Now I was immersed almost full-time with a Latin American family, observing and experiencing the ins and outs of everyday life. I had wanted to improve my Spanish so I could communicate better. Now I was finding that language was more than a collection of words and was allowing me to connect with people that I could barely relate to before. I had wanted to learn about Latin America in the present day, but I was also learning about the historical forces that have shaped and continue to shape the region. I had wanted to learn about poverty and how to help people escape it. Now I was meeting and hearing the stories of people who had been poor their entire lives. I was also meeting people who had very few material possessions but lived such rich fulfilling lives that they were redefining my perspective of poverty altogether. In summary, I discovered that my education included, but could go beyond the information contained in textbooks.

Seek First the Kingdom – Be Open to Critical Thinking
The lectures, experiences, and relationships from that semester in Costa Rica challenged me to question things I had uncritically taken for granted, to explore possibilities that I had never considered, and kindled a desire to understand other people and the world we live in. I was drawn back to Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God and reminded that the world (even much of the Christian world surprisingly, including myself!) did not operate by or think highly of the principles he described and modeled.* I realized that I still wanted to change the world for the better, but the best way to start doing that might be to first make some changes in myself.

Find out more here.

Learning Never Ends – Global Awareness
I returned home committed to learn more about the Kingdom of God and the things that might be preventing us from living it out. I wanted to take at least a year to intentionally explore this ideal, this way of life. So after graduating college, I traveled through Central America and was welcomed with generous hospitality in every town I visited. I also saw how the products we enjoy are often made possible by importing natural resources and cheap labor from countries that have been allowed no other choices. I then moved back to the US, to a predominantly African-American urban neighborhood, where I became aware of my own unconscious racial barriers and fears, the numerous challenges facing American minorities, and was able to develop genuine relationships with people whose backgrounds were often very different than my own. Next, I went to work in a US oilfield and came to understand the effects, implications, and dependence of our economy and way of life on the world’s ecosystems that we are a part of and that sustain our basic needs; and the tendency to use economic policies and war for control of foreign resources. I interned at organic farms and enjoyed learning how to live more simply and work with others to more directly meet our basic needs. Finally, I helped translate and publish the powerful story of Elmer Hernán Rodríguez Campos, one of the friends I made during my time at LASP.

Where I am Now
I’m still on this journey and it’s one that has rarely been easy and will likely take my entire life (or longer). Learning how to sail in seemingly uncharted waters, living in a US culture when I have fairly different values requires a lot of my energy. There is plenty of stumbling and uncertainty, which as I learned from my experiences at LASP, can be an opportunity to grow even more. Instead of material wealth and convenience, I’ve found my wealth in deeper relationships, better health, personal freedom, and the knowledge that I’m learning how to live in a way that can hopefully make the world a better place. I’m doing something different with my life after all, and I’m now able to use my life experiences, planning skills, and business education to offer practical help to other groups and individuals that want to do something different and are trying to figure out how. This service is one way I try to give back and also how I earn a humble living. I love being self-employed.

Appreciation
My friends and fellow students, even though they came and left with various interests and goals, all benefited and grew from their time at LASP. I’m personally grateful to LASP for inspiring me to look deeper, ask questions, think critically, step out of my comfort zone, and work towards making my goals a reality. Three months of transformative learning has gone on to impact my entire life.

*Perhaps we do this because following Jesus’s teachings would require us to acknowledge the source of most problems and renounce that which we love most: ourselves. It is easier to reinterpret these teachings or place the focus on less demanding passages that require small sacrifices, postpone life’s meaning until after death, and put the blame on others. It takes courage, trust, and humility to admit that we are hurting others to benefit ourselves and then learn to change our ways.

Spring 2015: We've only just begun...

Our first student blog post of Spring 2015 comes to us from Jon Thornton. Jon is a Junior at Wheaton College in Illinois, studying Communications and Anthropology.

The beautiful opportunity to experience a new culture, to learn from a new perspective; just two weeks in San José and we LASPers are settling in poco a poco.

    The city of San José is located in the Central Valley of Costa Rica, a highly elevated area of the country surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. In other words, the views are striking. Taking the bus home, one might look over a downward slope of red, green, and grey-roofed homes to see a distant mountain shrouded in clouds. However, one may also struggle trying to explain this same view in Spanish. Language, basic communication even, has been a consistent challenge. If Spanish is the language of love (as so many ticos insist), then we LASPers have just re-entered the awkward, sometimes-daunting phase of pre-teen romance.

Our group is eleven strong with the women leading the men by one (6 women; 5 men). We come from schools and universities all across North America, from the Southeast of the United States to the Northwest of Canada. With majors ranging from Spanish to Biology to Religious Studies to International Politics, our small group is about as interdisciplinary as a group of eleven can be. Each person brings her own context into conversations to make the learning process very interesting. Also, we like each other, which helps a lot.

     However, it is not simple to describe in a blog post the new relationships, new information, new understandings, etc. that come with this type of “abroad” experience. Gallo pinto, its taste and its importance, can’t fully be described in a sentence or two. The lessons we are learning through dialogue with our Costa Rican friends and family and professors is difficult to relay in text without omitting a great amount of valuable detail (please ask us about these lessons). What can be said is this: the study of Latin America and of Spanish challenges us, as North Americans, to think outside our own context. It forces us to pursue the intricacies of our own life actions and their impact of the world at large.

     This is the beginning of a semester we all know will pass too quickly. As relationships with our families deepen and opportunities for cross-cultural dialogue increase, we pray that we would be receptive to the truths God reveals. Please think of and pray for us as often as you can, so that this semester would be a reflection of God’s glory. More to come…. LASPers Spring 2015

Welcome to Spring 2015!

Hola and a special welcome to our Spring 2015 students and their "followers"! If you've already been following our blog updates, you know that we work to create a LASP Update every 2-3 weeks to share with interested applicants for coming semesters, and to keep those who love LASP up-to-date on current happenings. If you have any advice, ideas, or updates of your own to share, don't hesitate to send them our way: lasp@cccu.org We look forward to hearing from you soon!

Nicaragua: A Brief Recap

We have returned safe and sound from our 10-day study trip to Nicaragua. Students are enjoying a few extra days off to reflect and process on all the experience meant for them, and what it will signify for their future as well. Here is a short recap of our trip, look for more to come!

Last update of Core Seminar

Here is our third and last update from Core Seminar Fall 2014! On Monday we'll head to Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua. We'll be on a study trip for 10 days, living with host families for part of our time and spending many hours engaging local leaders who will give us a better sense of the history and current situation present in Nicaragua. Look for an update upon our return, and have a blessed couple of weeks.  

Dios te bendiga.

Semester Update Number Two!!

Opa, looks like we've fallen a bit behind in our posts! To catch you up, here's our second semester update we mailed out on October 3rd. 

If you didn't get this update and you'd like to, please email us at lasp@cccu.org and we'll add you to our mailing list!

Settling In

This week's post is an excerpt from Fall 2014 student Caroline Wells' blog "Always Blooming." Caroline is a junior at William Jewell College, studying Nonprofit Leadership.

Caroline takes a break in Monteverde

   As I continue to live in my new home with the Garita family, and learn from them, make silly mistakes and laugh at myself, I have come to think more and more about the importance of each and every human being that exists on this earth. (I know this sounds like some amateur attempt at a grandiose and inspiring analysis of humanity, but it’s not. Hear me out.)
   Every day we pass hundreds of people and see hundreds of faces on the street, in stores, at coffee shops, etc. If I were walking down the streets of San Jose, simply observing or on a mission to locate a certain tienda, I might pass faces that look similar to those of my host family. I wouldn’t think twice about it. But when you think about it, that person has an entire story, an entire life with passions and dreams and things that they are working hard to achieve.
   My host brother studies so much and is such a hard worker, and he has lots of funny quirks, he loves a lot of pop culture, and he is also so kind and desires to make me feel at home. I wouldn’t know this just by passing him by on the street.
   My host sister is incredibly patient and easy to talk to (in Spanish, which is a stretch for me sometimes), and she is a very talented interior designer, though you wouldn’t know because she doesn’t ever brag about it. She loves for everything around her to be neat and orderly, but wants me to be sure that it doesn’t bother her when my clothes aren’t stacked as neatly as hers. 
    I don’t know exactly where I am going with this, I just know that as I’m settling in, I see the value of living with a family and being invited into their lives. Although at times difficult and challenging, it is a very beautiful experience to be able to jump into the culture and experience true Costa Rican hospitality in this way.

Life in San José – Poverty and prosperity at the hands of globalization

This week's blog post comes to us from Fall 2014 LASP'er Jason Jensen. Jason is purusing a degree in Economic Development and Spanish at Eastern University. You can see more of his posts at: blog.jasonjensen.co

A poster in the LASP building; “Indifference is the worst evil”

     Long before I actually arrived in Costa Rica, my focus was set on poverty. “You may have to walk outside to get to your bathroom,” read the briefing packet, “and your ‘room’ may consist of a partitioned quarter of the house, shared with your new brothers or sisters”. The warnings intensified as orientation began and we got our first glimpse of the city. I saw the double-gated houses and heard warnings to wear my backpack on my stomach so that it wouldn’t be stolen.

     But now it has been a full week that I’ve lived here, and I wonder how anyone could have ever doubted San José. I drink the water right from the tap, and use the WiFi connection in my personal bedroom with full bath attached. 
     For breakfast I nibble on toast with rice and eggs, and for dinner I gorge myself with grilled salmon or filet mignon. Even in the gritty downtown, stepping over the litter, I feel safe and not far removed from the lifestyle in the United States.
     While this surprising pace of life may make my mom happy, to me it is a somber reminder of the inequality that exists in the world. When I talk to my fellow students in the program, I discover glimpses of the reality I was expecting: eating bean soup with an egg for dinner, or sharing a small space with several other siblings. I find that I am the “lucky one” who got a house with a warm shower. But even these things are superfluous, only hinting at the depths of disparity.
     Poverty in Costa Rica is indiscreet, but can be easily found if your eyes are peeled. It nestles itself under tin roofs tucked into a green valley. It hides behind the immaculate personal appearance all Costa Ricans value. Obscured by blankets of newspaper and trash, it sleeps behind park benches in the sun and the rain. In living metaphor, it illustrates the fissure of inequality by juxtaposing the grand bank building with the beggar sitting on the steps.
     We are told in our class that it was not always this way. Ignored by the Spanish crown for its lack of gold, the fertile mountain valley of Costa Rica was left as a humble frontier. Since they were almost as poor as the slaves they owned, settlers treated them well, beginning a tradition of equality. After a civil war in 1948, the egalitarian movement reached its peak, abolishing the military and instead investing in education so that all would have opportunity. The rich learned alongside the poor, and those abjectly in poverty numbered only 6% to 8%.
     After the global economic crisis of the early 1980′s, however, Costa Rica was forced to privatize and globalize in order to secure foreign loans. The lower classes, no longer supported by social programs and public education, slid down the income ladder so that now 18% to 22% are abjectly poor. At the same time, those who caught the rising tide increased in prosperity, so that now 80% of Costa Ricans have a washing machine, refrigerator, and color TV.
     It is in the middle of this new era that I write this post. The debate over opening the borders still rages, in Costa Rica as well as in the United States. Luckily for them, the Costa Ricans must live beside the poor while they deliberate. In the US, the marginalized have been red-lined, policed, and protested into back corners of the country. Like the parable of the Samaritan, we intentionally keep our distance so as not to be caught up in their problems.
     More than the material prosperity of the country, the sensitivity to the poor is what Costa Rica really stands to lose. An introductory article to this program read, “A typical American reaction to poverty is to first pity the people living in poverty, and then be annoyed because it inconveniences them.” Nothing I have ever read has rung so true, and stung so much. The rawness of poverty is odious to us, and so we keep it behind a sad face in a charity campaign. But as long as we keep the poor behind border fences and within inner-city limits so that our American Dream might not be disturbed, have we not won the world but also lost our souls?
     To redeem ourselves does not take much. It costs less than a guilt-induced donation to World Vision, but takes much more time than sharing a link on Facebook.
In the words of Oscar Romero, we must simply walk with the people.