confirmed in the love of Christ

I have been itching to blog again. Sister Debbie challenged me to write this about a week ago, but I am just now getting back to the old writing grind. I HAVE SO MUCH TO SHARE!

Over Spring Break, I had the amazing opportunity to go serve the poor in Comayagua, Honduras, with the beautiful people you see pictured above. When I originally signed up to be part of the team, I was ecstatic to get to experience the beautiful and overwhelming love of God I had encountered in the people in Marsella, Colombia I was sure I would find again in the people of Honduras. However, as my discernment became tumultuous and the turmoil heightened, I began to fear more and more what God would open my eyes to while I was over there. You see, I have been discerning marriage with Carlos for a while now, and marriage has always been something that I've longed for with all my heart. However, I had a voice nagging at the back of my soul that begged me to be open with the Lord and not cling to what I wanted. After praying a 54-day rosary novena and experiencing some serious spiritual desolation, I began to feel that the Lord was asking me to let go a little more of what I had been holding onto: marriage, and specifically marriage with Carlos, so that I could be more open to truly discern what HE wanted for me. As the day approached closer and closer to when I would finally have to leave everything behind and go serve the poor and the Lord, my anxiety grew and grew. I felt like the Lord was going to send me away to make me fall in love with the people of Honduras and then I would become a missionary or a nun and then I would never get to get married! But still, I just knew I had to go. For some reason, I just felt like the Lord was going to give me some answers over there.

The week before we left was crazy, with tests and a big presentation and packing and everything else, but when all was said and done the Lord blessed me with incredible support from my friends and family. On the phone with my mom the day before I left, she encouraged me to do good with the opportunity the Lord had given me and to allow myself to be inspired by Him. My roommates lent me everything I needed for the big trip and drove me out to IHOP at 3 am the night before sending me off at 4, along with my friends Brad and Madison who came along. Carlos also joined us, and he gave me a good long hug before I got in the van, encouraging me to shine with the light of Christ. It was kind of dramatic of me, but I really felt like I was leaving everything I had and everyone I loved behind to go and be the hands and feet of Christ and let Him show me what He wanted to do with me.

Here is my beautiful support system... looking extra rough at 4am!

When we finally arrived, we had two days of training and preparation. We began writing talks that we would give in the villages, practicing songs for praise and worship, developing dramas, learning more about the Honduran culture, and preparing spiritually with prayer and mass and a good healthy long-lasting dose of sacraments (since we probably wouldn't get to receive any in the mountains, as one of the main reasons we were there is because many of the people do not have the spiritual nourishment they need since there is a shortage of priests in the area) as well as physically for the kinds of foods we would be eating. A big part of the mission was being sure to consume everything given to you, since these people give everything they have for you, even if you didn't like it or were full. It seems simple enough, but it became a worthy sacrifice!

On Sunday, we were split up into our teams for each aldea. In my team, we had me, Lexy, Leticia, Joey, Justin, and Rosa. These people easily became my new closest friends. It was seriously such a gift to have Justin as an incredible leader who is truly a man of God and encouraged and guided us the entire week. Joey was a man of God who truly kept a smile on our faces at all times. Lexy was a sweetheart, and she kept us all lifted up in spirit the entire week. Leticia was our personal translator, and she rocked the house by stepping up as leader to reach out to the Hondurans. Rosa was our native sweet Honduran, who we didn't always understand, but shared laughs, talks, food, and a bed with!

Our aldea was called Montanuelas and was a huge town of 300 houses and 17 delegados, or leaders in the church, indicating that it was probably thriving spiritually. Even so, they are still only able to celebrate mass every two weeks!  Each morning, we would meet with a few of the delegados, split into groups of two or three, and go from house to house, evangelizing and spreading the Gospel and Christ's message of hope, love, and peace to families who had fallen away from the Church or had a particular need. After lunch, we would begin preparation for our afternoon programs: one for children, one for adults, and one for teens. One thing that was really beautiful for us was to literally not have any energy to come up with anything on our own, so that we were completely dependent on the Holy Spirit simply to speak through us! He used me to talk about marriage, family, and chastity, and to share my testimony. I loved that I got to share these things because they are some of my favorite topics, and I really felt like God had given me the experiences He had so that I could share in those moments! By the end of the night, we would be so exhausted from such a crazy, jam-packed day that we would go home and try to eat dinner as quickly as we could, take a cold shower, and sleep through all the animals making noises through the night, so that we would have the energy in the morning to do it all over again!

The image on the left is a picture that I stole from one of the Missioners, and this is what a typical breakfast for us would look like - except that the portion sizes were much larger. Corn tortillas, beans, eggs, and cheese - oh, the cheese! We four girls would have such laughs saving souls in Purgatory by offering up our devouring of that salty, salty cheese, of which we would sometimes get double portions. That cheese was probably the most difficult thing about the entire trip, which says a lot about how blessed we were! None of us even got sick! (Well, I just got a minor cold at the end, but merely another worthy sacrifice!) The image below is one of some of the children who came to our program singing and dancing and praising the Lord! AREN'T THEY PRECIOUS?! God touched me in a very special way through His beautiful, beautiful children.

Speaking of which, so after all my worries that God was going to reveal something to me that I didn't want, when I finally was forced to let go of everything and just follow Him, He on the contrary blessed me a million times over with the abundance of His love. He really touched me with the children there - they were the best part of the whole trip. In our aldea, we were blessed with 130 children at one of our programs - and they were 130 of the happiest, most loving, carefree, obedient, and giving children I have ever met in my life. They were just so incredibly beautiful. In addition, He really used families to touch my heart. My favorite experience of the entire week was on the night before we left. We went over to the house of two of the delegados who had been helping us out all week - the family of both father and son lived there, which totaled out to 17 people including parents and children all in one house!!! And a little tiny house, no less! This family was amazing; the father and son were clearly the main leaders in the church, and they had invited us over a couple times to their house to give us coconuts fresh off their coconut tree and for pancakes and soda, and we got really close to them and their children, who love to tickle and be tickled!


Anyway, so we went over there just to say a quick goodbye since we would be leaving the next day, but of course goodbyes are never quick in Honduras - when we got there, they sat us all down and pulled out a guitar. The entire family encircled us and began serenading us with songs they had written about the missionaries and just songs praising the Lord, and it was seriously the most beautiful thing in the whole entire world. I could not stop the tears from rolling as I witnessed the most beautiful family I had ever seen in my life praising the Lord together with their newly adopted U.S. children! The moon was shining directly over us, and I could feel the overwhelming peace of the Holy Spirit surrounding us, ensuring me that He was truly here. In that moment, God overwhelmed my heart with the notion that THIS is what a family should truly look like. THIS is what a family should be! Big, filled with love, and praising the Lord! I didn't feel a call at that moment to become a missionary and help out these people in this impoverished town so that they could improve their marriages; no, I felt a call to be inspired by the genuine love of this family to go back to America and share the beautiful love of God through a big beautiful family and evangelize to the broken marriages and families in America in that way.

Before we left, we got into a big circle and linked arms, and the mother of the whole family prayed over us earnestly, and many of the Hondurans joined in aloud with their own prayers. The prayer was so long, my feet got tired; it was probably 15 minutes at least! You could truly hear her faith and her love for us through her words, and afterward, the mother gave me the biggest hug ever, and she just prayed to the Lord for me in my ear. I told her that I wanted to be a beautiful mother like her, and she just held me and cried. I just knew that this beautiful woman loved me so, so much, and I couldn't help but think, no wonder this family is so beautiful! No wonder these children know that they are so loved! Because this beautiful woman, holding me so tightly and loving me like her own, loves them, prays for them, and lets them know that she loves them. What a BEAUTIFUL MOTHER! God touched me so much with this experience and left me feeling so overjoyed and ecstatic and just excited about returning to the states to live out this call that I just could not believe I could ever distrust such a loving and gracious God! 

Now, I am not saying that I am 100% sure of myself going forward, but ever since I got back to the States I have been able to rest so much more peacefully in the loving presence of Christ. I can simply look at Jesus and know that no matter what happens now in my life, it is all in His hands. Not saying that I will no longer make the mistake of not trusting Him, but I am committing myself now to this memory, that when a struggle to hold onto what I want comes again, I will remember that the Lord is trustworthy and will provide for me in abundance, so simply let Him.

You know, you never know.

Today, Carlos opened my eyes to a new reality. There is a woman who spends a lot of time at St. Mary's - she wears traditional African dress, smiles politely, and carries all of her belongings with her wherever she goes. Her name is Jackie. She is homeless. I had no idea, until, when on our car ride home, Carlos asked if he could give her my clementines, and I vehemently protested out of ignorance, selfishness, and an unwillingness to humiliate another person. More than once I've passed her by going in and out of St. Mary's, going about my daily religious activities, through which I can comfort myself in the idea that I am being a good person. I listen to homilies about truly stepping outside of myself to love those in need, facilitate discussion on what it means to love selflessly, pray constantly that God will give me the grace to love as He loves - and yet, I passed her by. Not once, but multiple times. And never once did I think twice. When given the opportunity to love her, even though I did not know her story, I hesitated, not wanting to assume that she was homeless just based on the way she was dressed and the fact that she was walking around alone at night. But so what, even if she wasn't homeless? What was the hurt in giving a stranger a gift? Should desire not to offend really trump a kind gesture? Perhaps, like Carlos helped me understand, it is better to potentially humiliate someone on the chance that they actually have a need for your help.

I pride myself a bit, ridiculously, on my love for service and the poor. How I love going on mission trips, visiting the nursing home, volunteering anywhere there is need! All of these are great things, but what about the need of every person I encounter? There is a hunger in every heart for love - not merely in those places where you can "volunteer" to love. I realized that there is such a disconnect in me between doing loving acts and being a loving person. But as Mother Teresa said, "Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well." I don't want to merely do things for others when I'm "performing service" or volunteering or convincing myself that if I bake cookies for someone that that is all that they need to know that they are loved, I want to be "the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in my face, kindness in my eyes, kindness in my smile, kindness in my warm greeting." To truly love Christ, to truly love Carlos, to truly love my friends and family, means to love each and every member of the mystical body of Christ. Starting not with the whole world, but with my neighbor. With the strange woman at church. With the person sitting by themselves. With my roommates. With my cousins. The love from God that overwhelms my soul needs to be poured out of me so that each person I encounter will realize a glimpse of the immensity of God's love for them.

        

How blessed I am to be in a relationship that challenges me to rise out of my complacency and grow in my capacity to love and care for others. Carlos truly amazes me with how humble, loving, and selfless he is. He never toots his own horn and tells anyone when he befriends a homeless person, but respects their dignity and loves quietly. He actually was upset with me when I didn't want to help Jackie, calling me out for failing to love as God calls me to, and then he became upset with himself for being upset with me. How blessed am I? The best friends in your life will truly help you to be a better you. I'm all sorts of confused in my understanding of God's will for my life, but all I know is that He is forming me to be the woman of God He wants me to be through the friends and the relationships that He has placed me in, and I want to rest in that. Wherever He calls me beyond that, I'm working up the courage in Him to go. Jesus, I trust in You!

Here is a lovely picture of the amazing man with a heart of gold himself and me being adorable in the outskirts of Assisi to end my first ever post. Bah, joy!!!

Love,
Tran