Rocha-ed

Y ahora la conclusión dramática de….KEVIN DOES MERCOSUR: KEVIN CONTRA EL MURCIELAGO ATÓMICO DEL INFIERNO, presentado por Telemundo – “Estás en tu tele, estás en tu casa.”

No, no, there will sadly be no atomic bats from hell in this entry, as exciting as it would have been to have encountered one during the last portion of my summer time away from the city. I got back to Montevideo on the 9th and was able to touch base with everyone for long enough to share a few stories from my adventures in parts more southern and distribute some of Bariloche´s finest chocolates to my friends. The next day, though, it was back on the bus and off to camp!
The Evangelical Waldensian Church (Iglesia Evangélica Valdense) has an annual camp for its young people in the Rio de la Plata district, and by “has an annual camp,” I mean the young people pretty much plan all of it and take care of a very large share of the finances. There is a very active youth movement to gain the vote, and a stronger voice, for the young adults in the Valdense church. Accordingly, the annual camp has become an assembly rather than just a week of camping out, a time to debate and make decisions as much as sing and play games.

This year, the camp was help in Uruguay, but in a region of the country I´d not yet visited – the eastern region of Rocha, along the border with Brazil. The camp facility itself is located just past the city of La Coronilla, putting it only about 15 Km or so from the border with Brazil, and also right on the beach – we only had to walk about 300 meters to get to the water. However, classic beach weather did not await us in Las Palmares when we arrived on the evening of the 10th after being dropped off at the wrong stop by our bus driver, who had assured us that he knew exactly which stop we needed. Evidently not – we were within walking distance of Brazil. Long-time readers of my adventures abroad will, no doubt, remember at this moment how a tro-tro in Ghana nearly dropped me and several friends off in Togo despite the driver´s protestations that he knew where we needed to get off. In the words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

But yes, we arrived just in time for a honey of a rainstorm, which knocked the temperatures down to long-sleeve and jeans weather. However, the storm itself provided a great opportunity to strip down to bathing suits, play drums, and dance and chant in the rain before sitting down to dinner. This too was reminiscent of certain goings-on at ISH in the spring 2006 semester when it would start raining. But I digress.

Lodging for the camp was in tents, and arriving halfway into the camp as we did, we had to search a bit for a tent with available space. Success was had, and we made friends with Ana Karen and Enzo for the next few nights – 5 of us in the same tent. Luckily, no one snored, or if anyone did, it was me and I certainly didn´t notice. Being sleeping bag-less, I did pass the first two nights in rather chilly fashion, but I nonetheless slept.

Our first full day at campamento was spent almost entirely in assembly. By the early evening, though, I´d had about enough assembly-time for one day. I can only stand so much of people talking over each other and arguing in Spanish before getting bored, and boredom has a distinct tendency to drive me to existential crises, so I wandered off to the beach to consider my sense of call and what I´m doing in life.

It was an amazing time of reflection. It was just me, a little chilled from the breeze, on the beach, walking and talking with God. I was alone, so the conversation quickly moved from in my head to out loud…no one was around to call me a lunatic, after all. I started to think about my experiences here and my perceptions of the assembly – what have I learned about my own call after 4 months of working in a church, and what did my being so perturbed by the assembly and its never-ending debate say about me? After all, if I can barely stomach a day of church politics, how will I manage a lifetime of it? How do I square my desire to work toward a doctorate and teach at a university or seminary with my call to ministry?

The good news is that, sometimes when you´re the crazy person talking out loud to God on the beach, God actually answers – not necessarily with a monologue out of a whirlwind (a la Job) or a burning bush (a la Moses), but with peace of mind and internal revelation. Maybe my lack of desire to be, and inability to see myself, in the context of ministry at a “normal” church in the ´burbs where the biggest debate is over which committee is in charge of the broccoli-rice casserole for the potluck next Sunday and my lack of enthusiasm for long hours spent debating the details of church organization is a sign not of a lack of call, but of the nature of my call being to an environment more like the one in which I find myself at Nuestro Salvador.

I remember saying in November that I admired Pastora Wilma for her work here, but that I could never do it. I think I was wrong; two months after that utterance, I find myself energized by life in the missionary church, in a congregation that is new and fresh in so many ways. Tradition doesn´t mean much in a church whose members have only been participating for two years and who are still just reading the Bible for the first time. It´s sometimes frustrating to have to explain things that, for someone like me brought up in the church, seem so simple, but I find that I learn more in Wednesday night Bible Studies by listening to people consider new texts and ideas in the Bible than I ever did in the various Bible Studies with other “serious” Christians raised in the church in which I`ve participated over the years. Out of the mouths of spiritual babes, I suppose, is where God likes to speak to people like me.

I still don´t know what the future holds – where I´ll be, what sort of congregations I´ll serve, how I´ll balance the pastor/professor call I seem to have in my life. What I do know, though, is that I can not know and be perfectly fine, safe in the knowledge that God is Emmanuel, present with me and guiding me every day.