Look Among the Lowly

“Kings build their castles and fools surround their thrones.

A thousand hillside mansions slowly fade.

We have built cathedrals wrought with

stained glass and with gold,

but inside them we feel cold and faraway.

I’ve been searching high, searching high to find You,

but I have been so wrong. I should have known to

look among the lowly, the poor and weary.

I see Your holy presence ever near.

The last and least, Your touch means peace and hope.

I should have known to look among the lowly.”

(“Look Among the Lowly,” Naomi Jackson)

Lowly Living

I washed parasite medication down with “liquid IV” electrolyte drink and went back outside to join my other slightly-infirmed friend. Our kitchen area was smoky from the open fire on which Emilianne and I were cooking potato soup and cornbread. All of Sunday’s meals had a slightly campfirey vibe due to the propane shortage in Rurre. “I took my American stove and oven for granted till I got here; I took our propane stove and oven here for granted till we didn’t have them!” I exclaimed that day. “But honestly it’s such a vibe!”

That same night as I finished baking Dutch-oven-style banana bread over the same fire pit, the power went out, leaving us in the pitch dark. But power outages, as scary as they are for some girls, also make for incredible star gazing! As Lisvania snuggled up next to me, she looked at the stars and asked, “¿Cuando nació Dios?” (“When was God born?”) That started a conversation about how much bigger God is than us, and I pointed to the stars. “El es poderoso, grande, eterno, y bonito,” (“God is powerful, big, eternal, and beautiful”) she sighed.

Looking among the lowly is finding beauty in the natural things like stars or mountains, in the little things like fluffy white seed pods or tiny kittens, and in the human things like laughter, hugs, and goodnight prayers. The humble. The simple. That kind of beauty is better.

Some things are mundane, like using rice for the second meal of the day for the fourth day of the week. Routine means that I will always shower with a flashlight after dark and smile when I smell my clean, hand-washed towel (after I shake out any potential wildlife). Living means romanticizing the mountains and the trees but sometimes tuning out excess bug noises, bird calls, and the constant hum of right girls’ voices. Over two months in, there is a comfortable familiarity; the same clothes, same hairstyles, same smells, same sounds, same tastes, same feelings.

Lowly living doesn’t mean it’s all mundane. In fact, we haven’t had a normal week yet! A prime example is how this Sunday baby José’s mother (just released from prison after incarceration for attempting his murder) showed up at the gate pretending to be her sister and wanting to take the baby. José was coincidentally simultaneously in the hospital for a couple days on IVs, but his mother and her boyfriend (who just escaped prison after being in for house robberies) were determined to get him from us. The defensoría tipped us off that the drugged-up couple would be back Sunday night to break into campus. So Melissa posted the SMs out by the gate two-by-two with machetes to “chase them away” and “call the police” if they show up (LOL). A group was outside until 2 AM marching around the campus perimeter, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, some SMs slept in the hospital with José, and the rest of the kids on campus were locked into rooms with their house parents (including me after 11:00).

Part of life here is expecting the unexpected and taking everything as it comes. And life includes a heaviness, too. My naïve idea that this campus was an unpoppable bubble where kids recover from their pasts was ruptured as I realized that we constantly accept new children and let others leave, face recurring trauma on campus or when they visit family, give suicidal teens our genuine concern, and struggle to accept what is out of our legal power to control.

Regardless of the oddly familiar yet incredibly unpredictable life, or maybe because of it, I have such peace. “For being such an organized person who has their life planned, you sure are serene!” Emilianne commented. “Nothing about your life now goes according to plan!” I paused and realized she was right, but also noted how that shift didn’t come with a struggle or even my notice. Living with Jesus looks different for me here. My devotional routine is respectively shorter and more interrupted, my prayer life is more desperate, and my introspection has more time and space for reflection. My Jesus time has become little moments all throughout the day, not just two big bookends.

Lowly Working

When I’m not on duty as a security guard (jk, that’s hopefully one and done), my work here is nothing inherently special. Going overseas for a year seems like a grandiose gesture, but once here it’s merely comprised of small opportunities to do small things. Lowly, I guess you could say.

Breakfast cooking is what I wake up thinking about most days. It’s my first real job, and usually it’s nothing fancy. Panqueque, be it chocolate chip, banana, oat, or potato. Variations of quinoa, oatmeal, and rice. Muffins or banana bread. Sliced oranges or bananas. Lemongrass tea or Api Morado (purple corn and spice drink). Ten white bowls, ten yellow cups, ten metal spoons. Yet everyday when I answer, “What are you making, Teacher?” — even when it’s a repeat meal — the enthusiastic response is always “¡Que Rico!”

“Teacher, I’m leaving today, so can you teach all the classes?” T. María asked me at 8:01 Monday morning. “¡Por supuesto!” was my response. I whipped out construction paper and a Bible story and had them act out Zacchaeus as I read, followed by creating it with paper. There are pros and cons of calling all the shots in my room, but it was a fairly typical day when it came to kids not heeding a five second countdown, using my God-given well-projecting lungs to be heard, sweating out the waterbottle I drank, and loaning my pencils as a bribe to get tarea completed. Some days I just look at the faces of my first and second graders and wonder what their lives will be like. Will Gaishel be counting change in a store someday and remember counting popsicle sticks in my math class? Will Diego sing read your Bible, pray everyday, and you’ll grow, grow, grow randomly to himself? Will Isaac give high-fives to his kids because he remembers how much he liked high-fiving me? Will Alejandro keep the notes he asks me to write him forever like he promises?

“I feel like Katie-Jane’s entire existence is craft supplies,” Elizabeth observed. I can confirm! Between braiding hair for my girls to go to Pathfinders or finding more Spanish worship music to blast from my little JBL, living in Las Lilas pretty much means supplying construction paper, crayons, glue, markers, and scissors. Afternoon house-parenting is pretty much an endless cycle of snacking, crafting, and chores with some Bible stories and conversations sprinkled on top of maintaining decorum.

Newsletter writing is a once-a-month fundraising adventure I have with Maddy. She presents a kid’s story after interviewing Melissa, I lay out our monthly goal, we craft a short inspirational thought, find our favorite pictures of kids, projects, and volunteers, and put it all in MailChimp with slow-as-molasses hotel WiFi in Rurre to be sent to about 250 inboxes. Then, we pray fervently that the $10,000 we need to stay open for another month come in, along with our specific project needs. At least one thing here has an immediate sense of accomplishment attached!

Carlo’s Friday night worship thought was on Matthew 25:40, “If you’ve done it into the least of these, You’ve done it to Me.” His comment was that too often we put Jesus on the back burner and forget about spending time with Him. He diagnosed the root of this problem as selfishness. “The cure,” he said, “is to serve the people around you, because then you’re connecting with Jesus and doing it for Him, too.” This really struck me. Lowly working means serving even when you don’t want to. And that’s where we find Jesus, already working.

Love the Lowly

As I was getting ready for school, I sang along to some rarely-played English praise music. After awhile of enjoying my worship, I turned around to see four heads in height order peeking through the cracked-open door. “¡Me gusta su canción!” one little girl said. My heart melted. “¡Me gusta su voz!” If my face was an emoji, it would have been the one with big round eyes welling with happy tears. I’m praising God out loud like this from now on, I thought.

I love my life here, all the little tasks and moments that keep a day running. The simplest interactions mean the most.

Everyday I tell Mariana, “Tranquila, chica,” when she’s in the process of inhaling her third plate of food. Emilianne phrased it perfectly when she said, “This is Mariana’s world, we’re just living in it,” because this chica marches — and eats — to the beat of her own drum. Wearing her iconic long skirt, button-down, and black headband down over her eyes, Mariana even proceeded to grind a small poisonous snake into the road with her purple rain boots on our last walk.

I regularly help Nirza and Nicol pronounce “poquito” instead of “copito,” “gracias” instead of “glacias.” “I’m learning Spanish alongside these girls,” I laughed. These two clowns bring my heart such joy! Nirza’s latest entertainment is me giving her a bin of water and cups to splash around in for hours, which comes with my older girls scolding her for being wet and me defending her. Every day I have to practically drag Nicol by the hand to and from school since her walking speed rivals that of a snail! Her doddling is precious if you let it be. She’s slower than a seven year itch when wiping the table (her chore), but her carefulness is reflected in how gentle she is when corralling our six kittens.

In my classroom, I confiscate endless paper airplanes from Diego, Gaishel, and Alejandro. I put them in the window till recess so often that they now sometimes willingly bring them over to me! It amazes me how entertained they continue to be and how persistent they are about making every old assignment (and current homework) into un avión!

I’m asked permission everyday to do the simplest things, like Lisvania getting a pair of scissors off the shelf or Milenca retrieving a comb to remove head lice. “¿Puedo dibujar?” “¿Puedo tener más?” “Puedo sacar piojos?” “Puedo usar el baño?” “Puedo bañarme?”

“¡Gracias damos, Señor, por el pan! Gracias damos, Señor por el pan. Por el pan espiritual, alimenta cada cual, y también por el pan material. Amén.” This is the song we sing before every meal, and often it gets used by one hungry girl who starts it to quickly call stragglers to the table.

“¡Gracias por la comida!” girls call out after leaving the table. “¡Provecho!” we all call out in automatic response. The Lilas are so well trained, in fact, that sometimes during the day they’ll “provecho” each other after being thanked for random things unrelated to food.

“¡De la Casa de Las Lilas les desea un feliz Sábado!” After every Friday night worship in la cancha or in the church, every house wishes everyone a happy Sabbath. Then after Sabbath, we wish a “feliz semana” (“happy week”), passing out hugs and giggles and handshakes and piggy-back rides.

For the Lowly

Sabbath morning I read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand in John. What stood out to me was the way Andrew brought the five loaves and two fish to Jesus but also said, “But what are they among so many?” I’ve wondered that myself. I’ve presented my lowly self that’s embarrassingly small in comparison to the great need. “What can I actually do this year, Lord, in the great scheme of these kids’ lives?” But Jesus just took the food from Andrew and said, “Tell them to sit down.”

“At the end of the day, we may not make much of a difference in the kids’ lives, especially in regards to education,” I was talking to the other SMs on my día libre. “But what we really want is to get them to Heaven. Our goal in being here is to connect them to Jesus and stop the perpetuation of the trauma cycle they are in.” And so we the lowly just love the lowly.

Love from looking among them,

Katie-Jane

🤍

Donate to Familia Feliz