“So what do you do?”

by Emma Buckhout, IWM serving in Santa Fe, Mexico City, Mexico.

People always ask, “What do you do? What`s your everyday life like?”

When a large chunk of your job description is to be present to and with people, that is one of the hardest questions to answer definitively. My scheduled activities include 9am-2pm Monday through Friday at the guardería (day care), English class on Thursdays, youth group meetings on Saturdays, and children`s choir on Sundays. However, that list seems to fall drastically short. So much of what I do, or more accurately, what I get to be a part of, happens between the lines. There`s always a party at the parish or somewhere else—everybody has a birthday to celebrate. Or there is nightly dinner at the parish after mass for whoever shows up. The moments off the books are what really give meaning, give flesh, to this experience of being a missionary. They give me joy and energy or steal it away. So for this blog I thought I would share some anecdotes or just thought processes from everyday life at the guardería, the parish, our house, or on the street.

Any one of the twenty-four preschool/kindergarten students with whom I work: “MISS! He hit me!”

Me: “Did you hit him as well?”

Student: “Yes…”

Me: “Ok, both of you ask the other for forgiveness and hug.”

*pause*

Student 1: “Me disculpas?”

Student 2: “Me disculpas?”

*hug, giggle, skip off and play*

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Between 8 and 9am every morning: “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAS! Tiene GAAAAAAAAS!” If we need to buy a new tank of gas for heating water and powering the stove, Tara or I run out into the street and flag down the screaming man. If not, I usually just grumble.

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Hanna (6-year-old): “Miss Emma, how are you getting home? Are you walking? You`re not taking a plane?”

Me: “No Hanna, my house is close. I can walk. I don`t actually go back to the United States each night.”

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AHHH ****. I almost just stepped on a rat while running. I wonder if scaring a rat by the sidewalk in Santa Fe is like scaring a woodchuck on the side of the road in Cazenovia….

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Camila (5-year-old) after talking about making paper mache pigs for Father`s Day presents: “Emma, I have two dads.”

Me: “Ok, do they both live with you?”

Camila: “No, first my mom married Apaez and had me and then she married Juan. But Juan is drunk a lot of the time.”

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I don´t know Lupita well, but I met her because the former missionaries knew her and occasionally she sits on the sidewalk on the main avenue. I know she is a drug addict, and while she looks forlorn and unkempt, she always greets us with a pleasant handshake and a smile. One night she had stopped in at the Incarnate Word Sisters´ house just before a planned community prayer and dinner night, and she agreed to stay and join us. Her prayer that night was sincere and beautiful. “God was holding my hand and I let go. Not Him, He never let me go. But I let go. I don´t want to let go again.”

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Maestra Luci: “Miss Fanny can´t come teach here anymore because she lives really really far away.”

Isaac: *gasp* “In the Estados Unidos?! Like Emma??”

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I tried to suggest that Father Salvador open a petting zoo at the parish during Holy Week. I was half serious. By that time the little yard behind the parish was not only serving as a cornfield, but was home to a donkey, a family of rabbits, two geese, two hens, and a rooster. And this is in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world. It all started when someone gave a chicken to Gallo as a present. Our friend Cinthia was known to jump on the donkey´s back at random.

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Dante (5-year-old): “Do you have any kids?”

Me: “Ummm no.” (Thinking “of course not, thank God.”)

Then again, it is a perfectly reasonable question. I am the same age as many of their parents. My friend who is only 5 days older than me has three kids at the guardería.

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Last Saturday, after helping another community group with a trash clean-up project, about seven members of the youth group helped us buy and prepare a delicious chicken and tacos meal at our house.

As Dafne and the others discussed the youth group´s evolution since December: “We´re like a family, no?”

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11:00pm: Knock Knock Knock.

I am in my pajamas and in bed, Tara is sitting on my bed for our nightly prayer time.

We peer out my bedroom window.

Woman in the street below: “Sorry to bother you, I came to leave flowers for the Santísimo” (aka the image in the chapel).

Tara goes downstairs and unbolts the door and accepts the flowers, which we decide to place in the chapel the next day.

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Slyvia was making her way slowly up the sidewalk, hunched over almost to the waist with a cane in one hand and two grocery bags slug over the opposite shoulder. I power-walked past her, late as always, on my way to the Ibero.

As I struggled to slow down and offer a hand for what were really very light bags: “Do you have any grandchildren?”

Sylvia: “I have a grown son and daughter, but I don´t know where they live and they never come to visit me.”

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Andrea (4-year-old) “Miss, why are you as guera (blonde and white) as me?”

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For those friends from the University of Pennsylvania: I felt like I was out on Locust Walk flyering again this week. Tara organized a huge recruitment effort for the parish youth and theater groups and made flyers to hand out in front of our friend´s shop on the market street. Along with a few enthusiastic youth group/theater friends, she distributed hundreds of flyers over the course of three sunny afternoons. The theater meeting had a lot of new people and I am hoping the youth group meeting this weekend will as well.

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We do not have a tv, but Father Salvador loves to project movies at the parish on Friday nights. I had expressed particular interest in watching Enredadas (Tangled), the new Disney movie, so one Friday night Father insisted that the group of us watch it in English so I could fully enjoy it.

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Another Friday, Tara and I left the parish at 11:15pm tired but in good spirits. On the way home we encountered Lupita sitting on the sidewalk. However, this time she didn´t recognize us and she had a bottle of household cleaner glued to her lips.

“Lupita, are you hungry? Can we get you something to eat?”

She didn´t respond until we gave up and started to walk away. She crossed the street with us, leaning heavily on Tara´s shoulder, and plopped down on the next sidewalk. We left her to run to the tienda and get some juice and crackers. She clearly wasn´t ready to eat just yet—she hadn´t loosened her grip on the bottle—but she said she would keep them for later.

“Que Dios te accompaña (May God accompany you),” she said as we left her hunched on the sidewalk for the night.

Conclusion:

“So what do you do?”

It`s one of the most difficult questions, especially when I ask it myself. I don`t get a grade or job report. How do I know if I`m doing the right thing? I know often I am not. Yet, the beauty of spending two years as a missionary is that it isn`t all about tangible black and white results. It`s most defined by those precious moments in which I get to see humanity in its most raw flesh, closest to God. I am blessed to get to share in the reality, in the joys and the tragedies, of preschoolers, teenagers, peers, and elders. It challenges me but also sustains me. Ultimately, it is why I´m here.