Homestay Experience
The Lord, in all his kindness, allows us to reside in a world that is both delightful and difficult. My time in Ecuador and, more narrowly, my experience throughout homestays, have served as testaments to, and evidence of, such. My heart cry going into this semester was that the Lord might deepen my understanding of his creation, grow my heart for his people, and reveal to me the wonder of his loving character. Growing up in small-town Missouri left me admittedly ignorant of much diversity—diversity of thought, background, ethnicity, race, belief, etc. As such, I hoped the Lord would use this time and people to expand my conception of the body of Christ and open my heart to the work he is doing within contexts and cultures I do not necessarily understand but desire to learn to love. When praying these prayers, I put little thought forward to how God might choose to answer them…little did I know my prayer requests would be satisfied as I stared up at the ceiling of an Ecuadorian Emergency Room with a needle in my arm and a million thoughts running through my head, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
My homestay experience began in tears. As one who knows roughly 100 Spanish words in total, a multitude of miscellaneous fears and insecurities raced through my mind as I prepared to leave the comfort of my apartment—a small pocket of U.S. culture in the middle of Ecuador—for that of the unknown. In this moment, my homestay parents met me with grace. My fear was not scoffed at nor were my tears viewed as offensive or signs of ingratitude; instead, my host mom looked at me, reminding me that it was okay to be afraid and assuring me that it would get easier “poco a poco.” I’ve spent much time since thinking about that phrase, little by little. Sure enough, little by little I saw myself grow, as I wrestled within and, at times, against this experience. Moments in which my fears were affirmed—nights of loneliness arising from my struggle to communicate and instances of frustration as I longed after comfortability and independency—were met with moments of sweet delight—evenings spent around the dinner table playing Rummikub and weekends exploring new parts of the city.
The language barrier, I have found, is much easier to summit if someone is helping you. This was a lesson I was slow to learn. My initial response to living amidst a language I knew little of was to remain quiet. I practiced active listening (only picking up every 15th word or so) and looked for ways in which I could express my gratitude that did not require me to speak (i.e. cleaning the dishes, making my bed, sitting in the family room to do homework). As I became increasingly more willing to practice my Spanish, I noticed my fear begin to recede and my heart for my host parents begin to grow. While my struggles with the language and my excitement to return to the familiar did not abate, I gradually began to accept that I was now a part of this family. What a picture of Christ’s love and grace. What a reflection of the generosity and hospitality he calls us to. I was loved by my host parents amidst my wrestling, not in spite of, just as I am loved by Christ amidst my sin.
No more was this seen then when I became ill in the Amazon Jungle. Upon arriving back home from our week in Misahualli, I crawled straight into bed and stayed there for the next 24 hours, not knowing what was wrong or how to make it better. Seeing my hurt, my host mom took it upon herself to care for me as she would have had I been her own daughter. She brought me breakfasts in bed, bent her own schedule to mine, and encouraged me to go to the doctor when I did not improve. It was here, as I sat in a random emergency room, scared out of my mind that I finally began to process my homestay experience. My poor RC sat and listened as I rattled on, in detail, about everything I had experienced, everything I was feeling, and the ways in which the Lord was using all of it. I told her that while my homestay experience could not be defined by comfort, it was defined by care, the care I had not earned. I expressed both the broken and beautiful aspects of my relationship with my homestay parents and was encouraged by her to press into such more readily. Through this reflection and through many moments after, my need to lean into the people and place the Lord had for me was revealed. It took me a while to understand that the hardships I faced within homestay did not negate my experience, but rather, enriched it. How could I have predicted that the lessons I hoped to learn would be taught to me by people who spoke a language completely different than my own? Little by little, the Lord is using the delightful and the difficult to open my eyes to the good he has here in Ecuador, and I am all the better for it.
A selfie with my homestay partner Emily, me, and Papá Wilson underneath the Panecillo. (left to right)