To everything there is a season?

So on Sunday evening I left Immokalee and moved back to Tampa! Aaahhhhhhhhhh....what a carnival of emotions.

Late Sunday night I spent a significant amount of time writing an entry here and when I was almost done, sleep hit me like no one's business and the next thing I knew I was in dreamland. In the end, I lost the entry I wrote. :( I'll try and recap as much as I can.

Right now I'm in DC, actually. I flew out here on Monday night because I am visiting a very good friend of mine, Dana "Banana Cafe" Villauz; she is moving to Spain for a year on Friday! I figured it would be nice to not have to wait until next summer to see her again. I am also visiting some other dear BFF's up here and then my mom and my sister are going to meet in the magical pupusa forest in a couple of days so we can vacation together (s0mething that has not happened in a very long time for the 3 of us, so I am really looking forward to this because my family had some rough times this year and I think sometimes we just need to be OK with resting and enjoying each other and showing one another a lot of love).

Wow. So Immokalee is over. I am always so freaked out at how quickly realities can change for people with privilege (like me). I mean, my reality is always one of privilege but do you know what I mean? I can choose to come and go as I please wherever I want, basically (within reason). Honestly, it feels good to just chill. Even before Immokalee, it kind of felt like I had not rested in like a year or something because this past school year was so stressful and there were always things going on during breaks even. Now I am just resting and it feels nice. I've been hanging out with my friends here, looking for jobs online (I actually had a phone interview today! but ehh not feeling it...), praying, talking with the Lord a lot, reflecting...

and just wondering what the heck is going to be next in my life!!!

As hard as Immokalee was for me in many ways, I am grateful to God that I was able to be there this summer. There is no way I would have learned some of the things I did in Tampa.

I think Immokalee should be considered one of Florida's best kept secrets, if not one of the United State's best kept secrets. This place is no longer a secret to many people but I think as many people should know that there is an incredible revolution going on there. The more I have reflected on what the CIW is doing, I realize how huge it is. They are changing an entire industry, they are working to improve a corrupt system that has been in place for way too long. I think it was the recent Whole Foods agreement that took place that made me see this. Pretty much all of our produce that we find in our grocery stores all over the US are products of exploitation and sweatshop-like conditions and sometimes even straight up modern-day slave labor. (Unless one is fortunate enough to find produce that is Fair Trade Certified by TransFair but that's usually a rarity here in the US). Yet now, in the very near future, peeps will be able to walk into a Whole Foods and know that the majority of those tomatoes were purchased at a more fair wage (the current piece rate for a 32-lb. bucket of tomatoes is 45 cents, with the CIW's penny-more-per-pound campaign, that rate has been raised to about 77 cents. With that, on average, a farmworker can now earn around $16,000 a year as opposed to somewhere between $7,500-$10,000. This is always a bit tricky because it always depends on how much work a tomato picker can find, etc). Also, Whole Foods has now agreed to the CIW's code of conduct, which holds them accountable to ensuring there is no other kinds of exploitative conditions going on in the field. The system is nowhere near perfect and there is still a lot of work to be done but indeed a revolution has begun in a place called Immokalee. I feel privileged that I was part of it and that I am still part of it and like I told my compas when I left, I am always their ally. Su lucha es mi lucha, their struggle is my struggle.

I truly believe that God is on the side of the tomato pickers in Florida. I believe He is on the side of the men and women crossing deserts and borders (that should never have existed in the first place) for the sake of love and survival. There are a lot of people I worked with this summer who would not call themselves Christians or who would not claim Jesus as their Savior (mostly the allies). Yet I met many of the workers who would definitely say God is the only reason any of this has been possible. I have to agree with this. The CIW began a courageous revolution many years ago and I really believe it was because they knew God was with them. Many of them were undocumented workers who did not speak English and yet in 2001 they dared to take on the largest fast food company in the world, Yum! Brands, the parent company of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, A &W (and one other restaurant that I always forget it's name) and they dared to declare a boycott on Taco Bell until they made things right. What made them think it was possible? Strength and courage from God. I want to continue to strive to have this kind of faith in God, that with Him all things will be made right someday because this His will! His will is for justice and righteousness so I pray that He would continue to bless the work of the CIW and that His name would be glorified through this beautiful community. It is in no way flawless but they are doing something big.

My calling is to be with my people. In many ways I went home this summer. I'm not a Chicana or a Mexicana or a Guatemalteca but I still found my roots in Immokalee as a bi-racial women- part Spaniard, part Incan via Ecuador, part Irish, part Scotch, part Welsh somewhere down the line, too. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but something inside of my soul felt very alive as my Spanish improved more and more each day. As I was able to carry on more and more conversations, it was as though God was giving back something to me that had been wrongfully stolen from me as a child. I once prayed about 3 years ago that God would give me the Spanish language; He has been faithful in answering that prayer for me.

I remember Brian once speaking this past spring about how when we will know what our calling is or just where we are supposed to be. (BTW, totally paraphrasing this, as if that were not already obvious). He said that it's when you think of that thing or that place, you start to feel kind of nervous but excited deep down inside. I think about Latin America, I think about Immokalee, I think about the neighborhood I grew up in, I think about LaFe and I feel that way. Tonight I was talking with another good of friend of mine up here, Anne, and I was sharing with her about the ministry of LaFe at USF and how it was started and how it has affected the IV chapter and the campus in an incredible way. It was crazy because I actually got goosebumps on my body thinking about LaFe and the amazing ways I have seen my brothers and sisters be impacted by this ministry.

I just want to be with my people. I think that is where I am supposed to be. I think for now I need to be with my people in Tampa. The longer I have been away from Tampa, the more I love that place.

Sorry if this is boring for any of you. Right now I am writing this mostly for myself to try and process what I am feeling. Writing has been so therapeutic for me always and it really helps me to make sense of things, especially because I am naturally scatterbrained. :) In a sense, though, I also write these things publicly as a form of accountability. I know that those of you who have been my faithful readers truly care about me and what happens in my life (and it goes the other way, too!).

One thing I have been freaking out about a bit has been a job because I feel like the job I get should be somewhat related to working with the farmworker community or it at least should be somehow connected to community organizing or something. Then I remember that many of those who have often organized within the community didn't do it as a day-job; they did it in their free time because they cared, they saw a need, so they acted. That is definitely something that I need to hold myself to, even if I end up in something totally unrelated to what I want to be doing for now (because eventually I'll have to take something to pay the bills, right?). I need to be out there with my people either way.

So...here I go...

Changing the system, not just charity work. Lord, don't let me forget that.

Another thing. So the title of this blog has been "Re-learning this Latino American Dream". All I have to say about this supposed American Dream that exists right now is...a really bad word, honestly, but I am not going to use it here. But guess what, I am a human and right now that's my attitude towards the whole concept of the American Dream. From what I have seen my whole life after growing up in Miami and then being in Immokalee, there is nothing too great about this dream. In reality, it is a nightmare. It's a nightmare that tells us it is OK to leave others behind as long as we are ourselves getting ahead. I think it has caused many of us to forget where we come from and to forget the sacrifices of those who come before us. I think too much of it turns into materialism and greed. I think it's a lie for many of the people immigrating to the US. I don't want anything to do with it.

Not unless we're willing to learn to create a new kind of dream. A dream of dignity, justice, righteousness, a dream where it includes all of us, not just the privileged few. A dream that honors the will of God and His love.

I still don't have a ton figured out. I have left Immokalee with a lot of questions but I am glad that I have a bit more direction in my life at this point.

OK...so this is going to be the last part of this blog now, for real!

This part is for all of YOU. You all have been so faithful to me this summer. Thank you. I don't deserve the kind of love and kindness many of you have shown to me but for some incredible reason, many of you have chosen to demonstrate it through your friendships with me. It has meant so much to me when you all left comments or sent me messages or emails letting me know you had read my blogs. Thank you for being my community, for being part of this experience with me from a distance. Thank you for the prayers (I could really feel them some days).

Thank you for affirming me as a writer. This has been such a huge restoration in my identity and I really want to continue to use this tool for God's glory.

Thank you for sharing your own stories and struggles with me as they related to what I was learning throughout the summer. There were a couple of you that I know God purposefully placed in my life during this season because He wanted me to learn something from you. I also found parts of myself in you.

I left Immokalee just as the season of autumn began. The former English major in me still loves to draw symbolism to everything in my life (lame, yes, I know, but oh well. this is who I am). But here begins a new season in my life. All I can say is that I am grateful I have a Savior to once again walk with me through this one. All I can do is take what He has taught me from my experiences and my mistakes and put those teachings to the best use I possibly can.

For all the sirenas, the jaranas, the Son Jarocho, the avocados, the paletas, the marimba music, the watermelons, the friends, the struggle...

it will be continued....!

The kingdom belongs to them

This entry is a shout out to some of the greatest people I have ever met in my life...some of the children of Immokalee. :)

Every Sunday of the past 3 and a half months or so I have had the privilege of coming to the CIW's reuniones de las mujeres (women's meetings). It's a time for the mujeres to come together and have a chance to speak up and ask questions about the current campaigns within the Coalition without feeling intimidated by any men in the room. There are also English classes that are held during this time, too. I have been privileged enough to be able to be trusted to hang out with their children and really, looking back,it's just been an honor to spend time with them.

I think kids scared me for a while and I am not even exactly sure why. I used to baby-sit my younger cousins all the time when I was finally old enough. Maybe when it was when I realized that I was old enough to bear children if I really wanted to and it hit me what a commitment they really are, that scared me. After this summer of spending time with my kids here in Immo and also living with Itzael (the almost 2 year old son of the family I live with), I definitely want a few of my own. I think it's safe to say all my maternal instincts have officially kicked in, jajajaja.

For all the Spiderman pictures, the panda bear masks and panda bear pictures, the "avion!" games (the airplane), all the abrazos (hugs), for all the smiles (that especially made me hopeful on some of my hardest days here), for the time Giselle painted my nails with orange paint, for all the conversations in Spanglish, the legos, the Dora the Explorer puzzle, el burro, duck, duck, goose! games, for trying to explain to kids what being bi-racial means, the talks about indigenous roots (both theirs and mine), drawing with chalk, for coloring in The Little Mermaid brown instead of peach (because brown skin is beautiful), for being able to affirm my kids in that our culture is beautiful and something to be celebrated, for being able to remember where I come from because of them, for being accepted by them without any questions.

This is for them.

The courageous kids of Immokalee. They are not saints, they are not without sin. Yet my heart breaks for them in a way because they are forced to grow up brushing their teeth, washing their faces, and taking baths in agua mala (bad water). I'll never forget all the times I had to walk them away from the water fountain in the community center and remind them that the water here is not the best to drink. I don't want to forget their confused looks on their faces as I walked them over to the kitchen to get water from our 5 gallon jugs instead. The thoughts of the kids being constantly exposed to water full of pesticides, arsenic and other toxic chemicals is truly sickening. That's an unwelcome invitation to things like leukemia right there.

Perhaps I have a lot of things to pray about acting upon. Perhaps? No, I definitely do!

The kingdom of God belongs to ones such as these. Ones who can love unconditionally, ones who can accept others and welcome them into their lives without passing any pre-judgments, ones who trust and accept love when it is given back to them.

I have so, so, so, so, so much to learn.............

God of the broken

So I really wanted to drop in a blog in the last few hours of August. I have only written twice this month because one of the weeks of this month was absolutely one of the worst of my life. I do believe a cancer relapse may have been easier. This kind of pain was different because it was the kind that was mostly brought upon myself. Those who need to know what happened know and those who don't, will not know. All I can say at this point about that is that I have finally started to feel like Lauren Meow again in the past couple of days. I know it's been the prayers that several people were praying for me and a couple that I cried out for myself- the peace of Christ has come over me. I have been reminded of who I am and who I want to keep being. There were a couple of moments where I honestly contemplated running far, far away from everything because then I would never have to face anything. I would pretend that I did not have to face myself. I can't run from God. I could run into the mountains of Oregon or Spain or somewhere and still God would be there, pursuing me, chasing after me like a mother after her kidnapped child. Like a man who felt his lover slowly slipping out of his arms, He came back after me. I am grateful with all soul that I was not able to escape Him.

In three weeks today I will be leaving Immokalee. Tomorrow makes exactly three months that I have spent here. Despite all this self-inflicted pain I have been experiencing lately, I am so glad that I can say now that close to 4 months of my life were spent here. I am thankful for the stories I have heard, the people I have met, the pain God helped me to embrace, the countless times I laughed, the moments that made me uncomfortable. I am grateful for the way God has made me yet again even more desperate for Him. I am privileged to have been able to open up this world to many others that I know. I am honored that I have been accepted into this community, even as so far that two of my friends here from Oaxaca (southern Mexico) have insisted that I come to visit them soon when they finally go home after several years of being in the US.

The last two weeks have been a bit of a blur for me being here in Immokalee. I know that I have been working and living but it has been hard. I am trying to remember the week before that but right now I can't. Right now I feel like I am in a stage of mourning....mourning the lost of things very precious to me, mourning over the broken person I am, mourning over things that should have never happened. Anger has been flaring up and down in me, mostly at myself, somewhat at others. Others who should have heard me when I said certain things but mostly I wish I would have heard myself and that I would have heard God in moments that I really needed to...

Grace.

I have never had this kind of deep understanding of grace and love before. I had, in many ways, forgotten what the Gospel really is all about.

The Gospel is for people like me. Broken, prideful at times, feeling like much of my life has been a disappointment, feeling inadequate, confused, not one of the most educated, not someone who can speak in a very intellectual way, someone who just messes up a lot. The Gospel is for ragamuffins, for people who do not have it all together, for people who will never think they have it all together. The Gospel is for places like Immokalee, where there is a town full of people that the most of the world has rejected. So perhaps this has been a good place for me to be in a lot of ways. Though I am not materially poor, my spirit has always been poor and I will always need Jesus to keep coming to fill it to just where it needs to be.

I have recently started reading a book called The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning. I think everyone in the world should read this book. Unless you really think highly of yourself, that you're good on your own and that you don't need God. Otherwise, it will break you in ways that you didn't think were possible.

I have been dwelling just a little bit on this old Anne Frank quote that I have always really liked..."I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains". I remember I used to have that written that on my bedroom wall in high school (along with all the other hundreds of things written and painted on the walls). Let's face it, there are plenty of things to be miserable over in this world. I see a lot of things to mourn over every day in Immokalee. I see a lot of things that are miserable about me. I have done some miserable things but there is still so much beauty in me that remains simply because I am a Jesus follower. That is the only way any beauty can remain in me ever and it's the only way to keep bringing something better into a miserable world, even when you are the one who caused the freakin misery in the first place.

Reconciliation. Like I said in one of my earlier blogs, that seems to be the theme of my life this year. That is a theme I am desperately praying to keep around. I am hoping and praying with everything in me that I will see it once again lived out in my life again soon.

Perhaps I will write once or twice more before I leave here. My mind is still trying to grasp so many things that have happened lately that it's been overwhelming.

I hope all of you are doing well. I will see many of you soon!

Just thinking....

Brian is right. It will never be cool to follow Jesus in the activist world. In that case, I would rather call myself a Jesus follower than an activist, an anarchist, a socialist or a radical. When being all about social justice stops being cool, I'll still do it because I'll always be a Jesus follower. It's not a phase, I am not being idealistic. I am just trying to follow all that I know to be true in a world full of lies. This is so much harder than I thought it would be. It is so hard to be the only one in a world full of activists trying to really hardcore follow Jesus. I struggle every moment to remember who I am and not to compromise myself to make others happy. That is not easy being the natural pushover, people pleaser that I am. Like I have said a billion times before throughout this blog, I miss my community and I cannot wait to live out justice with them. Last night a very dear friend of mine offered to pray with me over the phone and as we prayed for each other, I realized how much my soul longed and ached for something like that. Just to simply pray with another human and cry out to God together. After we hung up I started reading Ecclesiastes for some reason and then I got to the passage about how two is better than one, because if one falls, then the other can help bring them back up. I am grateful for many of you who have been my community from a distance. Please keep praying I don't forget who I am here. Please pray that I remember who I serve, who I follow, who I worship, who I love.

Can you pass me my machete, por favor?

I don't have wireless in the house I live in anymore in Immokalee so I have been limited on when I can actually sit down and write. It has been way too long. But less is more, right?

How does joy exist in the midst of pain? The past few weeks I have been crying quite a bit over several different situations of people I know, people I love and care about so deeply. I have been crying out to God and asking Him why. I don't completely understand why pain has to exist, why suffering has to happen. One could go ahead and give the cliche, "Oh, you know, for character development" deal but damn, it does not always feel that way when the suffering hurts as bad as a thick needle being stuck into your bone marrow. I know that I have learned that suffering is good and necessary because through it we learn obedience and discipline (Romans 5). It just doesn't always feel that way.

Where would be without the Lord? Where in the world would I be if Jesus had not intervened into my life and rescued me from myself? What would I do when I encounter so much pain this world? Where else would I turn?

Really, what can you say to a group of farmworkers who have been exploited their whole lives? To a group of people who have been discriminated against and taken advantage of simply because of their ethnicity and the class they were born into? Where does hope come from when those fair wages you are fighting for don't come in? What do you say to one of your good friends who has been battling a rare cancer for two and a half years, who has been to doctors all over the country and no one could cure her? What do you say to your aunt who is dying from diabetes at only age 42, what do you say to your uncle who has to do everything for her now that she is blind and can't walk anymore on her own? What do you say to your younger cousins who never come home anymore because they can't deal with their mother dying? What do you say to some of your closest friends when one of them hurts the other deeply, when one of them breaks the trust that was once there? What do you say to people who feel like there is no hope, there is no redemption for them, even when deep down inside you know there is something for them? What do we say to all this pain in the world? What do we say?

The thing is that I have nothing to offer, I have nothing to say, except for Jesus. I have nothing else to hope in. I do not have all the answers but I believe that without Him we are pretty much screwed. To think that we can make things right and better on our own is just straight up prideful. Who are we, but broken human beings, in desperate need of a Savior? Broken people searching for wholeness, and once we find that wholeness in Him, only then can we truly began to be used to bring some comfort to the pain of this world. Seriously, this has been one of the most painful years of my life. I have felt so sad way too many days but on those same days I have also felt a lot of joy when I have chosen to crawl into the arms of my Redeemer. Jesus is truly good news and I do not understand why any broken human being would reject everything we have always longed for. Being in Immokalee has allowed me to see my incredible need for Jesus more than ever. I never want to do anything apart from Him and all I want to do is bring others to know this incredible man, to put their hope in Him, to find joy in serving Him.

A little over a week ago my peoples from Tampa and St. Pete came for an immersion visit to Immokalee. It was so great to see InterVarsity in Immokalee! About a week before that, some good friends and leaders of the church I go to in Tampa also came to visit me, Brian, Joann and Alison. The visits really helped to affirm so much of what I am doing here. I am still so honored that they would take time of out their schedules to drive down here and spend some time in the community (especially with these gas prices). I loved how everyone was so engaged and so willing to take a posture of learning while they were here. I loved seeing my good friends from Immo talk with my good friends from Tampa & St. Pete. Bridging two worlds together, that is something Jesus uses us to do. I also do not feel as alone as I did before, in this burden to love migrant farmworkers, because now my community has seen what I have seen, now they have felt a bit what I have been feeling. Now we are in this together and this is so incredibly encouraging.

God has been really faithful in answering some other prayers. I have been able to really build deeper relationships with so many people in the community, even in my broken Spanish. I was thinking today about how much Vero and I have become good friends. Vero is the wife and mother of the family I live with and she doesn't speak much English at all. She understands quite a bit, though, and asks me how to say things all the time. She is also very patient with me when I forget how to say things in Spanish and I have learned a ton from her. I do not think I have ever had such a good friend where neither of us were completely fluent in the same language! It is amazing what the Lord can do, how He can work. God is bigger than my messed up Spanish, He is still able to use me in spite of it, to share His hope and love with others and He has been the One who has enabled me to be able to share my life with others here and for them to share theirs with me. Vero even told me a few days ago that she wished she had a sister like me and then I told her that I am already her sister.

Oh yeah, and I went to pick guavas about a week ago, too, that was so much fun. Lots of spiders, yikes. I never realized how incredible it could be to live in a rural area and to be able to drive out to the middle of nowhere and then run into a forest and shake the trees until the guavas fell out. I went with Melody (my roommate) and Reina, who is this really great lady from Paraguay that always invites us over to drink mate and chase alligators in her backyard. She is probably in her late 40's and she just puts on this big rubber boots and grabs her machete and starts cutting any of the branches in our way so we can run into the forest to climb up the trees. I hope that someday I can live somewhere in Latin America for a while in a rural area and climb mountains and swim in waterfalls. See, my indigenous roots are starting to be awakened more and more in me. My mom is so proud to be half-Incan, she would be proud of me. :) Perhaps I will start putting my hair in braids again and wearing my ponchos, like she used to do for me when I was a litte girl.

Bits and pieces

"We live in different realities".

"Here it's all about individualism. In Guatemala, when the town sees a woman and her family in need, we give her anything she does not have that we do. It's not like that here and that's why I don't like it, that's why I want to go back".

"They think we are happy to just have work. They say 'oh at least they are making some money'. No, we are not happy. We just absorb the pain and deal with it because we need to provide for our families. We are not happy with this work".

"We are not working for ourselves. We are working for our families back home. When we come here to the US and cross the border, we are not thinking about how we are thirsty or if la migra is going to get us or if a snake is going to bite us. You can't think about those things. All you can think about is your family and you do it for them. You keep crossing that desert for them, not for yourself".

"You want me to show mercy to those who exploit me? If I show them mercy and love, they are going to keep walking all over me. I cannot afford to show mercy".

"If you do not take the time to understand what is really going on, then you will never really love us. There is no way you can really love us then".

"God says we should love and take care of each other. That is why I always ask you how you are doing. But I am not going to church because in the churches here are the crew leaders who exploit us, who do not want to pay us for our labor. I do not want to be there with them."

"In the Lake Placid slavery case that was busted a few years ago, the people who enslaved the workers had a strong presence in church, they were the ones who were in church every Sunday. The ones who held others as slaves."

"We are not reaching and asking for that fair wage. We demand it because it's what we deserve. Ask for it?? F*** that! Demand it! It is ours!"

"I used to be in school in Guatemala, I was studying to be an elementary school teacher. Now I am here because some of my younger brothers and sisters are in the university studying. I work for them, I came here for them, I work so that they can study. I am the one paying for them".

Bits & pieces of conversations I had this week in Immokalee. These few words do not do justice for the pain and discomfort I have felt many moments this week. They do not do justice for the pain many of my people feel but have learned to absorb and take as a normal part of life. This is a glimpse of their reality.

Despierta

One thing I have heard a lot within the past few years of my life has been about how a billion people or so in the world do not have access to clean drinking water. We are privileged in the US to be able to turn on our faucets and drink from it without worry (usually). I have been meaning to mention this in here for a while now but I always forget to.

No one here in Immokalee drinks the water! If you do, you will be taking in lots of arsenic, all kinds of pesticides and, oh yeah, lots and lots of fecal matter.

In the United States of America, in a town called Immokalee, people do not feel safe drinking the water. I remember my first week here, all the allies and the CIW staff had a meeting at the new farmworker community center that we have slowly been moving into. We all talked about the water fountain in the center for quite a while, because everyone was really concerned about if people would drink out of it or not in the future.

That's a freakin huge deal.

Water! Agua! People, no matter where they live in the world, should not have to worry about if their water is going to give them a disease and eventually kill them. Arsenic in our water. ARSENIC. OK, some of you may or may not know this, but when I had leukemia, a huge chunk of my chemotherapy treatments were receiving arsenic through an IV for weeks and weeks. I think there may be different types of arsenic, I am actually not sure. I know that there are more toxic things out there than arsenic but it is still not great for the human body! If it is toxic and strong enough to kill leukemia cells (and those are some dangerous, powerful little things), then can one even begin to imagine what exposure to years and years of that will do to someone? Sure, OK, we have a bit more privilege here in Immo because there is a station near Winn Dixie where you can bring water jugs to be filled up with purified drinking water. Sometimes I see women walking around Immo, pushing water jugs in baby carriages back to their homes. So clean water is accessible if you have a way to get to this station and you have a $1.50 to fill it up; or you can use a filter like I have been doing. Still, though....every time I brush my teeth here or take a shower, I wonder what kinds of toxic chemicals I am once again being exposed to. I still don't really know what caused my leukemia a few years ago and I am definitely not in the mood to develop some sort of other disease that could possibly kill me again. My question is why has the county allowed us this to be, why has the state not done anything, where are the public health experts, where are the people of God? What about the children growing up here in Immokalee? Their health has to be put at risk simply because they were born into poverty? So it's going to be their fault if they end up with cancer in 20 years, if they end up with something else that could kill them? I mean, I know there is all kinds of horrible things in our water everywhere in the US but I have never felt that threatened about it growing up. The fact that people are concerned about a water fountain here really says something.

The longer I am in a rural area, the more I realize that rural areas are just way too neglected. They are so hidden, the people who live here are so hidden from the rest of the world. The focus is always on the city and that is where people want to go. I don't think the city should be forgotten but I don't want my people here in Immo to be forgotten nor in other rural areas.

There is something so intriguing about just being outside, about not having to endure traffic and overwhelming lanes of cars and trucks, about having some peace and quiet. There is something so great about everything being only 5 minutes away, about being able to ride a bike everywhere if you want to. A few days ago my roommate Melody and I went to pick pineapples, bananas and maracuyas with our other friends, Cande and Osker. We went to this forest/swamp place behind a lady named Reina's house. OK, I know this sounds weird, but she was the first person I have ever met from Paraguay and that made me really happy because I have always wanted to meet someone from Paraguay. I don't know why. There was just something so simple about it and we had a lot of fun, just all of us being together, and I was like why can't I do things like this more often? We just kind of took the morning off for a couple of hours and went did this and drank mate with Reina and it was a Tuesday and it was just so nice! So nice.

(OK, i have a lot of run-on sentences, I know, I know).

I told my friends that morning I wish I could be a banana. But I would definitely would want people to bury me when I became just a banana peel since I would be biodegradable and it would make me happy. So if I ever turn into a banana, I want you all to remember that.

It is so crazy how much I have adapted into a rural area. I suppose it could be my Incan roots coming alive in me (yay!). I just have this strong desire to live more naturally and simply.

You guys, I want us all to be more. I want us to be less so that we can be more (because less is more, right?).

I am so glad that I got to go to the Jesus, Justice & Poverty conference last weekend. I still think that was definitely the most incredible weekend of my life. I really feel like God is calling some of us into something together. I have some ideas and some vision but sometimes I am scared to put them down here. So i won't just yet. OK, I will put this out there but I think we all really need to bond together somehow and figure out ways as a community that we can consume less resources. When Brian spoke on Saturday about how 20% of the world consumes 80% of the world's resources (us), that was not the first time I had heard those stats, but they hit me just as hard. I have some ideas on how we could start to do this, to live more simply and stop using up so much resources for our convenience and I know that others do. I believe that God can really use a small community of people to make a huge impact if we allow Him to. I am just so tired of giving into convenience, I really am. I want to be about what I say I believe. For the sake of the love of God, I want to use less and be more. I want a community of believers to stop giving into entitlement and convenience and to start being better stewards of the environment.

Brothers and sisters, how are we going to allow God to use us to bring His transformation?

I miss my Tampa community a lot. I love my friends I have made here dearly but there is something incredible about being with other Jesus lovers/followers (jaja, that sounds funny but that's what we are). After the JJP conference, I am even more convinced that real justice and transformation cannot come without the Lord and it cannot come on our own, as individuals. We need each other. There is just so much going on that only Jesus can heal.

A couple of weeks ago I finally began to let myself really mourn over the pain of this beautiful community. I don't think that I have fully allowed myself to step into the pain of the community but parts of me have and the parts where I have gone to have hurt. I think it really began on the 4th of July; a large group us went to Ft. Myers Beach. It was a little crazy, a lot of fun and very surprising. However, it did also leave me with some aches in my heart.

Crazy because well, it was the beach on the 4th, enough said. (For anyone curious, no, I did not do anything crazy or illegal or nothing I should have not been doing!). It was fun because there were a lot of laughs making fun of each other and just hanging out and I always enjoy saying things that make no sense to people, especially in spanish, because then it really makes no sense at all (jajajajaja). Surprising, though, because God really just made some miracles that night. I ended up talking with a couple of the guys from the CIW for a couple of hours in Spanish (that's really huge for me to be able to speak that long in Spanish to people!). And I got to share with them about what God has done in my life and about surviving cancer and who Jesus has been to me! That's a miracle right there, on the real.

I also was able to do a lot of listening, though, which started to leave some aches in my heart. The one guy I was talking with mainly, everyone calls him "Chery" (and he told me he doesn't understand why, jaja), shared his story with me about coming from Guatemala to Immokalee. He is about 27 now and came here to the US about six years ago with one of his brothers, "Roque", who I actually worked with in the watermelon fields a few weeks ago. Anyhow, he shared with me that back in Guatemala he had been studying medicine for a couple of years in a university. "Chery" said he loved it, he loves medicine, he loves science and one day his dream is to go back to Guatemala and be a doctor who can provide medical services for those who cannot afford it. I've never been to Guatemala and I have only heard bits and pieces about the current political instability going on. "Chery" explained to me that there was still quite a bit of violence going on in the town he came from and that eventually he was forced to leave with his brother and come find work here in the US...

...how the heck does someone go from studying medicine to picking produce for sub-poverty wages?

I tried to imagine how I would feel if that happened to me. What if I went to the watermelon fields and for some reason, I was not allowed to leave? Or what if all of a sudden, I was forced to move to another country, where the culture does not make sense to me and I do not know when I will see my family again and I don't speak the language? And it does not matter that I just worked really hard and sacrificed tons of time, energy and sleep to earn a degree. I just have to work, I have to work to survive. The work I do has nothing to do with what I just studied but no one cares. Many would probably not believe that I ever studied anyway, because they already have their assumptions about me as a person because of the people group I belong to.

This is the case with many farm workers here. What does that do to a person's dignity? Studying medicine one day and then a few days later, picking produce for people in the US who will never thank you, never see your face, never really care about the back-breaking work you're doing for their convenience?

I would be so angry if that was me. I would feel entitled to more. I would demand better kind of work.

My heart begins to ache in situations like this. I also have met a couple of other guys who are really struggling with depression and then drinking out of that because they are so homesick and because they are away from all that is familiar and English is freakin hard to learn! This is where I start to mourn for my brothers, for those who are suffering.

God has been trying to teach me a lot about my people. I am so privileged that I cannot even see it most of the time. Almost everyday I am here I listen to people talk about their families they have not seen in years and it brings tears to my eyes, even now. It is so unfair. It is so unfair. It is so freakin unfair. How come I have the privilege to hop into my car and in an hour and a half I can see my mom, my sister, my step-dad, my grandparents, some of my cousins, aunts and uncles, my dad? How come others have to go years and years? I am a Latina but I have such a small understanding of my people's struggle. I don't fully understand what my family went through to get to this country. I know that my abuelita (grandma) had to come first and then she did not see my mom or any of her other children for 8 years because she did not have the money to bring them over here. I see the affects that has had my family until this day and I have heard my mom talk sadly about how she had to go through so much of her childhood without either parents around.

I am grateful, though, that God is allowing me to finally connect to some of this pain. I just hear so many hard things and I do not have any answers. I see no other hope than God. He is the only One who is going to be able to make things right. He is the One who has to bring people out of depression, out of drinking too much, He is the One who can bring families back together. I think the work and the organizing of the CIW is incredible and necessary. The fight is a good fight but the fight is bigger than us. We need the One bigger than us to win.

aaahhhhhhhh

Lord, you are like a really good song with a sweet melody that comes on the radio at the end of a long, tiresome day when you're finally able to get into bed and just listen to music.

Lord, you are our refuge, there is a joy in being able to come into your arms, being able to recognize your power and our need for you.

The way a newborn baby needs their mama, we need you, Jesus.

I think I have writer's block...

sorry, guys!

And I have so, so, so many thoughts and reflections going through my mind. So freakin many. I want to spit them out and put them on paper and/or a screen and I want the world to see them. There are so many things I cannot stop wondering about, trying to figure out what the Lord is doing because so many crazy but incredible things keep happening and I'm like AAAHHHH.

:)

I just know that I had the most incredible weekend of my life. (Well, one of the most). No, it was definitely the most incredible.

I've seen a lot and I want to see more.

I want to be more.

I don't want to stop here. We have got to keep going, we got to keep seeing the bigger picture.

I am so excited about everything that is to come and that is happening even now....

When I get over this writer's block, I will write more.

Someone keep me reminding me that less is more. Less is more...so it's ok if I don't write a lot this month. It would be better to write one or two great things versus ten mediocre things, right?

OK. Less is more!

Chasing alligators with some maracuya

Wow.

I have not written in here for like 15 days or something. That makes me kind of sad. And sooo much has happened so far in July. I think this has been one of the most joyful months of my life, for so many reasons. From welcoming home some brothers and a sister, to a beautiful panda bear who has invited me just as I am into a bamboo forest, to chasing alligators with Melo, Cande, and Oscar and then drinking mate and eating maracuya with a sweet lady from Paraguay in Immokalee, to sharing the hope of Jesus in Spanish on the fourth of july with some of my hermanos here, from the Lord helping me to have more of a heart of compassion, to those simple moments of sitting around and listening to my Immo friends play the jarana (a traditional guitar like instrument from Veracruz, Mexico), finally being able to understand and embrace children for all the wonderfulness they are, from the smiles and laughs Itzael (the baby of the family I live with) gives me every time he sees me now, the excitement and happiness I feel when I see him, from being moved more and more out of complacency.............

Wow.

God never fails.

Where would we be without Him?

I will write more tomorrow. I have not slept much in the past 4 nights (but it was worth it for numerous reasons).

Love you all.

Throwing watermelon in the fields of southern Alabama

I wish you all could have been there with me. I know that I have seen a lot of you since I went to work in the fields but I do not think I have fully processed everything I saw and felt and experienced. I don't feel like I was able to fully explain to anyone I saw in Tampa everything I experienced.

What scares me the most is that it is hard to believe that it all happened. It is so difficult to believe that I stood out in the sun in southern Alabama for two whole days, rolling and tossing watermelons around a field for your freakin 4th of july BBQ this friday (FYI, I have never been a fan of that holiday).

You can't really care about anything until it's all up in your face.

When it's your back that hurts, when it's your legs giving up on you, when it's your arms that can barely stand to lift anything anymore, when it's your breathing that becomes funny because you have inhaled pesticides all day long, when it's your fingernails that have become covered with dirt, when it's your face that the flies are attacking, when it's your body that is dripping with sweat, when it's you that wakes up several times in the night because your body aches so bad and you can't get comfortable in bed....

...then it can finally kick you out of complacency and really mean something to you. Then it becomes personal.

You can't play it safe anymore when it smacks you in the face.

Very few of us in the world of wealth and privilege have an idea of where all our convenience comes from. For two days, I watched people work their bodies harder than any human being should ever have to for the sake of my convenience and for yours, too. So we could have our goods nice and cheap, just like we feel entitled to them. I watched the Latino immigrants, MY PEOPLE, who are constantly stereotyped, scorned, and bashed in the freakin United States of America work for people like you and me, often deemed "illegals" and "aliens", as if they were not people created in the image of God. So we could have our watermelon for our 4th of July BBQ's this year and never give one thought to where it came from or who's back it came off of.

I watched a strong group of Latino men from Mexico and Guatemala work for their families. I watched them persevere in the midst of 90 degree summer heat, I watched them sacrifice for the sake of their people having a more dignified life back in their motherlands. I watched them as they never once felt sorry for themselves but instead chose to be strong and work together. I watched them encourage each other and push each other to keep working, all day long, all freakin day long. Sun up to sun down. No joke, no exaggeration on that.

Melody and I drove up to work alongside a crew from Immokalee that sticks together when they migrate north during the summer to look for work. What I saw was not common within the agricultural world. I got to work alongside a cooperative, people who were committed to being democratic about everything and making sure that their pay was split evenly amongst all the workers. I met a group of men who had become like a family, in the midst of having to leave their own families.

I already feel so far removed from being in that world. I couldn't even really journal while I was there because my arms hurt so bad. It hurt to use my hands and it hurt to make my arms straight. All I cared about at the end of the day was taking a shower and not being hot anymore and then finally being able to fall into bed, only to wake up several times throughout the night because my back hurt so much, and then my shoulders did too, and so did my legs. The first night a few of us went to swim in a river afterwards and I remember trying to find some comfort for my body in the water. All I could think about was how I did not want to go back the next day. I did not freakin want to put myself through that kind of labor again. To be honest with you, I did not feel like I should have to. I am a woman! I don't believe women should have to do work like that. That is pretty huge for me to say, considering that I am a feminist in many ways and that I am all about empowering women. But my body could not handle that. OK, so you may think, well, Lauren, you're just not strong enough. The truth is that you are probably are not strong enough, either. This work is not just physical, it is also mental and emotional. You have to be strong in spirit to endure monotonous work like this everyday, for weeks and weeks.

There were so many moments when I wanted to stop. I wanted to freakin stop. The first few hours I was there I wanted to cry. I knew that I was slow, I couldn't keep up with the crew, my body was not strong enough. My privilege was slowly nudging me, reminding me of my college degree I recently earned, reminding me that I have choices. It reminded me that just 48 hours later I would be back in Immokalee in my comfortable home and then in Tampa, even more in my comfort zone. I struggled with feeling too good to be there. I struggled with my privilege. I struggled with wondering if anyone would care when I talked to them about this experience. I struggled because I wanted to be good enough to do this work and I was not.

I looked at my Latino hermanos, my brothers, and I thought about how many times I have put them down. How I have stereotyped, assumed, and been angry with Latino men, ones who are related to me, ones I have dated, ones I have been annoyed at for being too flirtacious and sexual. I saw my brothers in a new way those days I spent with them.

My hermanos are strong. They are sacrificial, they are committed, they are caring, they are hard workers, they take their work seriously. They don't stop working because they know there are children to feed, maybe their younger brothers and sisters back home or their sons and daughters. They have wives to take care of and parents, too. They endure this kind of work for the sake of others. They are forced out of their motherland and away from all they know because that's how important their family is to them.

I had to ask God for forgiveness and mercy for the times I have put my brothers down. Then as I rolled watermelons around the fields, I thought about all the people I have met who hate immigrants. People who are so quick to hate my people, people who deem them all as criminals and "illegal" (as if any human being could be "illegal". I'd like to watch someone try and argue God on that one). If you have ever bashed immigrants or Latinos, I urge you to beg God for mercy. Unless you come from this world, we have a very, very limited idea of their struggle.

We bash the people who work for our convenience, who bring us the things we feel entitled to.

It's not just about the watermelons being picked here in the US. It's about the bananas we eat that came from Ecuador, the T-shirt from a maquiladora in El Salvador, the sneakers from India, the cell phone from China.

We just have no idea who's back it came off of.

How can I urge others to care?

How can I urge others out of complacency?

It was not just a farm worker who picked your tomatoes this year (or your strawberries or watermelons).

It was Gerardo, Joaquin, Leonel, Cruz, Manuel,Edwin, "Rocky", and Cande. And for a couple of days, it was ME, too.

It was a human being, who dreams, laughs, cries, and wants to live life, just like you and me.

Do they not deserve a fair wage, just like you feel you do, too? Just like I feel that, too, for myself?

But....

On Thursday we drove away from the fields, back into the world that made a bit more sense to me. On the way back to Immokalee, Melody and I stopped to eat at Panera in Gainesville and I felt like the two previous days may as well have been a dream. If it had not been for my muscles that were still so sore or the dirt that was still stuck underneath my fingernails, I probably would have thought so.

The only way we can truly care is if we stop removing ourselves from the pain of the world.

Jesus never removed Himself from the pain of the world.

Until it becomes personal, it won't ever really matter.

Until you put ourselves into someone else's reality, then we will just remain people who say "Oh man...that sucks, that's so sad" and then we'll be distracted two minutes later by something else.

We desperately need to re-connect ourselves to the pain of this world, ESPECIALLY the people of God, the people who claim to be followers of Jesus. We should be the ones on the front lines if we claim to follow the most loving and radical man who ever walked this earth.

We cannot afford to be the people who just send a monthly check to World Vision and then spend tons of money on unnecessary things for our homes.

I am pretty sure that when Jesus told us that to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves were the two greatest commandments, that He meant it.

And we are not called to feel sorry for anyone. No one needs our pity.

Another thing that really smacked me in the face was how much the guys I worked with did not feel sorry for themselves. When we waited for the next bus or wagon to come from the farmer to fill up, we were able to take short breaks and hang out in the van we all drove over in (BTW, breaks like this are not common when picking other produce, it was just because we happened to be loading the watermelons, what I learned). The guys would blast music and sing, sometimes they would playfully dance, kicked a soccer ball around and sometimes they would close their eyes and rest for a few minutes. If it hadn't been for them and their high spirits, I think I would have been in a really bad mood because of the pain I was in, along with the heat and the insects who insisted on being around you no matter how much big spray you had put on already.

Agricultural is a scary business. Not only is there a big risk for injury and for eventually developing something like cancer thanks to all the toxic chemicals you constantly inhale, you never know if you are guaranteed work or how much. You never know how much you will earn at the end of the day. You don't know if the crew leader or the grower is going to screw you over with your pay. You are not guaranteed health benefits in case of injury, either.

My challenge to any of you is to step into someone else's reality. Step into the world of someone who is faceless to many yet is someone you depend on for so much. Step in and take their struggle with you.

And have a happy freakin 4th of July.....celebrate "freedom"...........

Freedom for who? Definitely not for all. Definitely not for all who contribute a lot to our country.

Sandias

Today I am off to a small town in the Florida panhandle called Mariana ( i think that's the name, it's like 20 minutes from the Alabama border or something). Melody and I are going to work in the watermelon fields. We're meeting up with a bunch of the workers from Immokalee that we know (well, I only know a few of them).

I ask that you would pray for me.....pray that I would be changed in the ways God wants me to be changed through this experience. Pray that I will find a part of Him in the fields and in the lives of farmworkers. Pray for me as I learn to stop stereotyping, as I learn to love better, to forgive, to judge less....against both the rich and the poor.

So we will be working Tuesday and Wednesday and then driving back to Immo on early Thursday morning. Then I have to drive back up to Tampa on Thursday night so that i can go get my 6 month bone marrow biopsy check up on Friday morning. So it's gonna be a long and interesting week............

But i cannot wait to see many of you this weekend! And I will think of a lot of you today when we drive through Tampa on I-75. :(

Carnival

The title of this blog has nothing to do with anything. But it is the name of a song by Natalie Merchant that I have been listening to a lot in the past month or so. I am not sure why. You know when you just need a good song in the background and it's raining outside (like right now) and you're like, yes, this is nice.

Speaking of music, something interesting I have noticed about myself here in Immo is that every time I hear traditional music from Mexico or Guatemala, I get this huge smile on my face and something inside of my soul smiles even wider. I feel this contentment within that I have not felt in a long time. It reminds me of the contentment I felt last summer when I went to Manila and we spent a couple of the day in the slums, making new friends. I can't even really differentiate between Norteno or Duranguense or Marimba, yet I know something in me is drawn to this music, whether it's in the car with no AC in the middle of a humid Florida afternoon or coming from our yard while Lucas works outside. Something in me comes home when I hear it.

I realized that I did not write in here all week! I really wish I would have because this has been a different kind of week;I got out of the office a lot and did some other kinds of things. Then this morning I had a bunch of revelations that kind of tied the whole week together and I was like AAH!, this is so awesome and convicting and harsh and incredible all at the same time.

Hmmm, where do I start?

Well, God is faithful, once again. I was riding my bike to the office this past Tuesday and it hit me once again how Immo is full of single males who don't mind showing a cute young woman like me some attention (hahaha). I can't really ride my bike or walk around here without someone hitting on me at least once. It doesn't really bother me and I have never felt offended, because like I said, it happened all the time in Miami growing up. Yet it made me sad that this is another barrier to building relationships with people in the community. I can only talk so much to a single male my age because I don't want to give him the wrong idea and there are really not a lot of single women here, so yeah. So I was praying as I rode my bike and I asked God for the opportunity to build relationships with some of the women of the community. That day at the office was pretty quiet and slow and a lot of the other staff had to take off and do some other things. Eventually it ended up only being one of the CIW staff, Pancha (Francisca) and myself. She just turned 26 and does not speak much English. We have talked before and she is really cool but I am so afraid of not being able to fully understand her or her understand me. Something amazing happened that day and I credit it all to God. Pancha and I sat down and had some deep conversations, all in Spanish and I promise you that I understood at least 90% of what she was saying. It was not just like, oh yeah, do have any brothers and sisters. No, we were sharing our struggles with body image, talking about exercise, talking about men, talking about God. It was so wonderful. She did most of the talking and it was so great to hear her story. Pancha came from Oaxaca (in southern Mexico) to Immo when she was 17 to work in the fields. She came with her 13 year old sister. I think they had a couple of family members here already but man. That is scary. When I was 17, I had trouble convincing my mom that I should be allowed to drive at night. My biggest concerns when I was 17 were college applications, my friends, and whoever I was dating at the time and how I looked. Pancha was 17 and immigrating on her own to a place she had never been to with a little sister. I was working on my one-act plays for theater classes in school and she was picking the tomatoes for my sandwich at Subway and having to endure a lot of unfairness in the process of picking those freakin tomatoes. And she did this just so she could send money back home so that her younger brothers and sisters would be able to go to school.............

Then Pancha showed me something else that really felt like an answer to prayer as well. One thing I miss here a lot is being able to converse with other believers and pray with them and just find hope in God together. The phone has been good but there is something about those face to face conversations. While we were talking, she grabs this book off her desk called Prayers for the New Social Awakening and then proceeds to show me her prayer that was published in this book! Pancha is Catholic; her poem was printed in Spanish and then translated into English. I will type it up later on tonight so you all can see it, it is pretty powerful and it was so encouraging to read about her faith.

The poor and the oppressed always have the strongest faith. They have been through the worst yet they generally never seem to doubt that God is on their side and that He is with them. The closest I can relate to that is when I had cancer three years ago. In that moment everything was stripped away from me and all I had was my Heavenly Father. The marginalized of this world have such a deep understanding of that because God has always been all that they have had. The rich and privileged like myself have so much worldly things and we still doubt and question at times. Even in a world that has been so mean to them, the poor tend not to doubt the existence or power of God. Pancha and I talked about that and dude, it was so hard for me to express how much I believe in the power of God and how I believe with all my heart that He is the one who will bring real transformation. But I believe she got what I was trying to say.

I believe God is constantly just trying to remind me of His power here. That same day God spoke to me through a Mos Def song (yeah, I know I got this CD like a decade late but it's still amazing and I love it a lot). It's from the "Black on Both Sides" album. The first song on it, called "Fear Not of Man", really has struck me hard. I love real hip-hop. Here are some of the lyrics that truly to spoke to me and encouraged me:

"The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked,
but God is sufficient in disposin of affairs
Gunmen and stockholders try to merit your fear
But God is sufficient over plans they prepared".

GOD IS SUFFICIENT!

We cannot let go or doubt His power to bring transformation into this broken and painful world.

It was truly incredible because you probably know that I have been thinking a lot about wealth and TNC's and profit and all that kind of stuff. I just struggle with the idea of rich CEO's and rich people in general. So I was listening to that song while I was working on some stuff at the office (yes, I can listen to music on my headphones while I work, it's so great! I love being in a grassroots organization!). And God did not stop there with speaking to me through this song. I checked my email and a certain little panda bear that has come into my life recently forwarded me an article about Jesus and Zaccheus (the tax collector). Basically Zaccheus was a man who cheated people out of money for profit and he became rich that way. He abused the already corrupted system to gain his wealth. Hmm, yeah, it did not take me long to compare Zaccheus to someone like a modern day CEO of a big corporation.

What really smacked me in the face was the fact that Jesus reached out to this rich man. Zaccheus climbs in a tree to see and hear Jesus speak and as a result of their interactions, Jesus invited himself over to his house for dinner. Out of the gracious love Jesus shows Zaccheus, who is so despised in his society, Zaccheus ends up giving away half of his wealth. He repents for the ways he has cheated others and for the ways he has abused the system.

How can Jesus, a man who came to the world and stood amongst the poor and the least of these, also choose to love this rich man and show him grace and love?

Now that, my friends, is radical love.

I was just sitting there reading this article and I wanted to scream because something in me clicked. The rich desperately need Jesus, too, and His will is also to be reconciled to them as well.

His will is for me to love those whom seem like enemies. The ones I cannot stand, the ones controlling all the wealth in this world and creating unjust trade policies, the ones who oppress, the ones who are racist, the ones who gentrify low income neighborhoods, the ones who hate immigrants, He calls us to love them and share His good news with them, too.

Trust me, it's a bit hard for me to swallow, too. But this is truth. I cannot deny that this is truth.

This morning I realized that probably since the beginning of time there has been a war going on between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. This past week it hit me that this struggle, this fight is not just about farm workers fighting for their fair wages and safe working conditions. The working class is fighting against the system everywhere. On Thursday I went with Melody (my roommate/co-worker) and Brigitte (another co-worker) to a Collier County School Board meeting that was set to be pretty controversial. Basically, the county has decided that they are going to fire a few hundred janitors because they want to outsource them to work for a private company. That means all the janitors (who are mostly Latino and Black) will lose their jobs; if they want to, they can reapply for a job with this new private company but of course they will lose a lot of benefits and will be making less money. The three of us decided to go to stand in solidarity with other day laborers. That is what I truly love about the CIW. Much of their philosophy is not all about the farm workers; the fight is against any kind of oppression anywhere and we will show our support to others when and where we can.

I had a lot of mixed feelings at the school board meeting all the way in Naples. Going to Naples just feels strange in itself because it feels like one just went to another planet. It is so wealthy, so extravagant, so pristine. All in the same county- one of the richest towns in the US and then one of the poorest. Anyhow, there was a few hundred people who showed up to this meeting in order to fight for their jobs. Part of me felt hopeful because at least there was a time during the meeting for some of the janitors and their supporters (i.e. teachers) who were there to speak to the school board members about this. Some people spoke so powerfully and they really put the school board in their place. Some were audacious enough to challenge them and ask why there have been so administrative raises yet the school board claims they need to privatize in order to stay within their budget cuts. I loved watching their faces at certain comments, hahahaha....
There was one really beautiful lady who got up; she was from Haiti and even after her three minute time limit was over and the buzzer went off indicating that she needed to stop talking, she just looked at school board, pointed at the paper she was reading off of and said, "I'm sorry but I need to keep going, I need to read this until the end" and everyone in the audience just laughed and cheered and she finished! She said her piece and it was wonderful and they needed to hear about how she has worked as a janitor for ten years in Collier County; how dare they freakin just take away her job like that.

Then on Friday several of us drove over to Miami for a protest and march that took place downtown. It was put on by an alliance of people called Right to the City; there were groups based out of New Orleans, New York, L.A., etc, who all decided that it would be a good time to protest at the National Conference of the Mayors this weekend. It is a time when a lot of the mayors in the US get together to talk with developers, etc. But what about listening to the people of the community? What about talking with constituents about where their tax money is going, about how we want to improve our schools, about how we don't want our neighborhoods gentrified and yuppie'fied. So this protest and march around downtown was to get the mayors attention about these kinds of issues. Again, we went as the CIW to support other grassroots and community organizations who support us and have come to our events in the past.

It was so interesting. This march started in Overtown, which is an inner-city mostly African-American neighborhood in Miami right next to downtown and as I walked through there, I saw a lot of beauty and charm. I wondered why I was taught growing up to be scared of this neighborhood and to be separated from the people of that community. I was taught to avoid those exits on the interstate. It has gone through a lot of gentrification, though and you better believe a lot of the community was there to march and fight against it that day.

The protest got really rained out, though, typical Florida! But we marched anyhow and stood outside of the hotel that the mayors were in, people with their megaphones and their signs and everyone chanting their chants. I was just standing there in the pouring rain in my orange skirt and my bare feet (because it was too hard to walk in wet sandals and I am not a big fan of shoes anyway), looking up at this fancy building in the downtown of the city I grew up in and I wondered if the mayors even cared. I wondered how effective we are. I wondered if they would take into consideration any concerns of the citizens. I wondered if they cared that people are pushed out of the communities they have lived in their whole lives. I wondered if they cared that teachers are underpaid or that students are not often receiving the best possible education.

I wondered if the school board cared about the janitors who got up and spoke about how they were concerned they might not have enough money in the near future to feed their families if their jobs were outsourced. I wondered if they cared about the struggle of the immigrants who clean Collier County public schools.

God is sufficient.

So we ended up staying in Miami the whole weekend and it was a lot of fun. I unexpectedly ran into a ton of people I went to high school with and hadn't seen since I graduated. I also got to see my old college roommate/one of my best friends since the 6th grade this weekend too and it made me so happy. I missed her so much. She came out to dinner with my family and I love how she just feels like a family member even after not seeing her for a while. It was also great to share with people about Immokalee and to tell them about this amazing community I have entered into. I got to go to the beach, too!

So Melody and I ended up staying at my mom's place and for some reason, as much wealth my family has now because of my mom's re-marraige to my step-dad, there is no internet access in that house. Melody really needed to work on translating on this document for some of the CIW staff and get online so we decided to crash for four hours after coming home really late and then wake up at like 7:30 am to go take advantage of free w-fi at Panera Bread since she was on a time constraint. I felt like dying when I woke up because I was so exhausted but wow. I am so glad we woke up and I ended up sitting in Panera with her for a couple of hours because I had this powerful experience with the Lord.

I decided to just sit there and write and journal and read. I wonder if some people were just really praying for me this morning because the whole week tied together for me in a powerful way. I am not even sure that my words will do justice to what I felt and heard from God.

Reconciliation.

My life seems to run in themes sometimes. Reconciliation has been the big theme for me so far in 2008, it has seemed.

I don't know if you are familiar with the story of Jonah or not. In case not, it's a short book in the Old Testament; he is the dude who gets swallowed by the big fish for three days and three nights. Jonah, a Hebrew, was called by God to preach to the Ninevites to repent for their sins. The real interesting thing is the Ninevites were very oppressive towards Jonah and his people. Yet God was calling Jonah of all people to go and love the very people who oppressed him? Who hurt him, who probably stripped him of his dignity in some ways, and his people, too?
God has been bringing me back to the story of Jonah for three years now. I have gotten different things out of it at various times in my life the past three years. Today the Lord lead me back to Jonah and all I could hear was God's desire for reconciliation. His desire for peace, for truth, for restoration.

God calls for an end to this war between the rich and the poor. He calls for an end to oppression and He calls us to end it with love. We are called to the love the oppressors (and in some ways, I am part of being the oppressor but I take it personally as that I am called to love the CEO's I despise).

God loves those who hurt us, too. He wants better for them, too.

It's exactly what Jesus preached about -loving our enemies.

God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, He is merciful (Luke 6:27-36).

I thought about how so much this semester the Lord has urged me to be merciful to so many who have deeply hurt me in the past and also recently. He has urged me to choose His love. Reconciliation is the ministry of Jesus, that is what He did for us. He reconciled us to our Father, He gave us a restored relationship.

Is it possible? Could we be willing to fight for that? For reconciliation between the rich and the poor? Could we be willing to reach out to those who oppress, to those who hate us for no reason, who try and control us and the rest of the world?

I wrote this in my journal this morning as God spoke all this to me and I was trying to take it all in. I saw Him come alive once again in the Scriptures. I saw His desire for us, for His children, His jealously to be first in our lives, above anything else....

"Mercy on an abusive father....
mercy on a man who lies to you and disrespects you and uses you...
mercy on the rich CEO's who profit off of sweatshops...
mercy on me, the prideful girl who often deceives herself".

God is merciful and gracious and loving. He gives us a call to be of this kind of character as well. We have to choose this if we ever want to see real transformation, real reconciliation in this world...............




(PS~I just want to put it out there that Melody personally knows Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine because they heavily support the CIW! She has Zack de la Rocha's cell phone number in her own cell phone! OK, I just thought that was really cool because I have been a Rage fan since I was like 12). :)

Aguacates

So apparently more people read this thing than I thought! Seriously, I am flattered because I have had several people contact me this week and tell me that they enjoy reading my entries. I have always felt that being a writer has been part of my identity and this year I feel like it's come back more than ever. I remember when I was a little girl, my mom used to have to take my sister and me with her to the restaurant she worked at with her on the weekends sometimes. It was a small place, so it was OK. My mom was the best looking waitress, as well the hardest working. :) I used to sit in a corner at a table and write stories most of the day. I even made covers for them and chapters and then drew pictures on the cover. I'd really like to go back and read those so I can see how truly whacked out I was as a kid. I bet I would make more sense to myself now. I am pretty sure I wrote some really funny things, like stealing golf carts and driving to Canada or something. jajajajajajajajajajajajaja...........................

OK, that was a random tangent that has nothing to do with Immokalee!

Immokalee. I've been here for two weeks but it has felt like forever. Rahiel has left and I miss her a lot. Now I really feel like I am on my own for real in a spiritual sense. And that's hard because I have been asking myself a lot of hard questions.

One thing that has been really frustrating is my lack of Spanish in some cases. There is absolutely no way that I can express how I feel about a lot of things in Spanish the way I can in English. And this affects a lot of things, I am realizing. It really puts up a lot of barriers to building relationships with people in the community. I hate to constantly ask people to translate, too. All day I watch people come into the office and then I cannot fully communicate with them. I cannot support them or hear their stories fully. Sometimes its people who are coming in because they have not received wages for work, things like that.

So then this is where I have to ask God to continue to help me to forgive my Dad, who is the reason I don't speak Spanish fluently; because he was so freakin adamant about English being my first language so my mom stopped speaking it to my sister and me when we were very young. And then all I picked up most of my life were random phrases and words until I went to college and took 3 semesters of Spanish. That helped a lot but it's still not the same. I see no solution but to move to Latin America for a while and totally immerse myself into learning it fully. If Latinos can come to the US and learn English well and learn to express themselves deeply in another language, then so can I. So much of me is ready to pick up and leave this year but part of me is being an adult (sigh) and being practical about things like finances. So it might have to wait for a while.

I am not writing this to offend anyone but I just need to be honest, too. It is so hard that all the White people who have moved here to Immokalee to work with the community all speak Spanish better than me. It's difficult because none of them have to know Spanish. That is not their culture, that is not their roots. I should know it. The most important and influential person in my life is my mami, a pura ecuatoriana and I can't even fluently speak her native language that she wanted to teach me so badly.

I want so badly to reconcile these two worlds I live in. I keep thinking about how a few years ago God began to affirm me in my ethnic identity as a bi-racial person. I always heard Him tell me He was going to use me a bridge builder. I kind of can see how that may possibly come alive. I live in a world of White privilege because of how I look and because I am half White. But I am also a Latina and that is the culture I was raised in. And now somehow God is gonna use this for His glory as He uses me to love the Latino community. I can't fully explain it but I feel like I can see it.

So mostly I have been working on small things around the office, like making packets, copying articles, going to meetings, meeting and talking with people who come to visit. I know it does not seem so glamorous and exciting. But at the same time I feel motivated and inspired because I realize this is how you change a system. You educate, you network, you build relationships. You mobilize. We had a meeting this week to talk about the upcoming Subway campaign in the fall, so that they too can join in with ensuring farm workers get paid fair wages and have safe working conditions. It was amazing to sit there and listen the staff name off all these different groups and individuals they have guaranteed support from around the country. Basically this is what they do and this is what they did for the Taco Bell, McDonalds and BK campaigns. During the fall and spring they will go to the location of the company's headquarters and just work off whatever connections they already have there and then build new ones. They spend several months, the allies and the farm workers, in that specific city visiting churches, synagogues, universities, high schools, non-profits and community organizations explaining to them the situations of Immokalee. They then just build ally after ally and it leads up to a huge protest eventually at the company's HQ. Due to these strategies, the CIW, I believe is one of the most dynamic and effective grassroots movements in the US today. I feel so privileged to be a part of this. They are truly a group of people who persevere through the worst and it is amazing to hear their stories.

Their first campaign started back in 2001 against Yum! Brands,which is the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC, A&W, Pizza Hut, and another fast food place, I forget. Not only did they do a protest and ally building in Louisville, KY for several months at the Yum! Brands HQ, they also did a Taco Bell Truth Tour. A large group of farm workers and their allies got on a bus and drove cross country to Irvine, CA to do a hunger strike at the Taco Bell HQ. Along the way they visited numerous universities, churches and community organizations to build relationships and to educate people about what was going on. They then sat outside the Taco Bell HQ and did a hunger strike. It was like a 100 of them, I think, I am not sure how many. But that is courage, that is determination, that is perseverance. And Taco Bell and Yum finally did agree to their demands to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes they picked. They worked on that first campaign for FOUR years.

And they are changing a system, slowly...............

I watched a couple of documentaries this week that made me sick to my stomach. One of them was The Corporation and the other was This is what Democracy Looks Like. (The latter is about the WTO protests that went down in 99 in Seattle). We live in such a sick world. We live in a world that is controlled by a bunch of big corporations who are money hungry, greedy and they don't care who they step on in the process of getting more profit. We live in a world where many people outside the US see this country as imperialistic. We live in a world where transnational corporations have more power than our governments do and they own everything. Soon they will come into our homes while we sleep and patent our genes without our permission and then they'll be on sale at a freakin Wal-Mart the next week.

OK, that might be an exaggeration but if a TNC feels they have the right to go into any country they want and patent a rare plant THAT DOES NOT BELONG TO THEM and then make it into some expensive drug that only rich people can afford, how is that fair? How is that fair? How is that fair???????????

I am writing about this because I see the affects of globalization and neoliberalism in Immokalee. I see how it has forced people to leave their mother countries and their families.

I meet men who are lonely and who are looking for a woman to love them. I realize that they are not many single women in Immokalee. But there are a lot of single men who were forced to leave their wives and children to find work because their countries are getting screwed over by TNC's and US foreign policy and by their own governments. It is such a freakin devastating situation and many times this week I have had to wrestle with things like this within and I feel hopeless. Now I also see gentrification going on here, too, and I am like damn, they can't get a break in life??? Now some rich people are going to try and shove them out of their community because they think traditional agriculture won't even exist in the future. Are they really going to try and import everything cheaply from Latin America?

I HATE free trade. With a passion.

Last night I thought a lot about power. Then today I got a surprise phone call (I actually got two and they both made me very happy). But the first one was with a good and old friend from Tampa, Heather Plazak. We were talking about some different things and I shared with her something that I got myself into a couple of days ago. I am not going to explain the whole situation here because it's too complicated but basically something happened that was my fault and it really caught me off guard. Then she told me with a lot of love that I was relying too much on my power, on my own strength, on myself. I was not trusting God completely. It was definitely true because I heard God tell me the same thing, more or less, yesterday.

We NEED the power of God.

And I know various kinds of people read this and you all do not follow the same spiritual beliefs that I do. But I need to express here that in some ways I have forgotten how powerful God is. That is so wrong. And this is all somehow related. This one personal thing that happened to me helped me to see how dangerous it is to rely on our own strength and our own wisdom.

I think about "power to the people" and all this kind of hype that goes on in activist worlds. If the power were really in the people, wouldn't things be a lot better by now? I believe that God can empower us, He wants to empower us, to move, to act, to do something. He doesn't want us to be complacent. But God is the ultimate one with the power. And once we fully grasp that, that we serve a God of the impossible, then maybe we will begin to move mountains.

Why are we not crying out to God more for change? Why don't we pray together for things to be more just? Why don't we pray in Jesus name for maquiladoras to shut down, for the WTO to demolish and that more fair institutions would be implemented instead? Why don't we pray that the people of God would move, especially the people of God with privilege and degrees and that we would use those resources to change systems, to move mountains, to create something to His glory?? Why don't we pray together against greed, that CEO's of these TNC's would be changed in spirit? Why don't we stop being complacent and do more?

Why is the majority of the activist and grassroots world devoid of Jesus and prayer?

I have been questioning myself a lot lately. I wonder if I really am who I say am. I wonder if I am really about what I say I am about. I feel like this summer is a test.

I went running tonight (early evening and the sun was not beating down on me, so I did not feel like I was going to die, it was great!). I was able to actually go about 4 miles, yay! Anyhow, I thought a lot about this I ran. It's easy to be a certain kind of person when everyone is watching. I don't want to stop running when there are cars on the road and people might be watching. Then people might not think I am able to run, that I am not capable. I want them to have a certain image of me, I don't want them to think I can't handle it, so I force myself to keep going even though there is a huge cramp in my right oblique and also in my right shoulder.

But then I got to a more isolated road. I could have walked it if I wanted to. No one was watching. I could have gotten away with it. And then I could have kept running when I got back to a busier road again, when people would see me.

If I really want to be good at running, if I say I want to get better at this, I want to be healthier and stronger, then I am going to run whether anyone is watching or not. It's something I choose to be committed to.

If I say I am going to follow Jesus, then I am going to do it whether other Christians are watching or not. I have no other Christians here to watch me. It's not like college, where Melyssa and Jeremy always challenged us to go deeper, to do more. This is where the real test comes. Am I committed or not?

If I say I am committed to seeking justice, then I am going to do it, whether others are watching or not.

I want to be who I say I am. And I need to be OK with the fact that I am going to fall from time to time.

But I can't stop running this race. God is all I have, He is all we have. We can't change things without Him.

Because if it was possible to change things without Him.........
then someone explain to me why all these movements that exist in the world, all these ideologies have not been able to fix things yet.

We need Jesus and we need each other.

One last thing...sorry, I know this was really long. I need to ask for some prayer for my family. One of aunts, my Tia Odalys, may be passing away soon. She is the wife of my Tio (uncle) Javier, one of my mom's younger brothers. She is diabetic and has not been doing well for the past couple of years. Recently she went blind and had two massive heart attacks. I am not close to her so it has not really hit me yet. I am concerned, though, for my three cousins and my uncle she is going to leave behind. My cousins are only 15, 20, and 22. All still so young.............and they just have so many other crazy things going on along with this. I only usually see them about once a year. We were all super close when we were kids but you know how things get when you get older. So just pray that God does something beautiful in my family even in the midst of a hard time. Maybe this will all bring us closer together. I think it already is. My mom and my Tio Javier have had a lot of conflict over the past few years. The other night I was talking to her on the phone and she was on her way to take them out to eat and get them out from the hospital and I just had this surge of hope and I got a little teary eyed. God is hope and He does the impossible. So I just pray things get better and that we are all brought closer together to each other and to Him as a result of all this.

The Latino American Dream?

OK, just wanted to post this poem I wrote back in April. It was inspired by the LaFe/Wimauma immersion trip I went to this past March. Right after being in Wimauma for a weekend and then going home to Miami made me think about a lot of things. Here are some of my thoughts in a spoken word:

First there were some of us that came on the plane,

Some of us had to walk through deserts, our bodies dehydrated and drained.

Another handful of us jumped onto a boat in the Caribbean, longing for something more humane,

Either way we got here, it was all the same kind of pain.

Giving up the motherland for the American dream,

Some sort of magical life that was promised to us,

At least that’s how it first seemed.

Does the “us”, the “nosotros” even exist anymore today?

It’s become more like me, myself, and I and I just want it all my way.

A Latina in her Cubanized suburbia living the American dream,

The magical promised life she has found and it’s just oh so supreme.

Watching her hermanos y hermanas sip away their Starbucks in their designer jeans,

Never realizing our exploited people are the ones who picked those coffee beans!

A Latina in the middle of Immokalee,

Wondering if anyone will ever see,

That she’s been sold into modern day slavery.

Picks tomatoes and strawberries and never sees a dime,

On and on for years, because no one seems to ever have the time,

No one has the time to be her voice,

No one seems to care that she doesn’t have a choice.

A Latina in her Cubanized suburbia living her American dream,

Because of her US citizenship she has the higher self-esteem,

A life full of fancy clothes straight from the maquiladoras, the sweatshops, of El Salvador,

The exact same kind of places and reason her parents ran away over here for.

A Latina lost in a dream and a world all of her own,

Having never no clue that just an hour and a half away is a world of her own gente, her people, just completely unseen and unknown.

One day the suburbanized Latina stepped out of her comfort zone,

Away from all that she knew, but in so many ways it was like coming home.

She began to hear the voiceless and their silent screams,

The Latino American dream is not all that great as it had seemed.

Not only coming home to her gente, but also coming home to the Lord,

She felt her Heavenly Father urging her that this abundant life He offered was not to be ignored.

The Latina begin to see new kinds of dreams,

Ones of justice, love, redemption, instead those were now the themes.

A Latina in her Cubanized suburbia living the American dream,

Felt her heart begin to break, a heart that was once so mean.

Now she has finally woken up, her eyes are ready to see,

Her hands ready to help reconcile, to create new things for His glory,

The way it was always meant to be.

A new dream of freedom, of dignity, and love,

A new kind of Latino American dream for our people,

Can only come from our Heavenly Father above.