Sermón

I have been meaning to post this homily that I gave at St. Luke Presbyterian back in August! I shared some thoughts and things I've learned, and Chris and I sang, and the communion consisted of mango juice and tortillas. All the kids in the church went back for seconds!

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I asked one of my English students what I should tell you today. He said, “you should tell the truth, that’s what God wants.” He explained that sometimes the truth is hard to hear, but it is important and we need to listen.

Recently, I went to the home of a student to eat lunch. The mother didn’t know me, and didn’t have much, and yet she filled my bowl with beans, rice and cheese. I looked around her house. Two simple rooms, and an outhouse where a young girl did her math homework on the walls. No television, no tables. Fish caught from the river swimming in the water they use to wash their dishes and brush their teeth.

The majority of my students sleep in one room houses with flimsy tile roofs. They eat a lot of beans and tortillas, because it’s cheap. The arts center provides money for transportation for our choir, because they couldn’t afford to come otherwise.

“I could never live like that,” I might have said before. But when that is your only option, of course you live ‘like that’. Imagine not having things. Imagine not having places to go. Imagine that, in your free time you sit on your front porch and talk with your family. You tell jokes, you enjoy a cold fruit juice. A beautiful life. 

The truth is, we have lived in El Salvador for a year. We have taught classes, and gotten paid a fair wage by the Brethren Volunteer Service. I often feel spoiled – we receive breakfast every morning from the arts center, we have money to go out for pupusas, we are living a comfortable life. 

People often talk about “reverse mission” – this idea that the ones going to volunteer are the ones who will truly be served. There is so much truth to that. I came to Suchitoto hoping to help people, and in the process I have been helped. I have experienced genuine love and gratitude from my students, co-workers and new friends. They have been amazingly patient with my Spanish. I have hundreds of Spanish teachers!

Learning a second language can make you feel stupid. It can make you feel fantastic. Most of all, it keeps your ego in check. It is like transforming into a child again, who makes a lot of mistakes and is afraid to speak. We tell our co-workers at Centro Arte that our Spanish is in the coffee, along with our courage.

We have both had moments of frustration, and strong emotion. Living in a small town where the average temperature is 92 degrees means that everything comes out. The good, the bad and the worse. Sometimes we have felt stuck in a bubble, running into the same people over and over again. And if you dislike someone? Tough, they still live here. And if you are tired and you just want to go home? Tough, you still have to say hello to everyone you meet along the way to your house.

But isn’t that community? Through the good and the bad, you still say greet each other. You acknowledge one another. You look each other in the eye and say, “I see you”.

I love asking El Salvadorans “what will you do this weekend?” The answer is almost always, “relax”. And they actually do! Everyone has at least one hammock in their house, and the intentionally rest there when they can. The hammock in our home is a holy place, it has been my teacher and continues to rock me even when I am not resting in it.

When Chris and I are not relaxing, we are working hard. I have ended up teaching a bit of everything at the Arts Center for Peace. Yoga, which has been a wonderful blessing. English, a bit of a challenge but always rewarding. Music education for kindergarten through fourth graders both in our small town and in a rural community. Poetry, an extreme challenge for someone still learning how to speak Spanish. Basic computer skills, everything from how to use a mouse to the internet. Directing our choir at Centro Arte, where we sing pop songs and laugh a lot. 

It feels like everything I love and have learned I am now teaching. Every learning opportunity I have had, I now have the opportunity to pass on to others.

It’s an odd mix of jobs, but the thing that holds it all together is that I am teaching children and young adults things that they otherwise would not have access to. Music, poetry, yoga, computers, choir… these are things that are not offered in schools, or universities – especially not for free.

The truth is we are wealthy people living among poor people. I never realized I was wealthy, but now I know that I am. The man down the street from me has needed a knee surgery for the past 6 months, and doesn’t have the money. He continues to be in pain and on crutches. If I did not have the money for a surgery like that, I would just ask for help from family and friends. That doesn’t work in rural El Salvador, when your family and friends are also in poverty. 

Yet I often feel that the people here are so much richer than I am. They know how to live with little. They enjoy things to a deeper extent. They truly appreciate the opportunities they’re given. They know suffering. They have lived through a horribly violent war. The gangs of El Salvador continue spreading a culture of violence. Yet still, on a Sunday afternoon spending time with their family, Salvadorans seem full of joy.

I sing a “rules song” with my music classes. “En esta clase, vamos a ser amables, en esta clase vamos a escuchar, en esta clase no peleamos, ahora vamos a cantar!” In this class, we will be nice, we will listen, we will not fight. Now we’re going to sing! One day, in the middle of a movement activity two children began pushing each other. I had my back turned, and the kids stopped dancing and began to sing. “En esta clase, vamos a ser amables…” That is my favorite part about teaching. Seeing how the students might take the knowledge and songs they are given, and teach each other. And of course, I hope that they sing more often!

In the midst of frustration – conflicts at work, students being very late or not showing up, struggling with Spanish, socioeconomic injustice, gangs extorting money from their own people… In the midst of it all, I find myself walking down a cobblestone street in El Salvador and thinking, “there is no place I would rather be”.

Chris and I are not in El Salvador “changing the world”. We are living, and learning alongside the people who have become our friends. We are grateful for your support as we have walked through this journey, your prayers and thoughts and donations.

“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” 

-Lila Watson