Pickles!!!

I love pickles (specifically dill pickles, not sweet pickles). I love to eat them as a snack, on a sandwich, on a veggie burger, on the side, or any other way I can manage.

So I decided to try to make my own pickles.

I thought I would keep it simple and start with refrigerator pickles rather than actually canning pickles. I scoured the internet and looked at a bunch of different recipes and eventually settled on trying this one.

Recipe:
3 cups distilled white vinegar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tbsp kosher salt

1 tbsp of pickling spice (or 1 tsp each of mustard, coriander, and dill seeds)

2 cups hot water

2 pounds pickling cucumbers, sliced 1/4-inch thick

1 bunch of chopped fresh dill

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

Combine your vinegar, sugar, salt, and pickling spice in a large bowl. Pour the hot water over the vinegar mixture, and mix until the sugar is dissolved. Cool to room temperature.
Chop your cucumbers into ¼ inch slices, and divide them into jars (mine fit perfectly into 3 quart size jars). Chop the dill and the garlic, and divide it evenly between your jars.
Pour the cooled brine over the cucumbers. If the brine doesn’t quite cover the cucumbers, add more water/vinegar mixture (I just mixed 1 part water to 1 part vinegar).
Place the jars in the fridge overnight.
They’re ready to eat after 24 hours, and will keep in the fridge for 2 weeks.


I don’t often follow recipes exactly- I like to make changes that make the recipe simpler and I make changes based on what I think will taste better. So here’s what I did differently: I skipped the pickling spice because I didn’t have any and I wasn’t sold on the idea that I would even like it. I used pickling salt instead of kosher salt. I added some thinly sliced onion along with the dill and garlic.

the cukes.

the jars.

I sliced some of the cucumbers in lengthwise slices, some in quarters, and some in circle slices. I made 2 jars- a ½ gallon jar and a quart jar.

cukes all cut up ready for the brine

I put them in the fridge and let them sit for a week. And then I started eating them. They are pretty good. They taste more like tangy cucumbers than pickles though. Or maybe I’m just so used to commercially produced pickles and the ones I made are what pickles are supposed to taste like. I think if I were to make these again I would make a few changes: add more garlic and finely chop it (I really can’t taste the garlic at all and I love garlic), and not chop the dill (the little pieces of dill are floating at the top of the jar and I think it would be better to just put the pieces of dill in there without chopping it). For my first attempt at pickle making, I think it went pretty well.

My next adventure in pickle making was making pickles and canning them so I can enjoy them all winter long.  That story will be my next post...

Cucumbers!

I enjoy cucumbers.  I obviously wouldn’t grow them if I didn’t like them.  If you grow cucumbers, you have to know how to be creative in order to use them (or you have to have friends and neighbors that you can give cucumbers to),  because there always seems to be lots and lots of cucumbers. 

So, here I would like to share all the things that I have done with cucumbers so you too may enjoy cucumbers

I started out just eating the cucumbers cut up on salads.  Then I put cucumber slices on sandwiches with other veggies. 

Then I made a cucumber salad. 

To make the cucumber salad, slice up a cucumber along with about ½ cup of sliced onion.  In into the cucumber and onion about ¼ cup each of mayo and sour cream.  Add a little salt and pepper to taste and some dried or fresh dill.

Then I made taziki sauce.  

This one is a little more complex, but I have made it quite often so it is becoming easier.  Buy a big container (32 ounces, I think) of plain yogurt.  Take a colander and line in with a coffee filter.  Dump the yogurt into the coffee filter lined colander with a bowl underneath.  Liquid will drip out of the yogurt- let it drain over night or for a while.  Now the yogurt is thicker.  Add to the yogurt a shredded cucumber, ½ cup finely chopped onion, 2-3 cloves minced garlic, fresh or dried dill, and salt and pepper to taste.  You can use this as a dip with pita chips or pita bread.  Put some on a sandwich or in a pita or wrap.

I sliced up half a cucumber and sprinkled some salt and lemon juice on the slices.  It might sound a little strange, but it is a very tasty and refreshing cucumber creation.

Then I made pickles, which is going to have to be a post all by itself.

Garden Update- the good, the bad, and the ugly

I think I’m done writing about El Salvador for a while. There are a couple other posts that I’m working on related to El Salvador, but I want to think and reflect on them some more before I post them. So, I will now return to posting random posts about my everyday, less exciting yet good life back in the US.  Mostly I'm going to post about the fruits of my vegetable garden and what I'm doing with those fruits.

So, my vegetable garden hasn't done as well as I would have hoped.  I'm going to blame it on the fact this was my first year growing plants from seeds, a late spring, really hot dry weather, and a lack of proper care while I was away in El Salvador.  

The good: The cucumbers have done well- I've picked at least 15 and there will be probably about 6-10 more.  The jalapenos are doing excellent- lots and lots of pleasantly spicy peppers.

Look at all those nice jalapenos!

cucumbers!

this poor cucumber is oddly shaped because it decided to grow through the trellis fence 

The bad: Tomatoes.  The cherry tomato plant I planted did ok.  I've picked about 20 little tomatoes and they are really yummy, and there are still some more green ones growing, but there should have been so many more.  The regular tomatoes have made me very sad.  The plants grew very slowly to start with.  I started growing them inside, but I started too late.  I thought they would grow really quickly when I put them outside in the nice soil, but they didn't.  I eventually bought some organic fertilizer to give them.  When I got back from El Salvador the plants were huge and I was really excited.  But I didn't see one single tomato on them.  About a week later there were finally some little green tomatoes on the plants, and now there are more little green tomatoes.  I don't know if they will grow to a decent size or if they will have time to get ripe before it gets too cold.  We'll see...

A couple almost ripe cherry tomatoes

the pathetic little green tomatoes

the tomato plants look good, but there just aren't any tomatoes

The ugly: I had planted some cilantro in a couple of pots, and they clearly did not get watered and they were very dead when I got home from El Salvador.  And the broccoli plants grew and grew, but no heads of broccoli ever formed.  I guess broccoli likes cool weather so I think I planted them too late and it got really hot too soon in the summer.  I just pulled the broccoli plants out of the ground and planted some cilantro where the broccoli had been. 

A nice surprise: Acorn squash!!!  I didn't plant acorn squash, but when I got home from El Salvador I found 2 acorn squashes growing amongst the cucumbers.  I'm not sure how the acorn squash grew- maybe there was a seed mix up at the seed factory (but I'm pretty sure that all the seeds I planted looked like cucumber seeds) or maybe a bird stole a seed from somewhere and brought it to my garden or maybe there was a seed in some compost I used.  Or maybe it was a miracle.

Walmart in El Salvador

I don’t like Walmart.  In fact I very strongly dislike Walmart.  For a lot of reasons.  Walmart puts small local businesses out of business.  They underpay and mistreat their employees, some of this mistreatment could even be considered abuse.  The vast majority of Walmart’s products are made in factories with very questionable labor practices.  Walmart promotes the idea that you will live better if you shop at Walmart simply because you’ll be able to buy more “stuff” for a low price.  You won’t live better if you have more “stuff”, and the people who made that stuff you buy won’t live better because they have to pay the true cost of producing that “cheap” stuff.  These problems certainly aren’t limited to Walmart- there are plenty other companies out there with similar problems.  Walmart just takes things to the extreme.  If you want to earn more about why you too should dislike Walmart, there is a pretty good documentary out there called Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.

So when I saw that Walmart had finally made it’s way to El Salvador it made me sad.  (Technically Walmart has been in El Salvador for about 5 years- it was just operating stores under different names.  Now Walmart has opened an actual Walmart store like ones in the States).  There were signs and advertising for Walmart all over the place in San Salvador.  

"Walmart has arrived.  Low prices, everyday."  There were billboards like this one all over the place.

There it is.  We drove past it a few times.

El Salvador already had enough problems without Walmart, that’s just one more thing that will make life more difficult in El Salvador.  Walmart will provide some jobs to Salvadorans, but the poorest of the poor- those who really need the jobs- won’t get the jobs.  I can’t say this as a fact, but my best educated guess is that most Salvadorans will not be able to afford to shop at Walmart- even with the “low prices”.  Walmart will put the little local stores out of business.  This just isn’t at all what El Salvador needs.

Here’s a blog post about Walmart in El Salvador (and this blog, What’s Up El Salvador, has quite a few interesting posts).

Estoy Aquí

There are these billboards all around San Salvador that I saw almost every day while I was there.  It’s a message from God: “Estoy aquí.”  I’m here.  On the bottom of the billboard it says “God is everywhere.  Talk to him.” and “God is looking for you.  Let him find you.”  I really like these billboards- they are comforting and challenging at the same time.  It made me think about God and my relationship with God, but more specifically it made me think about my spirituality in El Salvador.

Here's one of the billboards- sorry about the tree that jumped into my picture

Estoy aquí

It is reassuring to know that God is here, God is everywhere.  This is something that I need to be reminded about all the time.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the moment, to think only about what is physically evident, to think only about myself and my problems.  But specifically it’s so nice to be reminded that God is indeed in El Salvador.  Some might say that God is not there- with all the poverty, hunger, violence, and death- that God could not possibly be present in such a horrible place.  Surely God would do something to make El Salvador better if God was there or surely God would not want to exist in such a horrible place.  But in reality, God is so very present in El Salvador.  I have written about this before and I still find it so striking and wonderful that I can find God so easily in El Salvador.  God is present in El Salvador- he is present in the poverty, hunger, violence, and death.  God suffers with the Salvadorans.  God has not nor will God ever forsake or give up on the Salvadorans.  And the Salvadorans know this.  It’s just about the only thing they can depend on and put their trust in.  God is one of the few things Salvadorans can find comfort in.

God is looking for you

I love this.  It is true.  But it is difficult to comprehend and accept.  Why would God be looking for me?  What have I don’t to merit God’s attention (especially God’s positive attention)?  How could God possibly seek me out among the 6 billion other people in the world?  Why would God spend time thinking about me and make an effort to seek me out?  I feel so unworthy and yet this is exactly the point.  I am completely unworthy of the attention and love that God shows to me, and yet God seeks me out anyways because God loves me.  God’s grace is stronger than any of us could imagine and so God seeks me out and God seeks out you and every single other person.  It doesn’t really make sense but that’s the way it is.

Let him find you

This may be my favorite part of these billboards.  But it is also the part that is most challenging.  It might seem that it is an easy thing, a passive thing to do, but in my mind letting God find me is something active and very difficult.

Playing hide-and-seek with little kids can be fun, but when the kids are really little you can’t play the game as you would with older kids.  When you are seeking you have to pretend for a little while that you can’t find the kids even though you can clearly see a large part of their body and you can hear them giggling or laughing.  And when it’s your turn to hide, you have to let them find you.  This might mean hiding in an obvious place or where they can see part of you.  You can also make noises if this first tactic doesn’t work. 

Letting God find you is a little like this.  It might seem easier to hide where the kids can’t find you and then you can just sit in the hiding place all day and you don’t have to deal with the antics of the kids.  Likewise it might seem easier to “hide” where we think God won’t find us.  But in reality this would be futile because God had much better seeking abilities than a 4 year old.  It would be futile, but more importantly “hiding” from God would be denying myself so much- love, forgiveness, grace, truth, and peace.

Talk to Him.

I guess it all comes down to this then.  All the other parts of the billboard- God is here, God is looking for you, and let God find you- depend on talking with God.  It depends on having the conversations and the relationship with God.  Understanding that God is present would not be possible without listening and hearing God speaking in my life.  If I didn’t talk and listen to God I wouldn’t realize that God so actively seeks me out.  And if I didn’t talk with God I wouldn’t be able to let God know that I was going to let him find me.

Fireworks Salvadoran Style

One night we went to the celebration of the 153^rd birthday of a town called Suchitoto.  People gathered in the town square for the celebrations.  The main square in Suchitoto is a charming place- a beautiful white colonial church on one side of the square with restaurants and little shops on the other three sides.  In the center of the square there is a little fountain, some nice trees, and benches where people rest or gather with friends.  The celebration started with some music and then some speeches by some important people in the town.  There was a big marching band that played a few songs.   They lit up the church with lights that changed colors every minute or two, which was really pretty.  All quite lovely.

And then without warning, fireworks started going off.  These were big, serious fireworks.  And they were being set off right there in the square- maybe about 100 feet away from me.  They probably weren’t the best quality big fireworks (or maybe it was lack of skill on the launcher’s part), so some didn’t quite launch going straight up.  A few veered off toward the marching band, some toward the crowd.  Ash and sparks from the fireworks came down and landed on people in the square.  People all over were brushing off their heads.  And the fireworks were very loud (I know fireworks usually are loud, but since they were so close they seemed even louder)! 

For the Salvadorans at this celebration this was normal.  This is apparently how Salvadorans do fireworks.  But for me and my American friends, this was anything but normal.  In fact it was quite terrifying.  When the fireworks started we immediately retreated farther away from where the fireworks were being set off, but most of the Salvadorans stayed where they were and calmly watched the fireworks.  Besides worrying about my own life and the safety of all the other people there, I was terrified that the historic WOODEN church was going to catch on fire.  This is a beautiful church that has survived some pretty big earthquakes, but I was pretty sure that this church was going to be destroyed by fireworks.

And then there was the torito pinto that came out while the fireworks were still being set off.  It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on, but we figured out there was a young man running around carrying a metal cow over his head.  A whole bunch of fireworks had been attached to the metal cow and the fireworks went off from the cow randomly.  These weren’t just little sparklers, these were some serious fireworks that were being shot off…sometimes towards the people standing around watching.   The poor person running around with the torito pinto ran into a tree and a pole- I can imagine that it’s not very easy running around carrying a metal cow over your head while it is shooting off fireworks.

That bright light you see in front of the church is the glow of the torito pinto.

Here is a YouTube video from the celebration in Suchitoto from a couple of years ago.  This video very clearly shows the insanity of the torito pinto.

I learned that the torito pinto is a pretty traditional thing in El Salvador- there’s even a really good song about it (the song in the video above is the song).  After I had witnessed the torito pinto, for the rest of the trip I kept hearing the song about the torito pinto.  I don’t remember hearing this song in my previous trips to El Salvador, but it’s possible that I did without recognizing that it was a song about a cow that shoots off fireworks.  Who would have thought that there was a metal cow that people run around with while it shoots off fireworks and that they would write a song about it.

I’m pretty sure that this firework show violated every single fireworks safety measure that would be taken in the US.  And yet as far as I know, no one was seriously injured.  Salvadorans love fireworks (they even love really loud fireworks at 5:00 in the morning as I found out one morning).  And Salvadorans are much braver than I am.  I guess they don’t have much fear.  Which is why I’m guessing they do fireworks they way they do.  It was certainly the most interesting and unique firework show I’ve ever witnessed.

Really long church services...

While I was in El Salvador, I got to go to some really long church services.  Sometimes we were lucky if the service was under two hours (and that was without taking into account the time we spent waiting for the church service to actually start).  I love going to church- I love singing, worshiping God with other people (and sometimes with dogs, cats, chickens, and bats), hearing a good sermon, and praying for my need and other’s needs.  But as much as I enjoy going to a worship service, the long worship services in El Salvador got to be very tiring.    

I am complaining a little bit, but these church services were wonderful despite their longness.

Worshiping in El Salvador has given me a much deeper and greater understanding of the Church.  I have come to see how beautiful it can be when Christians from different cultures, different countries, and even different denominations join together to worship, share in fellowship, and even work together.  Compared to what I see in El Salvador, my home church is isolated from Christians outside our church.  In El Salvador there always seems to be international Lutheran visitors in addition to national and international visitors from other denominations (Presbyterian, Catholic, Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Anglican, Episcopalian, etc.).

One worship service I went to was led by about 8 male and female pastors from El Salvador, Germany, and the U.S.  The pastors took turns leading different parts of the worship service.  When it came time for Communion, a pastor from Germany said the words of institution in German.  I’m quite familiar with the Words of Institution in English, I can understand them pretty well in Spanish, but I only know about five words in German so I didn’t understand.  But I did understand.  In Communion there is something that goes deeper than the words that are said (although these words are important).

With those pastors and all the visitors and the Salvadoran congregants, it was very easy to see just how big the Church is.  It was easy to conceptualize that the Church is all over the world (something that I think Americans can forget easily).  Furthermore it was so easy to see how all parts of the Church can and should work together in solidarity.  We all must depend on each other, we can all learn from each other, we can all be strengthened and challenged by each other.

Back at home it will be more difficult to remember the extent of the Church.  I’ll have to make sure that I’m making an effort to remember and seek out the Church beyond my own church.

Going to church services in El Salvador has also given me a deeper understanding of what it means to worship God.  Anyone who goes to church on a regular basis knows what to expect.  Each church has their own slightly unique way of “doing” church.  But when I go to church in El Salvador, worship is far from what I would expect if I were at my church at home.  Worship is different in El Salvador, and yet it is still fully worship and it pleases God- perhaps the worship of Salvadorans pleases God more. 

In El Salvador I learned: You don’t need a church building to worship in.  If you do have a church building, it doesn’t need to have electricity nor does it need to be spotlessly clean to please God.  You don’t need nice clothes to worship God.  Worship doesn’t have to be in English.  You don’t need an organ, or a piano, or a guitar, or even hymnals to sing beautiful songs of praise to God.  Worship doesn’t have to be limited to an hour on Sunday morning.  You don’t have to be literate to worship God.  You don’t have to have comfortable chair to sit in to worship God.  You don’t need a complex sound system, or any sound system, to worship God.  Worship doesn’t have to look or sound a certain way.  God only looks at what’s in a worshiper’s heart.   

I think I knew all this before I ever went to El Salvador, but worshiping in El Salvador made all this true to me in a whole new and deeper way.

Waiting on the bus

When I went with my friend Marisol to her house in the little town of Las Minas we had to take a bus from the city of Chaletanango to her house.  The bus ride was a little bit crazy.

We got to the bus about 25 minutes before it left, but it was already pretty full.  We went in the back door of the bus, had to step onto some large bags of fertilizer on the floor.  There were some seats with only one person but it appeared that these seats were being saved for other people.  So, we stood in the aisle of the bus.  We managed to shove all our stuff into the overhead racks.  It was HOT on that bus.  Every once in a while there would be the smallest little breeze that came through the open windows.  While we stood in the aisle of the bus, vendors came through selling just about everything.  The vendors squeezed by us with their wares.  At first the things they were selling seemed “normal”- candy, snacks, water and other cool drinks.  But as we waited for the bus to leave, just about everything that you might ever need came onto the bus.  The vendors called out whatever they were selling.

“Here come tomatoes!”

“Cold water!”

There was fresh fruits and vegetables, flashlights, screwdrivers, underwear, bras, hot sandwiches, bowls of french fries with the ketchup already on them.  We had just gone to the grocery store and had lunch but we could have just come and sat on the bus and got just about everything we needed.

The vendors had such a hard job.  They had to deal with the heat on and off the bus.  They had to carry all the stuff they were selling.  They had to try to convince people to buy stuff while squeezing their way down the aisle of the bus.  They probably had to pay the bus driver to let them come on the bus in the first place.

After what seemed like forever, we finally got to leave.  The vendors that were still on the bus did all they could to get off quickly with all their wares.  A lady let me share her seat, which was quite nice after standing for so long.  We finally had a nice breeze coming in through the windows.  The ride to Marisol’s house wasn’t too long- less time than we had waited, thankfully.

The experience of waiting for the bus to leave was a bit overwhelming to me- it was a new experience, it was hot, and it was crowded.  But for many of the Salvadorans on the bus it was probably a daily experience, something normal.

Driving around El Salvador

Driving around El Salvador, I tried really hard to pay attention and take everything in because I want to be a writer and writers are supposed to pay attention and describe everything to their readers.  So, I tried really hard to take everything in and remember all the little details, and then write stuff down when I got home.  This paying attention and writing lasted for the first few days I was in El Salvador and then I stopped writing about all the randomness I saw while riding around El Salvador.  I often ended up on sensory overload trying to pay attention to everything.  Especially when Cesar was driving everything went past so fast and there was so much to see, hear, and experience when driving around El Salvador.  There just so much going on, sights, sounds, smells, and they are all so big and overwhelming.  The streets seem so chaotic compared to the calm streets of the suburbs back home.

Here´s some random sights, sounds, and experiences that I experienced driving around El Salvador to try to give you a little taste of what it’s like to drive around El Salvador:

There´s graffiti all over the place.  Sometimes I think it is just part of the normal decoration of the houses and stores and buildings.  There´s gang graffiti, political graffiti, advertising graffiti, religious graffiti, and the graffiti that I can´t tell what it is.  It sends messages of all levels of importance: “this territory belongs to my gang”, “Jesus saves”, “Funes is a good or bad president”, “smile”.  It adds color to the already colorful landscape.  Graffiti is a platform for expression- perhaps most importantly for those people who have few other options for communicating their needs, wants, and opinions.  Practically every surface along the road is painted or decorated in some way- Salvadorans love murals.

even the guardrails have been painted

Religious mural

Political mural

Advertising along the highway- no billboards required

Then there´s the black, grey, white exhaust that comes from cars tucks and busses.  It hangs in the air.  Sometimes the plumes of thick black smokes come out of the rusted tailpipes of busses as they accelerate.  Other times it´s the lighter grey exhaust constantly being spewed from the 30-year-old car.  You drive past a bus struggling to get up to speed and it projects out toward you a thick cloud of hot black exhaust.  You try to hold your breath so you don´t breathe it in, but just as the air clears enough to think that you can breathe without immediately developing lung cancer, another dark cloud of exhaust is extruded by another passing bus.  It’s really gross. 

There are always people around.  It´s quite rare to drive around without seeing people all over the place.  People walking, people diving, people riding in the backs of pick-up trucks, people carrying things, people selling things, people buying things.  El Salvador is a very densely populated country and it is very obvious from all the people you see while driving around.

There are all sorts of makeshift stands like this one along the roads

One day when we were driving around in San Salvador traffic.  I saw a truck with a bright blue loveseat and stuffed chair in the back.  A man was sitting in the chair while the truck was driving down the road.  He was sitting in that chair just as he might have been sitting in his living room watching his favorite TV show.  This is the way to travel, especially if you have to ride in the back of a truck, which isn’t the most comfortable.  The thing that most struck me about this scene was that it was something that I never would have expected to see, but the man and everyone around just acted like it was a normal thing.

There’s the stores and houses that we pass by.  It seems like the little stores and even the house try to paint and construct themselves in such a way as to attract as much attention as possible, but in a hodgepodge sort of way.  People use whatever is available to make things useable and practical but also to make things pretty and attract attention.  

I think my favorite by far were the animals crossing the road.  Horses, cows, goats, dogs, chickens.  Yes, chickens really do cross roads- it’s not just a joke.  I just loved it when cows stopped traffic.  I’m not really sure why I find it so entertaining or funny, but it always brought a smile to my face to see cows on the road.

Trust.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a couple of days before the group from Minnesota left we all shared with each other our testimonies of how our experiences in El Salvador had affected us.  I’d like to share with you the testimony that I shared with the group, but first I have to give you some background information so that my testimony will make sense to those who haven’t been to El Salvador.

The background:

Salvadorans are crazy drivers and the roads there are just a step away from pure chaos.  Traffic laws are treated as suggestions.  If there is a stop sign it means you might stop if you really want to.  A red light only means stop if there are other cars coming quickly.  Speed limit signs are pretty much just a way to decorate the side of the road.  To drive in El Salvador, you need to know how to drive stick shift, you need to use the horn a lot, you need to be aggressive and you need to be very brave.  I am none of these things, which is why I won’t be driving in El Salvador any time soon (although maybe one day).

While in El Salvador we had a variety of drivers who drove us around.  My most favorite driver was Cesar.  Cesar is the stereotypical Salvadoran driver on steroids.  He maneuvers the microbus with such precision.  He can easily create a third lane on a road where only two lanes exist.  He treats “no passing” signs as a challenge- he passes on the right, on the left, on the shoulder, around a curve, going up and down mountains.  And he drives really fast.  Whenever we talked about how long it would take to get somewhere we had to take into account who was driving- Cesar could get us somewhere in 2/3 the time it took anyone else.

The trusty microbus

Cesar!

My testimony:

On this trip to El Salvador I’ve been thinking a lot about trust.  Trust is something that I struggle with.  It takes me a long time to trust other people.  And I have a hard time trusting in God.  I struggle to trust that God will take care of all my needs and I have an even more difficult time trusting that God will indeed restore the world one day to the world of justice, the Kingdom of God.

Salvadorans have taught me a lot about trust and I have had many opportunities to practice trust while in El Salvador.  Every time I get into a microbus requires me to trust that driver.  It has taken me a while to come to this point, but I fully trust Cesar and his driving abilities.  Cesar is the most aggressive and fast driver I know.  He very rarely drives in any manner that I would even think of driving.  Cesar often maneuvers the microbus in ways that make me incredibly nervous and worried, but after many trips with Cesar I have always arrived safely and quickly.  And so I trust Cesar.

As I have been thinking about this trust I have in Cesar, I have also been thinking about my trust in God.  Really it is my lack of trust in God that I have been thinking about.  I try to control my life and believe I know how to do things best rather than trusting in God’s will and God’s plan for my life and the world.

Salvadorans know how to trust in God- in many cases, God is the only entity that they can put their trust in.  Salvadorans rely on and put trust in God to provide them with food and all their other necessities.  They trust in God to grant them another day of life each morning.  Perhaps most significantly Salvadorans trust that one day the Kingdom of God will be present here on earth and they trust there will be glimpses of this kingdom along the way.  They trust that things will get better.

For Salvadorans trust is something much deeper than a belief- it’s not just something intellectual or an attitude.  The trust Salvadorans have in God is a trust that involves taking action.  To trust in God and to trust that the Kingdom of God will come means to start doing things now to announce and bring about the Kingdom of God.

Pastors Matias and Martina have taken action through working to ensure that kids have all the opportunities that come with an excellent education.  Trini announces the coming of the Kingdom of God through the physical and spiritual care given at the Casa Esperanza.  So many Salvadorans have given us a little taste of what incredible hospitality there will be in the Kingdom of God.  Archbishop Oscar Romero offered an example of the love, humility, and mercy that will be a part of the Kingdom.

Unlike the Salvadorans, I have a very difficult time believing and trusting that a better world is possible.  I have seen and heard about so much suffering, so much pain, so much injustice, so much poverty.  I have a hard time imaging that things can ever get better, much less imaging that the Kingdom of God could ever come to such a place as this present world that is filled with so much injustice.  I have a hard time thinking about bringing about a better world, but the real issue is that I often fell incapable of doing anything to bring about the Kingdom of God.  It seems absurd to think that anything I could do is adequate or able to do anything to bring about a better world.  I doubt that I will ever see the day when justice prevails so I often see no reason to try to do anything.

But in El Salvador I have met so many people who trust in God and trust that a better world is possible.  I have met people who have seen glimpses of the Kingdom of God and I have seen some of these glimpses myself.  These Salvadorans and these glimpses have given me hope and courage- they have given me reasons to trust.

And so I ask myself: What will trust in God look like in my life after this trip?  The answer is: I don’t really know.  But I do know that trust will require me to do things to start to bring about the Kingdom of God.  It will mean taking risks- physical and otherwise.  It will mean doing things without guarantees.  I will do things to take steps towards a better world even if I know I won’t see that better world myself.  I will focus on what is possible rather than what is impossible.  Trusting in God may require me to do seemingly crazy or irrational things.

But I have learned from having Cesar as a driver- sometimes those seemingly crazy and irrational things are in the end the best way to do things.  Cesar has a plan of action while driving that I rarely understand, but in the end I realize it works.  Even if I don’t understand God’s plan right now, I have to trust that there is indeed a plan for me and for the world and in the end these plans will work.  A better world will come about.  There will be justice, peace, and love in the world.  And on that day all of us will be able to look back and see how each of us had a role in announcing and bringing about that better world.

And so I cast my lot with the Salvadorans and all those who act on their trust in God and are working toward that better world.

Home.

I made it back home safe and sound last night at about 12:30.  Julie and Kira had planned to go home with the rest of the group from Minnesota, but they decided to extend their stay a few days so they could go to the quinceanera party on Tuesday (more about this later).  It was nice traveling home most of the way with friends- both Julies, Kira, and I flew to Houston together.  From there Julie and Kira headed back to Minnesota, and Julie R. got on an earlier flight to Chicago.  My flight was delayed an hour and a half, so I got to spend some more time getting to know the Houston airport.  My sister picked me up from the airport, and we stopped at Taco Bell for a snack on the way home.

I started missing El Salvador before I even got on the plane to leave, but I'm so glad to be home.

Here's what I missed while I was in El Salvador:

• my family
• my doggy
• drinking tap water
• eating whatever I want without worrying about getting sick
• cheddar cheese
• salad
• my bed
• clean clothes
• my computer
• my church
• watching my vegetable garden grow 

Here's what I'm going to miss about being in El Salvador:

• All the wonderful Salvadorans, especially the ones who have become almost like family
• Pupusas
• The mountains
• The crazy driving skills of the Salvadorans, especially Cesar
• The unpredictability of our daily adventures
• the music
• People who can find the joy and humor in just about everything

Now that I'm home, I'm going to work on catching up on blogging and I'll put up some pictures on my blog (I'll add some pictures to some old posts, so check back in a couple of days if you want to see pictures that go along with what I wrote).  I'm also going to get back to job searching.