Así es la Vida: Mid-year retreat!


Me, Antonette, Tara and Caitlin soakin' in the sunset.

Over the weekend my community and I went to Mancora beach for our mid-year retreat. Mid-year retreat is a time for each volunteer to step back and take a moment to reflect on how the year has been going, and what changes they want to make going forward. We thought about how we have progressed in our faith journeys, got some insight from previous volunteers, and contemplated the frustrations and joys of living in Peru.

Playing the a Fortune Teller sent by one of our Domestic AV friends :)

I didn't really get to think about retreat much before we left. I was busy with work and busy helping to plan Tara's 25th 1/2 birthday celebration, so I never really thought about what I wanted to get out of it. But whatever I would have thought of would have paled in comparison to what I did get out of it.

Firstly, it was BEAUTIFUL there. We were on a more secluded part of the beach which made finding those intimate moments with God and each other a lot easier.

Breakfast of bread, butter, jam, fresh juice and coffee while gazing out at the ocean.

Group reflection on the beach right outside our hotel

Enjoying the sunset.

I realized a lot of things about my year and about the relationships I have made so far that inspired me to change my priorities going forward. Here were my big take aways:

1. I have never REALLY put God first. Something has always come before Him. School, work, friends, family, boyfriends, or even alone time. My first baby step will be to wake up earlier so I can journal about the daily devotional I read. It's a small thing, but I feel like starting off the day contemplating God could be a really good thing.

2. Now that I feel comfortable with the culture and language, I need to put myself out in the Chulucanas community more. The first half was about adjusting, and now that that has happened (more or less), I want to make more of an effort to meet new people, attend more Peruvian functions, and be more active outside of work and outside of my community of volunteers.

3. I shouldn't get comfortable with the relationships I have with my AV community members. I should always be trying to challenge them as they challenge me, and I shouldn't shy away from conflicts which are sometimes necessary to grow a relationship.

4. I want to create something sustainable before I leave, or at least give it my very best effort. For a while I have been having this feeling of, "leaving my mark". And for a long time I didn't know if that was my pride, or God speaking. I reflected on it a lot during retreat and talking to my community about it, and have since decided that what I am hearing is God's voice and not my own ego. A lot of what we do here is service of presence (which means the program and Chulu have more an emphasis on being with the people and growing relationships than leaving a trail of tangible projects behind), which I love, but that I have realized recently I would like to supplement with some sort of community project.

5. I value my time too much. For example, at the Centro Pastoral I am often asked to color (make bulletin board stuff or make nametags). And while it is work that someone would do if I wasn't there, I have often felt like, "HELLO, I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Marketing degree, give me real work!". But then I realized...I came here to fulfill the community's needs, not my own. And that means doing the work they decide they need done. I also need to be more open about going to meetings and working at night or on the weekends. My Peruvian counterparts do it, but I have complained many times that I dont want to have to give up MY saturday morning. Which I need to get over.

One of my favorite parts of the weekend was picking a prayer partner and writing a prayer for them. I had Caitlin and Tara had me. I wrote Caitlin a prayer about what she has meant to me this year and Tara wrote me a "Letter from God" since I had told her I was having problems feeling connected to God sometimes. We also wrote each other affirmations; just nice little notes to tell each other how we feel. They were all very nice too.

On the beach after reading each other our prayers and recieving each other's affirmations.

In addition to the great reflection time, we also got to eat like Queens! Mancora is full of delicious ethnic restaurants. I really do love Peruvian food, but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing...or too much of the same thing anyway...