I'm Back

Well, I'm back from my trip to La Paz. I didn't end up going to Peru after the conference for a couple reasons. First of all it just didn't feel like the right time, and sometimes it is good to obey those feelings, and then the day I was going to leave Ann texted me and said not to go because I had asked her to ask our lawyer if it was ok to go because the letter of invitation I recieved from the church said I was an evangelical missionary. If I had gone with theat letter they would say I need a missionary visa, which I have to get in the states. So this week we will try again and I hopefully will get to make a trip this next week. I am thinking Chile this time because that border crossing in Peru doesn't make me feel very comfortable.

Anyways, if I didn't get a visa, the trip was still totally worth it for the meeting in La Paz. ITwo and a half days is such a short time to see old friends and make new ones and get 60 people together to write a declaration on Indigenous Spirituality, Interculturality, and Integral Mission. I certainly learned a lot, though I probably have more questions now than I did before, and it was such a good time just to get to be a part of such an amazing group of people from all over the Americas. I will just limit myself to one story right now though. The whole conference was probably worth my last experience yesterday. I was eating lunch before leaving and found myself sitting with an old Aymara man who is a pastor in La Paz and a Navajo man from the reservation in Arizona. Mark, the navajo, did not speak spanish so I was translating for the two as they each shared their experiences of oppression, racism, and of the similarities between their cultures and worldviews. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to share my "white guilt" and ask them what I could do. The Aymara pastor's response, which was in the form of a story, was very humbling:
"How can you ask me that question? Do you know how that makes my people feel when a Yankee like you asks us that? It is like a woman whose husband beats her and mistreats her and she is always asking him to stop, that he is hurting her, and he promises to change but he never does. Then one day the husband realizes how horribly he has been treating his wife and asking for forgiveness he asks his wife, 'What can I do to help change this situation?' The wife has asked her husband to treat her right so many times now that when he asks her again she is so broken she has no more words to say. What do you mean you do not know what to do? You know exactly what you have to do."
The pastor then asks the Navajo if he feels the same way and he responds, also with a story:
"Well, I know why you feel that way, but I have not very often experienced feelings like that because no one even bothers to ask my people that question. This is how I feel: I feel like my people is a very old woman living in a large house. Downstairs there is a huge party going on with lots of people singing and dancing and enjoying themselves. Meanwhile the old woman is upstairs in her room, too sick and weak to join the party, but the problem is that no one in the house thinks to ever go thank the old woman for letting them use the house. In fact, they don't even realize that the house belongs to her. She is glad that the people can have a party in her house, and realizes that she can't kick them out because many wouldn't have anywhere to go anyways. She just wants them to come upstairs and recognize that it is her house and thank her, maybe even helping cure her sickness so she can be strong enough to join the party. That is what hurts her the most."
He continued to speak, trying to help give me some sort of answer to my original question. He said there are two things that we can do for his people. The first, he said, was that, "We want you to come and get to know us. We want you to be our friend before you take our picture and give us your charity. The second is you have to totally rethink the way the U.S. government and society are structured because as they are now we will never be given a voice in government and our concerns will never be brought to public attention. We are utterly ignored."
So I just thought I would share that with you. They were in know way attacking me, we are brothers in Christ, but it may be one of the most important tasks of the church in the U.S. today to give a voice to our Christian brothers and sisters who have none. That doesn't mean that we have to be a voice for them, but that we must provide the space for them to use their own voice. As soon as our discussion was over a couple other guys came over to say goodbye and the Aymara pastor asked if we could pray. That was one of the most moving experiences ever, like one of them said afterwards that it was like a glimpse of what will be. Between the 6 of us, we spoke 5 native languages and we all prayed together in our tounge: Aymara, Navajo, Spanish, Portugese, and English. Of course, there will be more more languages in heaven, but you know what I mean.